I am already tearing up as I write this because of how drastically our lives have changed.  You have been through so much this year.  My hospitalization for two weeks when you told daddy you forgot what I looked like, our move from New Jersey to Massachusetts, and now being apart from daddy for a very long time, with no set date for when we will be together again.

I am so sorry that this has happened, but it had to be, at the time we just didn’t see any other way.  You tell me that it is okay, you still call me the best Mommy in the world, but what you will think of me five years or ten years from now?

After six months you are still so unhappy here.  Any good thing I have tried to give you; a vacation to Cape Cod, camp, the pool and the lake, and soccer, still can’t make up for the fact that you miss your daddy and your old home.  I know that, Tyler, I feel it too, but I am trying to make life as good as I can for you with what life has dealt us.

Still, you are excited about your birthday.  The celebration at school, your party at night and your party on the weekend.  Making friends is hard when you’re new, but you have three boys coming and you will have a lot of fun!  As we get into the school year, I know you will make more friends, and hopefully the routine will make it easier for you to adjust.

Your favorite shows are Adventure Time, The Regular Show, Scooby-Doo and Ninjago.  You love the Captain Underpants series and the Frances the Badger books. You are collecting the Lego Monster Fighter series and the Trash Pack.  You love monsters and gross things in general. You have an Angry Birds backpack and a Spider-Man lunch box.  You have really branched out this year from all things Spider-Man although he is still your favorite superhero.  This year you discovered that my phone and computer have some really cool games on them.

You still love your Eeyore and you carry him in your backpack to school.  You don’t take him out, it’s just nice to know he’s there.

You have gotten so tall this year.  My little boy is turning into a young man.

You are so loving, compassionate and understanding.  Our situation has made us closer, and we are partners in crime in our new adventures; getting used to walking after living in suburbia, getting lost almost every time we drive somewhere, and checking out the new parks.

But most of all, you are the bravest boy I know.

On your sixth birthday, know how much daddy and I love you, and know that we are doing everything we can to bring us all back together as soon as we are able.

The post For My Son On His 6th Birthday first appeared on Mama Sick.

Welcome to all of my fellow book club members or anyone coming here for the first time!  I am a chronically ill mom married to a chronically ill man and we are raising our five-year-old son, who also has some special needs.  My blog focuses on the challenges parents with chronic illness face, but also speaks about being a mom and a woman in general. )

One does not have to read Stacy Shiff’s book Cleopatra A Life to believe that one knows all they need to know about the Egyptian queen.  Many of us have read about her through Shakespeare, or confuse her image with Elizabeth Taylor’s portrayal in the 1963 movie, Cleopatra.  Even if one has never read about her through plays or watched the classic film, Cleopatra is as notorious or famous now as is our modern day Lady GaGa.

And yet, without reading this book or a book that writes about Cleopatra’s actual history, you would have many misconceptions.  She was not a great beauty “a la” Liz Taylor.  A temptress maybe, but she did not have much time to do this tempting as she was dead by age 39.  There is only evidence that she actually had sex with only two men in her life, but they do happen to be pretty important ones, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, sound familiar? She was married twice, each time to a brother.

Most will not read this book or any other that is historical, and so the misconceptions about the Queen will live on.  But above all, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator, who in her short life, reshaped the ancient world.

As I read this book, I thought about how I would want to be remembered.  Poor Cleo must be “rolling over in her tomb” if she is able to.

What do people think of me right now?  If you are a faithful reader to this blog, I would say you know me pretty well, better than a lot of my friends and family.  If you are not a regular reader of this blog, a first-timer, you may wonder how anyone could be so sick, or think they are so sick that they could give up a successful career as a headhunter, a good salary, and raise her child in poverty.  How could anyone do that?  Isn’t their something this woman could do to support her family, instead of living off of our government for food stamps, and seeking disability, when she is only 41 years old? Maybe it makes you mad when you think that somehow she is taking your tax dollars to live off of. That if you were sick, nothing would stop you, that you have a family to support and whatever came your way, even if it was cancer, you would still get up every day and go to work, that you would have to, that you MUST!

Perhaps you wonder how anyone could have 15 diagnoses and live?  Is this woman telling the truth?  Is she one of those bloggers who makes up a life in order to get successful through advertising?  When will she die?  Surely, no one could claim to be that sick and be able to throw her child a birthday party or celebrate Christmases or take her son to karate classes.  Something just does not add up here.

If you see me in real life, with bandages on my wrists and elbows, you may wonder what in God’s name is wrong with me?  What the Hell happened to her?  If you know me well and know that I am on an immunosuppressant drug and that I catch colds and weird infections frequently, you may be scared to be around me.  When exactly the opposite is true, it is you who are a danger to me.

What do I want to be remembered for when I die?  It is something I do think about frequently as if you do the math, it does not appear that I will live to a ripe old age, that at 41, my life is more than half way over.

Maybe Cleopatra didn’t think much about what her legacy would be, but I have had plenty of time to, as I am not busy ruling over a country and am more likely to be found in bed in my pajamas.

When I die, I know a world will not mourn my death, or be thinking about me over two thousand years later, but I know those who are my readers, close friends and family will.  I would hope that with this blog and the way that I live my life and through my conversations, that I have brought comfort to a few thousand or so people who are sick and raising children, just like me.  That I have educated healthy people on what being chronically ill is like and that NOT just the uneducated, those mothers who are not sure who their “babys’ daddies” are, or illegal aliens need food stamps; that there are disabled people who need them too.  That those who use scooters or wheelchairs are not just old, quadraplegic or have a terminal illness.

I would like to be remembered as someone who used her 15 illnesses to make a difference in this world.  Maybe not to millions but to those few whose lives I have touched.  I would like to be mourned not as a sick person who died slowly, but as someone who lived every minute of her life to the fullest.  As the best mother she knew how to be, the best wife, relative and friend that she was able to be.

And now let’s talk of my death no more.  I have a life to lead now.  I have to get ready to start my day which includes getting an ultrasound done on my thyroid, picking up a big bottle for a 24 hour urine test, making a shopping list and buying a few things at the grocery store, and planning tonight’s dinner.  I am thinking about what my son and I will do when he comes home from school. I am looking forward to the new episodes tonight of “Gumball”, “Adventure Time” and “The Regular Show” on the Cartoon Network, which my whole family loves.

Maybe you are going to do some of those things too.

The post On Being Remembered first appeared on Mama Sick.