Well the inevitable has finally come. My mother has been battling cancer for 13 years now and it looks like it's finally caught up to her. There's a tumour around the nerve that controls her breathing and speech that is slowly both eating away at and constricting said nerve. The sad part is that she had just had brain surgery not even 4 months ago and everything seemed to be looking up despite the fact that the cancer was terminal. Well, sad isn't really the best word in all honesty; she's been counting her days since last year. What's killing me right now is seeing the effects slowly progress. Her voice is starting the become more and more faint, her memory is becoming more and more clouded, her decision making ability is disappearing, etc. Regardless, I'm just glad we as a family can all be at peace now. I know I haven't been around this forum for very long at all (2 weeks maybe?), but I've always had a lack of an outlet for my negative thoughts, as much as I hate to let them out. I try to look for the positives in life, even in a situation as dire as this. Yet, losing someone who has been around you for so long can't really be anything short of heartbreaking and despite all my efforts to accept the reality of the situation, I struggle to keep my thoughts away from the negatives here. I'm posting this thread now only because of the fact that I can see the process begin to unfold and in all honesty my mother is becoming less and less the person I have known for so long as each day passes. You might say that she dies a little every day. It's interesting how dealing with a disease for so long can be so insignificant in the grand scheme of things to one person, though. Despite all the pain, suffering, discomfort, etc., my mother has been just about as close to a healthy person as I could have imagined her being. She would come with us on trips, even go on them alone, she's go on walks with us, clean, yell at us for being bad, give us life advice. I think this is why it's so difficult for me and the rest of us; we've never really seen her as being sick. Regardless, I've grown old enough to accept the fact that life is one of the most finite resources on this planet and is readily exhausted at an unimaginable rate. My mother will live on through her memory, just like her parents and my father's do. I just want her to know we'll all miss the times we shared while she was still alive and that no matter what we'll always love her.