I am not really sure where to start, but I will try. I am so very lost in my head and not sure what to do to get through my pain right now. I am not even at the point of processing these changes in my life or the grief of loss.
I am not sure if any of you know, but my mother has been struggling with stage 4 cancer for the past 6 months, it was a surprise when she was diagnosed and she was given a grim outlook, but sought other opinions. We got her on ivermectin, fenbendazole, hydroxychloroquine, via some very generous people on bitcoin twitter. The second opinion doctor affiliated with MD Anderson started her on a quick treatment plan and put her through immunotherapy and light chemo and things were looking up with her treatments. She eventually had some side effects and weight loss that caused her to stop the treatments about 3 weeks ago and has been trying to stay positive and fight.
We had to take her into the doctor for various reasons of pain and discomfort and they did some tests/blood work. They gave us the news that if there is anyone that wants to reach out and see her, they should do so in the next 2 weeks. They also suggested that two weeks may be optimistic.
I am completely and utterly shattered to the soul. She passed just after Bitcoin block 867,550, this past weekend.
Even up until the end, I was looking for ways to extend her life and get her just a little more time to see my sister's first child, which is due in December. I overextended myself, financially, to buy ~$500 in various medicines and natural supplements that help to fight cancer and administered as much as I could. She wanted to fight up until the end and some of the last words she was able to speak in hospice were "I'M STAYIN'".
I have had many great friends and family reach out to me and check on me and I was taken out to lunch yesterday and the day before, which are all amazing things, but I am not sure that there is anything in the world that can really get me to the other side of this event faster or easier. I just have to process it and move forward accordingly, which is difficult on every level.
No matter how many people are around or here for me, I just feel alone in the world. It is not the people around me or the support they are giving me emotionally, it is the fact that I cannot call my mother and share it with her. She was a huge part of my life and someone I could always count on to be there for me when times were tough and when times were good. She gave everything for her friends and family, even if it meant that she would go without. Words cannot even express what that means to me.
This is a woman that raised me as a single mother and also stepped in as I raised my son and daughter as a single father. She dedicated her life to us and I am not sure what a world without her looks like. She has never had the means to do for others, but only the ability to sacrifice what she has to help those she cares for. She gave everything for us, she gave everything for friends, she gave everything for strangers in need.
She was the type of person that left her job to go down to help clean up after hurricane Katrina, but the "universe" punished her for it by making her do a quick claim on her house in 2009, sticking her with a 17% interest rate for 16 years. We are still stuck with that setup. As soon as she was in a position to finally get it refinanced at a reasonable rate, she had to leave her job due to the cancer diagnosis. She was so determined to do whatever it took to make a home for her family and never gave up on that goal. She even brought in those in need along the way and helped so many, which is a thing she learned from the example her mother and father gave her.
She taught me so much along the way and has been both inspiring and a pain in the ass at times (as I am sure I have been to her as well), but we have braved the world as a family and I owe her so much respect for that.
We mined Bitcoin together from 2012-2017, but both were completely wrecked in 2021 due to leveraged positions at Nexo, along with the collapse of BlockFi and Celsius. In that era we mined, we sent out ~.05 BTC to everyone we knew to get them into the future of decentralized finance, but in the end, we had none to show for the adventure, we lived hand to mouth without much to be able to stack back. She was a Bitcoiner, she was a freedom lover and she had a great heart.
In the recent months, we exhausted all of our funds, but we have made it here, even if the universe has been very cruel and unusual. We have found ourselves facing unexpected major home repairs several times this month, including a broken HVAC, animal incursions in the attic space, a broken fridge/freezer, and various other super challenging hurdles. We lost nearly all the food in the fridge, but we have a small bit saved in the old fridge in the garage. All of these challenges are expensive and none are on their way to repair, due to the financial situation on our hands. She did not have life insurance to ease our financial burdens and it has only compounded the issue.
I find it hard to accept the hard challenges that were put in her path over her life, some of those were the doing of those with mal-intent and other were just circumstance or poor positioning, but in any case she "kept on keeping on". She was an inspiration as to how to move forward, no matter what life throws your way, but I really wish she was able to have a life more deserving of the good she always tried to put into the world.
No matter the hardships in her adventure on this earth, she led a life that I am proud of, found the joys to be had, and there are many lives that she touched along the way. She did not deserve a abbreviated journey, she did not earn the hardships she faced, she did not put out bad into the world, but she did live a life worth living and that is a huge accomplishment.
We fought for more time and it seems that we got all there was to get.
I love you Mom, rest easy now.