The cruel irony of losing your mother is that right after her death is when you will need her the most. My mother died a decade ago, when she was 57 and I was 21. She was first diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 9, but, for the most part, she made a full recovery.

But after 11 years in remission, she started feeling sick and was soon diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer. For a year and a half, she endured painful surgery and chemotherapy. It was during one of those grueling treatment sessions that she indirectly told me it would take five years to “get over” her death. It’s still difficult to remember my mother as she was then – in excruciating pain but fighting through like a champion. But remembering the wisdom she shared with me about the passage of time, gleaned from losing her own mother, has become a touchstone for me throughout this past decade.

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