My mother. 63 years old. Colon cancer.

She first noticed rectal bleeding. She made excuses. Maybe it’s hemorrhoids.

She put her physician on a pedestal. He said, “You’re too young to die,” and there was no need for further tests.

Her daughters, both RNs (one an ICU nurse, the other an anesthetist), pleaded with her to get a colonoscopy. She refused. We pleaded with her getting a second opinion. She refused. Her once-plump body shrunk as she drastically began losing weight.

Her brothers flew in from New Jersey to visit her. They told her she looked great. And her response was, “I’m too young to die.”

We hired a hospice nurse for her. Mom would go in and out of comas. She was dying. We daughters would help. I would help turn and reposition my mother. Clean her bowel movements in bed. Mostly an act of guilt, feeling that I was supposed to do this. Feeling obligated.

While remembering my painful past.

She was a negligent mother. A narcissist. Undiagnosed mental illness, I suppose.

We lived in a big house, but the inside told the secrets. The secrets of her neglect and failure to clothe us children while she wore designer clothes.

The secrets of my dad climbing the corporate ladder all along bumping into walls after he drank his daily gallon of wine. Losing our lake house. Daddy lost both jobs because of his alcoholism. We were told he was taking an “early retirement.” As I cleaned my mother, the memories flooded back. The lies. The neglect.

She died at the age of 63 years old. Yes. I also always felt she was “too young to die.” I always wondered: “What if?” What if she had gotten a second opinion and went to another physician? What if she had listened to her two nurse daughters? What if she had been proactive?

A colectomy was eventually performed. But her colon cancer had frantically spread. Liver, pancreas, lungs.

Too young to die. Too little, too late.

Denial and a long wait to face the truth.

Dad gave her the grand funeral, with the mahogany casket and large photos of her with her “Jackie Kennedy-like” hairdos. As her casket was lowered to the ground on a still and hot sunny day, a wind gusted through. I guess that was her final goodbye.

The grande funeral that left me thinking: “What if?” And I cried. I cried for the mother I never had.

Debbie Moore-Black is a nurse who blogs at Do Not Resuscitate.