I wish I would’ve listened when my mom said “you’ll miss me when I’m gone.”

I lost my mom to cancer two years ago. I always thought cancer would just effect other people, never me, I don’t know why I thought this way, I just did. it was always “aw they are sick, that’s sad, but at least it’s not my family.” until it was. I always took her for granted, everything she did for me, I never got everything I wanted as a kid but I got everything I ever needed. I was her last child, the baby of the family, so while she was sick, I was the only one home to take care of her, while I’m grateful I was, I was also very angry about it. everyone else my age got to go to college, and parties, I got to help my mother bathe while she was too weak and nauseous from chemo. her last few months, we thought she developed some sort of post-chemo delirium, she was acting so odd, she did things so unlike herself, until we found out it was an inoperable brain tumor. she told me she felt like a burden to the family and that’s what hurt me the most.
She came home from the hospital on hospice, she physically walked into the house. I watched nurses set up a hospital bed in the same living room that she taught me how to read in, the same living room we had family movie nights every Friday night when I was little. the hospice nurse told us that sometimes people hold on for weeks even, my expectations were too high. I told her goodnight one night but she was on morphine and wasn’t conscious. I was woken up early the next day by my panicking dad saying she wasn’t breathing, I immediately ran to her side and tried waking her up, and I don’t even know why,I knew she was dead. something about seeing your own mother, dead in the living room of the house she raised you in is so horrifying, I had nightmares about it for weeks. I felt so selfish because i cared more about the fact that I lost my mom than I did that my mom lost her own life, about the fact that I would never have a mom to go dress shopping with when I get married, or that she’ll never meet a child of mine if I decided to have one. she deserved the entire world and she didn’t even get a full, happy life. most people my age are living on their own, but I still live in this house with my dad because I’m all he has, and I’m so scared I’ll relive the same situation with him. I’ll forever live with regret that I didn’t cherish the time I had with her, that I didn’t tell her I loved her every single day, that I made her cry sometimes. I don’t believe in heaven, but I hope that for her, there is something nice after.