On this day last year, my husband and I left Florida to move back closer to home.
Florida never felt like home to me and I desperately wanted to be closer to my mom again. I was miserable and depressed the entire time we lived there. I basically just lived one visit home to the next.
I finally broke down one day and told my husband I didn’t think I would ever be happy living there. He started to look for jobs closer to home and found one within a few weeks. He sent his resume and got a phone call the next day saying the job was his.
Everything moved quickly after that. They wanted him to start the new job in the very beginning of January, so we immediately put our house on the market and began planning our move.
We initially planned to leave a few days after Christmas, based on my husband’s last day of work. But after some thought, I had the crazy idea to bump our move up so that we could be home in time for Christmas.
That meant we would only have about three weeks to facilitate a move from Florida to New Jersey, but we would get to spend the holidays with our families, especially with my mom.
Even though I had prepared for her last Christmas in 2017 and again in 2018, I knew that 2019 would definitely be her last. If there was any possibility that I could spend her last Christmas with her, then I was going to make it happen no matter what it took.
It was an incredibly busy three weeks, but we got everything done in time and arrived to stay at my sister’s house the day before Christmas Eve.
I was able to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my mom, on what ended up being her very last Christmas Eve and her very last Christmas Day. We had many laughs and made many beautiful memories. We took many photos and videos, too.
I will never forget our last Christmas together.
At the time, I thought it was just about being home in time for Christmas, but as it turned out, it was about much more than that.
About two weeks after Christmas, my mom started dying.
As I prepare to relive the end of my mom’s life, and what was also the hardest time in mine, I will try to remember this one beautiful fact.
She waited for me to come home.
And I will be forever grateful that I made it just in time.
