On a sad note

My goodness this has been the strangest Thanksgiving!!! I hope everyone's was good and that you got to spend lots of time with those you love.

I did get to spend time with my family, got to see everyone that I wanted to but I did get a bit of bad news on Thanksgiving. My best friendlost her Mom that evening. It was very sudden and VERY unexpected. She had a massive heart attack. I was dumbfounded to say the least. I had spoken to her on the phone just about a week before hand. She was always very upbeat and quirky on the phone. You always hung up smiling.

One of the reasons I am talking about this is because my friend and her Mom were just getting to know one another again. Her Mother had run out on the family when she was just a young teenager, so they have been estranged for years. From what I understand she wasn't the most pleasant Mother to live with either. Over the last year my friend had decided to try and reconnect with her Mom. To try and salvage some sort of relationship. Her Mom was very open to that but wanted to just pick up where they left off like nothing ever happened. It wasn't that easy for her daughter. She needed answers and apologies and closure on that part of her life. Then she could start to build that relationship.

Now her Mother is gone. She is feeling massive amounts of guilt because she wasn't as willing to just forgive and forget.

How do I feel about this? I don't know how to feel. I don't think my friend should have had to forgive and forget that quickly. I also hate that she is feeling this guilt now. What to do? How can I help her? What do I say? How do I show her that she did nothing wrong and she was doing the right thing by taking those first baby steps to make a connection with a Mother who abandoned her and her siblings?

I am sorry to burden the few people who read my blog with this. More than anything I just needed to talk about it. Advice would be great, your thoughts on the subject? The one thing that I can say for sure is cherish and be thankful for those you love, show them daily how much you care for them and how special they are to you, for tomorrow they could be gone.

Comments

[April]

Dana that is just horrible. I think that no matter what we do, or don't do, we always seem to have regrets when a loved one passes. We always find something in our hearts that we think would have made things different. Who is to say that even if you dear friend had forgiven that things would have been super wonderful. She didn't have the closure on her feelings of abandonment. She was looking for something that her mother was not prepared to give,or something she was not prepared to accept~ answers. In reality there really is no good answer or excuse for the abandonment. Your friend is only human, and abandonment is such a hard thing for a child. She truly has nothing to be guilty about and we should try very hard not to regret decisions that we have made. We must find the courage to somehow move on and come to peace with our decisions. At the time we made them, we felt they were the right ones for us and we cannot change the past only how we see the future. I hope that we can all learn from this terrible tragedy and cherish the ones we love everyday!