Memories Are Not Forever

I didn't think turning 40 would affect me....no other birthday has affected me.  Age has always been just a number.  I have always lived according the principle that you are only as old as you feel....and I have never felt old at all.
But the older I get, the more I miss my mom.  I realize now what she went through as those years ago.  She lost her mom as a younger adult with two small children.  Although she had a great relationship with her mother-in-law, sometimes a girl just wants her mother.
There are so many things I want to ask or just simply say to her.
I wish we had been honest with each other in the early stages of the disease.  I wish we had taken advantage of the days while they lasted.  I wish we hadn't refused to acknowledge that something was wrong.  I wish I had wrote down all the questions and had the courage to ask them.  I wish I had recorded the answers.
My son will never know his Nana.  His memories of her will only be of in the hospital as he calls it.  He will never know how much she loved the idea of him.  How much family meant to her.  How much she loved children.
She will never be able to help me raise him as I am so clueless. I can never ask for her advice.  I can only rely on my memories and what I think she would have done based on what I know of her.
No one can fully understand the wickedness of this situation until you have traveled down this road.  It is a road I truly hopes no one ever has to walk.  As my mom lies in a bed slowly dying, she was taken from me years ago by  Alzheimer's.  We wasted this critical early years by pretending everything was ok.  We should have been documenting our lives for later.  We should have been preparing for heartache.  I have very little left of my mom.  I have a lot of memories, but...as I know all too well, even those are not guaranteed to last forever.
I wear purple for my mom who I said my good bye too last April.  She didn't know who I was when I waved and said, "I love you Mom."
I can walk into her room anytime I want too, but my mom won't be there.  She hasn't been there in a long time.  She is no longer lying in that bed.  Her soul...her mind left a long time ago.  What is in that bed is just the shell of who she was.
Purple was her favorite color.  It has always been mine.  Now it means even more.