Today was a different kind of day. I didn't cry - I almost cried during my "special hour," but I didn't - only the threat of tears. It's the first day since Tash died that I haven't cried. I don't know if that's progress. I don't know how how I feel about it - a little guilty. There are so many terrible things about the death of your child - your only child - but, one of the worst is guilt. I don't know what I could have done differently - but, there had to be something that I could have done to save her - to make her life easier - to have gotten her that kidney that she was waiting on - SOMETHING!!! The guilt rides my shoulders so much - so, on a day like today, a day that would be considered good by many is considered not too good by me. NOW, I feel guilty for not feeling sad or guilty. How messed up is that? It's a vicious cyle - this grieving process. It will be five months next week & I'm still texting her every day - I'm still checking her Facebook - I'm still leaving comments. Is this normal? I don't know. Does it matter whether it's normal? Because normal or not, this is MY new normal. I'm learning that I have to let people go from my life. I'm learning that I don't know who I am. I have always been TASHA'S MOM and that's the only thing I ever wanted to be. The rest of my life has involved being who others want me to be - who they expect me to be. I don't even know who I really am with Tash removed from my life. I don't even know what I like - what I like to do. I have become a chameleon, blending into whatever form I need to, if it allows me to fit in, make others feel at ease, or allows me easy passage. This week, I want to find something I like - a song, an outfit, a hobby - WHO AM I? Because I know I am not me that I have been for the last 43 years....

As insomnia creeps in to take over the night once again, my mind starts to drift to the past. As beautiful as our lives were together, it is the past that reminds me I could have done more - been better - fought harder. And, it is these thoughts that make me feel like I should be with her, instead of here, counting days...

Looking at pictures...chasing memories

How do you look at pictures of your baby and accept the fact that she's really gone? How do you accept the fact that you will never touch her again? Never hear her giggle? Ahhhhh.....that giggle...I loved the sound of it so much. Tash's giggle was an amazing sound. Even as she got older, that giggle never lost its magic. Fifty-nine surgical procedures, seizures, congestive heart failure, failed kidney transplant...nothing kept her down for long. I think that's what makes all this even harder - she fought so hard - for so long - just to die in her sleep. How could that happen? I'm not sure I will ever understand that. Are you smiling now? That's the question that haunts me. Is that giggle gone? That would be so terrible - just to extinguish that giggle forever - that would be the cruelest of answers - after all she went through, I would hope that the giggle continues tearing through the skies of Heaven - vibrating the clouds and heightening the joy of Heaven. What I wouldn't give to hear that giggle again - that giggle was often the light of dark days. On September 30, 2002, we found out that her transplanted kidney couldn't be saved. They called me to the nurse's desk to take the doctor's call. Tash loved Dr. Campos! But, he had called with the worst news I could have ever imagined. The results were back - the kidney couldn't be saved - the transplanted kidney had necrosis - in essence, it was dead. The transplant had failed & a life we had fought so hard to avoid had roared into our life with a vengeance. Now, it would be dialysis treatments - one health crisis after another. Gone was the normality of life - the life we thought we had in place when I gave Tash a kidney on December 10, 1999. And, it was up to me to carry the news back to my eighteen-year-old daughter and destroy the new life she had just started when she walked onto the FSU campus a few months later. After the phone call, I slid down the wall of the nurse's station - that was the time and place to cry - not in front of Tash. I would have to wear the face of bravery, to guide her into this terrible world - a world she would suffer through for the next nine-and-a-half years, until she slept the sleep of the angels. As I stood up and walked to her room, which was full of friends and family. I could hear Tash's giggle above everything else. If she could laugh through this, I had a hope that she would make it through it all. Her giggle was the last thing I heard before I ripped her heart into little pieces, took her dreams of the future and connected her to a dialysis machine, the last sound I heard before we left a life of normalcy behind - in those few words, I felt like it was me - not PKD - destroying her life. I miss that giggle...

It's almost 5 months now and as I re-read my journals, there is so much left unsaidq - so much to add and such raw emotion to process. As I look at my original promise to Tash, I am only more confused as to whether it's a promise I can break. But, is it a promise I can keep? I have 63 days to make these decisions - 63 days to decide how to best honor her - by being with her or staying here to work to keep her memory alive. I question so many things. I go to counseling and I love my counselor. But, what I say to her, must scare her - she always suggests the safe places for me and has made sure I understand the rules of the Baker Act. So, I am starting to try to find another way to process my questions because as much as I love sweet Susan, I am afraid to give her too much honesty - I am afraid my thoughts are not ones that can be processed through counting at this time. Trust is not something that comes easy to me. It is not that I do not want to trust - I do - but, I am not sure that I really know how to trust. I had one true love - one true trust and that was my baby - the one person that always accepted me as I am and that always loved me. On January 7, 2012, she left this world, leaving me alone, with nothing but questions left in my head. For the next 63 days, I will be working to answer some of these questions and to decide how best to honor my daughter...with my thoughts....or with my presence.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END I always knew this day could come - but, I never truly believed it would happen. She was beautiful, vibrant, and my whole world. Her name was Natasha and she was my whole world. ------------------- Natasha Courtney Knobel was born on July 31, 1984 at 3:39 am. I was too young to have her, but, old enough to know that I loved her from the first breath she took. She was born with one imperfection - one we could not see - Polycystic Kidney Disease. To a sixteen-year-old mom, this was overwhelming, but beatable. After all, we were going to be a team - we became more of a team than I could have ever believed - nothing was going to beat us or separate us. Twenty-seven years later, I'm alone for the first time as a adult - without my daughter, my love, my teammate...me heart. As I begin this journey without her, and struggle to find out who I am without her - how to live without her - I'm completely overwhelmed as to how I will even take the first step.