A Reminder Of Love & Hope Found Among Old Diabetes Newspaper Clippings

Mom ad I, four months before I was diagnosed

And she's still looking over my shoulder - Even though I can't see her.

So as one of the Executor’s of my mother’s estate, I have the task of going through years worth of her stuff - And at times it can be all consuming and incredibly emotional.

For instance, as I was cleaning out the kitchen junk drawer one day, I found two newspaper clippings from long ago.

One was from 1994 and it was all about the Diabetes Control And Complications Trial (DCCT) and the other from 2006 about how steel cut oatmeal was the better choice than instant or fast cooked oatmeal for people living with diabetes.

As I was cleaning out a drawer in her vanity, I found a newspaper article from July of 1990 (6 months before my sister Debbie died) about a new drug for transplant and dialysis patients re: Kidney disease. My sister started dialysis in the fall of 1990, and died in January of 1991.

And yesterday as I was going through her nightstand drawer, I found a 1995 clipping from the Associated Press about researchers successfully transplanting insulin producing cells from mice who were related, by tricking their immune systems into accepting the foreign cells.
And each I time I would find one of these clippings tucked away, I’d start to tear up, because it made realize several things.

1. My mother loved her 6 children very much, and three of those children had type 1 diabetes
   


2. She worried about us 24X7, which was something I used to tease her about daily
   


3. My mother taught us to live our lives with diabetes with gusto and even though she had her own demons regarding the “cure in 10 years” theory that she’d been told continually, each time one of her children was diagnosed with diabetes - She never never stopped hoping that researchers would some day make the cure prediction a reality
   


4. I was once again reminded that hope floats and stays with you even when you think you don't have any
   


5. And finally, your mother never stops loving you, even when when she's gone. And it's when she's gone that she'll find ways to remind you of her love... just when you're missing her the most!