Moving Day - a day of change, of moving forward, of realizing part of your dreams. I've been looking forward to this day with mixed feelings. I know that the change will be better for my family, will be better for me. But it is a bittersweet day. Today marks the first anniversary of my mother's passing.

Out of all the people in my life Mom was always there for me. I was never a bad kid but I moved through life slowly, kind of directionless for a while (the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it?). But the one thing I always saw from Mom, despite my seeming lack of ambition, was that I was never a disappointment to her. Oh, I'm sure there were times she wanted to smack me upside the head but she never let on. I try to be that way with my own kids; sometimes I am successful.

Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer in late 1999. She disclosed to to my sister-in-law Nancy, a nurse, when she was visiting here from her home in Virginia. What we didn't know was that Mom was aware of the tumors for about a year. Nancy took her back home with her, but by this time the disease had metastasized, which I came to understand meant little chance of recovery. Radiation treatment got rid of the tumors in her breast but a few months later it appeared in her lymph nodes. She began chemotherapy in mid 2000. The chemo treatments were devastating to her. She was a small woman, 5'1" and barely 100 pounds. She took the treatments on Tuesdays and they disabled her until the weekend. By the time she was feeling well enough it was time for another treatment. She always help out hope the treatments would work but that hope wained as time wore on. By December 2004 she had had enough. She told me that she was stopping the treatments, that she would let the disease run it's course. Although this decision did not sit well with my brothers and their families I was proud of her for taking back her life. I visited her daily but as a single parent I could not give her the care she needed. In April 2005 she moved to my brother James' house where she stayed until she died. Although I knew the day was coming you're still not quite prepared for that call.

The funeral was very hard, and it was the only time my boys have seen me cry. They seemed shocked by this and I knew they did not understand, and will only know that when it is my turn. I am writing this when they are not around so they do not see it again.

So today I'm moving back into the house where I grew up - her house. I've made a lot of changes to make it my own, old walls gone, new walls up, a different atmosphere. And yet every time I'm in there I feel that there is something missing. And there is. I wonder if that feeling will ever go away.