It didn't seem to impress anybody else that I mentioned it to today, but a year ago I had surgery. It was the first surgery of my life, and I remember mostly wanting Mom, whose absence I still hadn't grown accustomed to. I don't even remember the pain all that keenly, only an outside awareness that it existed—this was mostly how I dealt with the pain as well, seeing as how "pain management" seems to be an oxymoron in my body's dictionary.

My family, so recently ravaged by my mother's death, were gathering in her hospital, the one with the Comprehensive Cancer Center, to cross fingers and pray that this was not happening all over again. I was so lucky, so lucky. Everything was raw—my emotions, my body, my spirit—but I was alive and I was going to be okay. My mother's surgeon fixed me in a way that she would have liked to have fixed Mom.

My mother's oncologist never had to meet with me.

They were gathered in an exam room across from mine in the general surgery clinic before I was admitted—I was there for a consultation with no idea I would find myself stuck in the hospital for a week. There must have been 10 them standing in that room across from mine, long white coats and low, detached voices...holding up films and seeming very mechanical. I saw him in that room, her oncologist, and it didn't occur to me until days later that it had been MY films they were all reviewing.

I know it's gone now, all of that...and I'm whole again. I know that it isn't a great practice to look back at bad times because it almost puts you right back in the place where it started and you're miserable all over again. But that is not the reason this event is earmarked in my history.

After Mom died, and even that last month when she was fading so quickly, I felt very alone. Falling asleep at night—what little I was sleeping in those days—would only be a chaser to hours of silent sobbing and feeling so utterly hollow. Who but your mother comes looking for you in the middle of the night when you don't answer their call? Who hurts when you hurt if not her?

I was so taken with what I had lost that I had forgotten what I had. Thank you to those of you who stood by my side even when I wasn't great company (or when I tried to break up with you, depending who you are) and for reminding me that I am loved.

I love you, too.