Your mom didn't choose to die. Grave illness took her life. I object to this mythology that says people die when they "let go." I've seen patients I've cared for who were more than ready to let go, as was their loving family, who just weren't blessed with a merciful exit. Some had to endure what seemed like interminable torture before it finally ended. I've seen my own mother glad to be recovering nicely, only to be found expired an hour after staff documented that she was resting just fine. We have to stop kidding ourselves that we can figure it out with our theories of who's "a fighter" and who "let go." The dying process involves much mystery. Nobody comes back afterwards to explain it to us. (Yes, I'm unimpressed with people's accounts of their "near death experiences.") We'll all go through some version of it eventually. Meanwhile, we should be humbled by the littleness of our grasp of what is unknowable to mere mortals. The best we can do is love each other through the suffering that surrounds the ending of life. I am a somewhat comforted by what my own father told me about dying, "We only have to go through it once." Once it's over, it's over.

I believe your mother, and mine, have been removed from where any pain can ever touch them again. I'm glad for that. No use filling up our minds with self-recriminations about how, maybe, we should have done this or that differently. We live in a culture where we are obsessed with the lust to be blameless. That's a vain ego thing. Let's let our grief not be about that. We feel the loss of someone who meant so much. The better they were, the bigger our loss. Grief should be about that. We had someone worth grieving. Pity those who do not.

For some inexplicable reason life involves pain, sometimes a lot of it. Our ability to feel pain is part of our humanity. (We're not crocodiles.) Experiencing pain allows you to better understand others who've been through this particular form of pain. That strengthens your ability to connect with others. That, basically, is what life is all about - connecting with others. That's your job now. Your mom has been taken from you, and it's okay to be sore about that. You are now a member of the confraternity of the greatly bereaved. Nothing you are feeling is a new human experience. You can look into the eyes of a fellow grief sufferer and say, "Yes, I know. I know how it goes." You can get more out of relationships. You have more to offer - a new, deepened understanding of the human condition.

It's good that you are working a program - your DBT skill lessons. It's humbling to be dealt a blow that we have to accept. But it is what it is. You can let this experience mature you . . . or not. What ends up ruining our lives is not the hard experiences we have, but a choice we can make to say, "I'm going to stay mad about this forever." Don't make that choice. You have other options. Find others to take an interest in.