My Mom is Gone But I Love Her So Much!

Some of you know that my mom passed away six days ago after a horrendous 11 month battle with one of the worst diseases I’ve ever seen: dementia.

My mom went from this incredibly petite fireball of energy with the biggest heart, the most compassion of anyone I’ve ever met, into a shell… She was going to rage at times and we knew it was not our mom… It was the disease speaking through our mom.

It must’ve been so hard on our 93-year-old father who is seriously ill himself, to sit there every day with hospice in their home holding the hand of the woman that he had loved, and had been married to for 71 years!

And I’m sharing this message today because I think it’s so important to face the grieving to face the loss to talk about the grieving so that we can heal and eventually get to a place where we remember our mom with total love… It’s very hard to do right now for my brother, my sister, and my dad because this is all so recent.

Over the last 11 months, my mom has had moments of lucidity, and my brother Terry and my sister MaryDiane, when that happened would contact me and FaceTime me and I would have two or three glorious minutes with my mom on FaceTime!

She had totally changed… From this bubbly energetic nonstop action hero figure, yes I’m talking about my mom LOL, to someone who could smile for two or three seconds and then the smile would fade to nothing.

But we still had a way to communicate that was so deep and beautiful that’s making me cry right now thinking about it. When I would be on FaceTime with her I would tell her a joke or tease her and she would give me a look outside the side of her eye that was so adorable, she would reply sometimes with the funniest statements that you have no idea where they came from but you knew that part of her was still here in the physical world and you knew part of her could totally understand what we were saying to her.

Of course, I’ve always been the one in the family to try to crack jokes, and one day I said to my mom “hey your son Terry told me that you were out water skiing today for a couple of hours and I didn’t know why you cut it so short mom?“

And her response?

“Well there are other people that need to use the lake as well I can’t use it all day just for myself.“

In other words, in those few minutes of lucidity, she was funnier than hell, and she’d love to play with me on FaceTime and I just love that part thinking on my mom right now.

But the downside of dementia is like living in hell. My brother and sister and dad experienced it for 11 months, because I live out of state I experienced it minimally compared to what they did, but I’ll never forget when she was dying in the hospital several months ago, she is a warrior she came back from four last rights, four times they were going to declare her dead and every time she bounced back…

But I’ll never forget one time in the hospital when we thought for sure she was dying she couldn’t talk she could barely open her eyes and once again my brother, an absolute savior for my mom and dad, would hold the FaceTime video and even though she couldn’t open her eyes and it looked like she was right on the brink of death I was able to tell her everything in the world that I was afraid I would never say to her.

” Mom I love you so much and if this is your time to go God is so ready for you, Jesus is so ready for you, you have lead a life that God is so proud of, you touched so many people in so many ways and I love to call you my Mom.

It was because of you, Mom, that I became an animal lover just like you. It was because of your devotion to God that I became an all faith minister. Mom, it was because of you that I got sober. Mom, it was because of what you taught me as a little boy, how to always be prepared, even overly prepared LOL, and I still put my clothes out every night for the next day I still make my lunches the night before just like you taught me when I was a little boy.

Mom, I don’t know if you can hear everything I’m saying, I don’t know if you know how much I love you and it’s killing me to see you in the state, our family right now is so sad that you’re hurting this bad, but I want you to know that I love you with every ounce of my heart and soul, and if it is time to go its OK Mom. We all understand and we love you more than you could ever know. I love you. David“

So I was able to share with my mom everything I’ve always wanted to tell her and some of the things I have of course told her in the past, but I learned so much from her during her battle with dementia as my whole family did, and that when she was done she was done and you respected her and you quit talking.

If she wanted to be alone there was always a nurse in the house but we made sure, that we were making accommodations for almost everything that we could to make her more comfortable.

And my memories with her will always be so brilliant, my brother, sister and my father all feel the same way… But the grieving process is very fascinating it’s not linear at all.

A memory I hold dear… My mom was such a lover of animals that I became a lover of animals and my brother and sister too.

But she was Mother Teresa when it came to the animal kingdom, and here’s a story to prove it.

We lived in North Syracuse New York, and I loved living in the woods behind our house, I was out there building forts doing everything I could to stay in nature.

One day I caught two snakes, a brown one and a green one which I named appropriately “Brownie and Greenie“. Pretty creative Ha?

So I brought them into the house and I put them in cages downstairs and my mom asked me what I was doing and when I told her I had snakes, now that was one animal she was not particularly fond of LOL, she said OK just keep them in their cages.

Well, Brownie and Greeny had different ideas of their own.

The next day as my mom walked down the stairs to do laundry there was Brownie and Greenie staring up at her on the stairway….she absolutely freaked out over it!

She told me that I had to get rid of them but I begged her just to keep them because they would never get out again.

Wrong move David!

The very next day there they are greeting my mom as she goes down the cellar stairs and that was it… “David, David Joseph Essel, at this very moment get the snakes and get them outside!“

I can go from hysterical crying even when I’m writing this article I’ve broken down several times, and then I can see a picture of her holding me and just melt.

And at that time there’s a huge relief and I called Archangel Michael and I asked him to calm my soul my heart and to try to keep me in a balanced state… Which is impossible in the grieving process but at least we try.

From 0 to 18 I was probably one of the worst sons that any family could ever have. I was a lot of trouble. My addictions started very early in life and my mom never once gave up on me!

She never once told me to leave the house. She never once told me she didn’t love me because I was a pain in the ass, and I was a pain in the ass, but she accepted me every day of my life just like she did with my brother and sister.

I didn’t know I was going to write this much about my mom, below is the obituary, but I praise her every second I can think of her, I pray for my brother and my sister and especially my dad who now is alone after 71 years of marriage, and I know we will eventually all pull through this but I wanted to write this so that if you need to grieve please grieve. If you need help in the grieving process please reach out, life is spectacular and death is so difficult.

And then eventually, we will all come to an acceptance of my mom‘s passing, and eventually, I’m not gonna rush this, we will remember her only as the angel of God that was put in our family.“



If you’d like to donate in honor of my mom, please choose an animal rescue of your choice and donate to them. That’s what our mom would like.

I love you all so very much, David

https://www.traubfuneralhome.com/obituary/Mary-Essel