If you have been keeping up with our blog for a while, you may notice that we try to emphasize some common themes. Embrace life, have beautiful moments, make memories, etc. Those phrases are idealistic but yet so easy to shrug off during our day-to-day lives. It’s so easy to get caught up in the monotonous though frustrating experience of your daily life.
We can’t tell you how much we strive to live out those themes of enjoying life as best as we can because we know that years are long but life is short. We write about fun events and vacations because these are the times that we’ll treasure. Looking back, you will remember moments and people and experiences. There was, in fact, a specific time when we decided to stop taking things for granted and that really sparked embracing life and moments and friends as a priority for us.
Angela, here. This past week marks one year since my mom passed away after a four-and-a-half year battle with bone and breast cancer. To make a long story extremely short, she was diagnosed at the end of my senior year of high school when she found out that the cancer was everywhere and that she only had 20% of her hip bone left. There was nothing the doctors could do, so my mom was moved to a Hospice house where they gave her a few days to live. However, by the amazing grace of God and prayers from all around the world, a year after her diagnosis she was able to “graduate” from Hospice when she got the news that a new hip bone had grown where the old one had deteriorated. I still tear up thinking about how excited and amazed we were that day.
After this, my mom was on the mend for almost a year and a half. She did an amazing job at physical therapy, and things really seemed to be looking up, until she got a scan saying that the cancer had progressed again. The doctors tried a bunch of different treatment options, but weren’t able to find one that worked in time to prevent the cancer from ultimately taking over her liver. She passed away at home in the presence of my dad, sister, and me.
If you remember from our other blog posts that I got married in September of last year, you’ll realize that my mom died less than two months before my wedding. Typing that out I still can’t believe that that’s the way things happened. Looking back on my mom’s suffering, all the doctor’s visits, all the prayers that were said, and all the tears that were shed, I can’t even comprehend how my family and I mentally survived it. If it wasn’t for the love and support of my friends and family, speaking for myself at least, I would have ended up on my way down an extremely dark path.
Whenever something happens, my instinct to call my mom and tell her about it still kicks in every now and again. I know in my heart that my mom is watching over us, but that doesn’t always work as consolation when things happen that I still need my mom around for here in this life. It pains me each and every single day that she wasn’t here for my wedding, that she won’t be here to meet her grandkids, and that she suffered so much. If you knew my mom, you knew that she was the most faith-filled, loving, and kind person to ever walk this earth, the very last person to deserve the suffering she had. When she was first diagnosed, a hospital chaplain asked her why she was so hopeful when she was told she was dying, and she simply responded that it was all in God’s hands and we just had to trust. She couldn’t have been more right about this, even now as I go through my life without her.
The consolation that I take from all this is that my mom left my family, friends, and me wonderful pieces of wisdom from the way she lived her life. She took so much joy in the simplest things – just to be chatting with my sister and me in our kitchen was her favorite thing to do. I have experienced first-hand watching my mom savor each moment we had together as a family, and I think that we can all use a little more of this in our extremely busy lives. Along those lines, my mom had this way of creating beautiful memories and seeing the bright side of things from each moment as she went through life. I remember getting frustrated when my mom and I would do our taxes on our family computer way back when (complete with a 7-hour download of the tax program via dial-up!). Looking back, I’ll cherish those memories forever and would give anything to be able to laugh with my mom about how slow our internet was again.
Since my mom passed away, it has been my goal to live my life how she did and not take even the littlest of blessings for granted (although we all have our days, and know this is easier said than done!). So much has changed since my mom was first diagnosed, since she experienced a miracle, since she passed away, and now a year later, but what hasn’t changed is how incredibly blessed I feel to have been raised by the greatest mom I ever could have dreamed of. I will be able to carry her wisdom with me for the rest of my life, and that is the greatest gift I could have ever received.
If you could only use one phrase to describe Basic Bash, it is at its simplest form, a wedding planning business. But, we find deeper meaning in Basic Bash because we help others celebrate the happy times to their fullest. BBE is built on a foundation of celebrating life and moments and memories. It is built on love and never taking for granted the beautiful moments in life but instead, celebrating them so that you can have beautiful moments and memories to remember for a lifetime.