My Mom - Anna Mae Robicheau

My mom died on September 6 2011. How crazy is that? She fought a good fight but cancer kicked her ass literally and figuratively. The last picture of her was in April when her sister came for a visit. I hardly recognized her. It's sad that cancer can change someones looks so much.

Someone dieing at the age of 53 is not right. She still had years, she was still healthy, she still had grandkids she'll never meet. There was still so much I wanted to do with her.... I wasn't finished with her. My brothers weren't finished with her.

I think it says alot about a person, the amount of people who come to share at a funeral/memorial. She effected people greatly. I don't even think she knew how much she effected these people. I know for a fact if we were somewhere more central, mom's memorial would have been over flowing and not with people who felt obligated to come. These would have been people who knew her and loved or hated her.

Mom fought stage 4 colon cancer, she was diagnosed a year and half ago. I'm sure she had it longer but her being her never went and got checked. Some of it was the doctors she saw initially, some of it was her fault. I read somewhere that stage 4 you have about 2 years. She knew and never said anything..... never said anything. She wouldn't even tell me it was colon cancer it was always bowel cancer. Or this hospital doesn't do stages.

I spoke with her the night she died. She sounded in so much pain. Her words were slurred and she sounded tired. It was a 2 minute conversation. Hi mom I just wanted to check on you. How's the leg? Oh it's getting better. I feel so much better. Then she was talking to a nurse, I think she was getting changed. I'm going to stay in the hospital until I get this leg fixed. I said did Barb call you? Yes I talked with her for a bit. I have to sleep now, I'm tired bye baby. That was it the last conversation I had with my mom hours before she died. I got off the phone and told Dustin.. she's not doing well, she doesn't sound good at all. I had planned on phoning her doctor in the morning and found out what was going on. Talking with mom's friend later I found out that mom planned to be found in the morning by one of her favorite nurses. She knew.... she knew... and said nothing. I'm angry over that, things feel undone. She died by herself, I never got to say goodbye.

I never took my kids or husband with me to the funeral. With where she lived and what we had to do, we cleaned out her apartment. We traveled 20 hours to NS to bury her with her father. Something I know she would have wanted. She loved him even though she's spent more of her life without him then with him. I want my kids to be able to say goodbye. I want the feeling that she knew how much we cared for her.

If you have cancer or some other disease where you know the diagnose is not good. Please tell your family. Yes you have the right to die how you want. But your family needs to know, they need time to prepare... they need to be able to say goodbye. You can't go along and say everything is fine, I'm getting better, I'm doing o.k. when you know you're not. When you die yes it will be a shock but maybe your family will be alittle prepared. Maybe they will be able to wrap their heads around how it could happen.

I'm hoping there is a heaven where every now and then mom; you'll look down on us and smile.

Photo Challenge Day 6 - Childhood Memory

So my favorite childhood memory is roasting marshmallows on a fire. We didn't do it very often only when we went camping and we only camped once or twice during the summer. I don't have any pictures cause my parents have the albums. So I thought I would share my friends and my kids doing what I love to do. I forgot how much I loved roasted marshmallows until we started doing it again.

I'm going to be away for a few days. But I'll catch up with the photos when I get back.

Photo Challenge Day 5-Someone I love

Well this is a hard post. Do I focus on just one individual? Do I do a group? Do I do just my small family? It's hard to just pick one.

So I picked them all. This is my family about 2 years ago. The only person missing is my dad. I love them; all some more then others, but the love is still there. This is my husband and my kids, my brothers family and his kids, my mom and my younger brother.

It's just to hard to pick....

Photo Challenge Day 4-Favorite Color

My favorite color is yellow. Although I don't wear it often. I do really like it. The kids all have yellow clothes. I took this picture last night of Payton after our friends wedding.

I love this yellow dress; although this is the first time she's worn it and she's had it for over a year now. I don't think her favorite color is yellow.

Photo Challenge Day 3-Clouds

I took these pictures last night. There were a ton of clouds in the sky. I was playing with the different setting on my camera so the clouds look more menacing then what they really were. I think they look good. What do you think?





I used other setting on the camera other then the manual one. We had a huge rainstorm last night, so yesterday after supper was the perfect time to get a cloud picture.

Tune in tomorrow to see what the picture is going to be!

Photo Challenge Day 2-What I Wore

So this is it.... Me; this is what I've worn almost every day this summer. Tank top and shorts. It's been so hot this summer, that the last time I wore a t-shirt was Canada day. Can't you tell I got one of the children to take the picture lol.

Photo Challenge Day 1-self portrait

I took this picture at christmas time. I'm the one always behind the camera. I almost NEVER get my picture taken. Not because I don't want too, mostly because Dustin doesn't care about pictures so he doesn't want to take pictures. If and when he does, they are out of focus or why in the hell would you take that picture, picture. You all know what I mean. So I'm either left with taking my own picture; or getting my daughter to do one and they turn out like this

not that this is horrible, she's getting alot better. I learned early on to sit when she's taking pictures or else I get the up the body look. But this isn't really a picture of myself that I would show to everyone. You can see everything (all the mess) in the back ground.

Come back tomorrow to see photo challenge day 2.

Photo Challenge

So a friend on another blog did a photo challenge last month and I really enjoyed seeing what photos she came up with and what she had to say about each one. So I thought hey I want to do that too. So this month I'm doing the photo challenge. Here is the list of things: