This summer, I walked.

I walked and walked and walked. One foot constantly in front of the other. My body in a machine-like continuous forward motion, my mind not straggling far behind. The straps from my pack sinked into the knots on my shoulders- a doing of the purple and green mountain-town-thrift-store hiking back pack itself. The pack that held inside everything I needed to survive. The pack that over time became like a extra limb, as dear to me as my very arms and legs. Occasionally, I strapped on the buckle on my waist to shift the weight, which then massaged the ever-forming bruises on my hips. My discounted one-size-too-small hiking boots rubbed the raw blisters on my feet. The feet that brought me hundreds of miles across landscape untouched by man-kind. The strong feet that held my now strong legs- muscles I'd never seen before revealing itself. I could smell myself. In fact, I could smell everything around me. Having spent weeks immersed in the presence of Mother Nature had awaken all my senses.  No longer were the city's commercials ringing loudly in my head. My thoughts depended deeply on the song of the birds, the whirl of the wind, the ice-cold water flowing down a creek that would soon fill my water bottle. I could smell the wildflower's perfume dancing wildly in the air. I could see every wrinkle on a every tree, I could hear their story. I could feel the drop in temperature, the tiny crystals of ice in wind as I hiked higher up a mountain. I could feel the elevation take hold of my lungs and embrace it firmly in it's hands.
How I got here, in the home of wild animals and wild flowers and wild air,
How I ended up living days with one goal in mind- to hike and hike and hike some more until I thought I couldn't take one more step, then take a hundred more,
How I got here- was a mystery.
So often I find myself on a road I never knew existed. Yet, this time I was in the driver's seat. I brought myself here, this was my choice.
To walk, walk, walk.

I remember waking up in a sleeping bag on the hospital visitor waiting area's floor on the first morning I was the mother-less girl. My boyfriend at the time was behind me, my sister across from me, my father in the intensive care room with the body my Mother's spirit just left behind.
I banged my fist on the cold tile crying out to the gods that drove the car to this road- keeping me as their hostage in the passenger's seat. There on that floor, Reality made a raw appearance. I could no longer sanely convince myself that my mother was going to be ok. She was dead. dead. dead. dead. No matter how many times I rubbed my eyes or pinched myself, no matter how badly I needed to hear her tell me she loved me, no matter how badly I needed her hug- I couldn't get it. It didn't matter that no one else in the world knew what time I was born. It didn't matter that I wasn't done growing up. It didn't matter that my father was less like a father and more like a "friend", later becoming more like a roommate more irresponsible with money than I was with my feelings. It didn't matter that she never saw me graduate, or have a baby, or find happiness. It didn't matter. She wasn't coming back.
How did I end up here.
It seemed so obvious- every event leading up to that very moment flashed in my head. It was like Reality suddenly showed up with an arm-ful of pictures and threw them at me- each picture weighing like a brick.
The forth of July spent in the hospital bed snuggled close to my mother, cradled in her arms-the day we found out it was the pain she had was indeed cancer.
The nights she spent too wasted from chemo therapy to make dinner, or move a muscle.
The New Year's Eve she decided to shave her head to avoid the painfully slow process of hair loss.
The New Year's countdown I spent in the bathroom in tears because her bald head made it impossible to ignore her illness.
The time she held my sister and I in her arms assuring us that even though the cancer made it's way back for the second time, she was going to be alright, she was going to fight.
The bone-marrow transplant. The weeks in the tiny clean room. The smell of the lotion I rubbed on her dry feet and hands, a smell that now immediately sickens me to the stomach.
The ghastly disease that took over her beautiful skin and clean lungs.
The downward spiral that quickly followed-
      Hospital visits no longer visits but stays.
      Her thinning legs
      Her thinning physical strength
      Her repeating apology every time she woke me even though I always told her It wasn't her fault the the liquid going through the IV was going right through her.
      The morning she held her eye lids wide open asking me to help her open her eye
               the moment I realized she wasn't getting her sight back
               the moment I learned it was a fungus behind her eye leaking to her brain.
      The moment she was getting wheeled to the room for the last attempt at removing the fungus. Her face- that expression hasn't left me. She told us she loved us. She told us she would see us soon.
The warmth of her hand on my face. I placed it there as she laid in a coma so that I would always remember what that felt like- and I still do.
Her finger tapping to the music I played for her- Michael Buble, Carlos Vives, Juan Luis Guerra.
The moment she opened her eyes and she looked at me. She told me she loved me. She told me she loved me. Regardless of the horrible daughter I sometimes had been, despite my flaws, despite letting her down countless times- she loved me. The told me she loved me then slipped back into the coma.
That was the last thing she said.
That was the last thing she could say.
Her last life decision was made for her even though she had been the one to fight the hardest at keeping her life.

How did I get here. How did I become the mother-less girl.
This is what life has given me. I had no control of it, nor do I have any control of the pain it causes me even to this day.

And so I decided to walk. and walk, and walk. As if with every step I could become closer to an answer. An answer to why my mother had to die; an answer to how I was to live without her.
Every night, at the end of my hike, as I gazed over the thousand shades of purple and orange melting in the sky, gently gazing over the peaks of mountains and treetops, I searched for that answer. I asked a question that received no response. Until I learned that there was no answer.
As I walked I passed trees, mountains, flowers--nature that just is. That's the beauty of it- nature just is. Life just is.
Life doesn't decide one thing is bad and the other good. Life is only in favor of the circle, the inner system that is the reason for Night and Day. To go against that flow is to purposely swim into a whirl-pool in which only destruction can occur. The Universe will bring many joys along with many tragedies. As long as I could accept that I could have as close to an answer as is reasonably possible.

I will never stop missing my mom. I will never stop wishing she didn't die. But if there is one thing I learned, it is that when I walk and walk and walk until I feel like I can not possibly take another step, I can always take a hundred more.