Tamsen Fadal

It came back very aggressively after years of her being treated, after two mastectomies,

it metabolized to her liver and her lungs and it moved fast.

As a family, it was my mom, my dad, my brother, my younger brother, myself.

We had just relocated to Tampa, four of us, brand new city, still getting our footing.

We were actually in a temporary apartment trying to figure out where we were gonna live.

And within the second month of us being there, she relapsed.

And before we could even understand what was happening and what was going on, she was diagnosed again, and then she was gone.

And she passed away the day after Christmas.

She was basically sick all that Christmas day, and by that night, incoherent, and passed away the next morning, December 26th.

My brother was 16.

I had just turned 20.

And my dad and my brother and I were suddenly the three of us in a city where we barely knew anybody planning my mom's funeral.

I spent the last 35 years doing everything without her.

My first job, my first apartment, my wedding, my first one and my second one, my divorce, which she, of course, never knew about, finding Ira, who I think she would love, who she never got to meet, writing a book, going through menopause, which, and this is something I think about a lot, she never got to warn me about, talk to me about, never got to tell me what it was like for her.

I don't even know if she knew what she went through because she went through it due to cancer.

and chemotherapy.

That intergenerational conversation that most women get to have with their moms, the ones where you realize, oh, that is what's happening or that's what's going to happen.

I never got that like a lot of women.

I went through the whole thing without her roadmap of life.

And here's what I will tell you.