Nine

Nine years ago my mom died.

The pain is more bearable, not lessened.

We often didn't get along, which makes her absence oddly felt.

Fuck cancer!

Ironically it was a bone cancer that metastasized into her lungs what got her, because she was a lifelong smoker.  The cancer that metastasized wasn't a lung cancer associated with smoking, she could have stopped smoking and still got this one.

Dammit!