To Mom, Ten Years Hence
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Angela with her mother, Donna Amoroso
I still remember the day as if it was yesterday. The 911 call, the ambulance, the police officers, missing school, picking up incoming family from the airport. I remember it all.
Ten years is such a long time, but it feels even longer if it means that it’s been ten years without you. It is beyond me.
So much has happened in the past decade, and I wish you were here to experience it all with us. I wish you could have seen Hawai'i, and I wish you could have met and grown close to all the beautiful people here, the beautiful people who we now call family. I wish you could have helped me apply to college and shared with us the joy of receiving acceptance letters. I wish you could be here this spring when I graduate.
“If the past ten years have taught me anything, I will never get over your passing, but I will get through it. I’ve also learned that you ARE still here.”
Never did I think I would have to do a lot of these things alone, without you.
Throughout the past ten years, I’ve needed to understand that sometimes the odds would be against me. No one promised that this journey would be easy, but I learned that I still have to wake up every day and give the world everything I’ve got. I’ve learned to love without limits, as we are not promised tomorrow. I came to realize that none of us may ever know which sunset is our last or when our last “I love you” will be.
Before you left, you made Dad promise you that I would grow up exposed to a community full of opportunities and diversity that would provide for me a moral anchor. Because of this promise and you both, I have grown up surrounded by so many different cultures in one of the most diverse places in the world. Most importantly, along with this, I hope that I have made you proud.
If the past ten years have taught me anything, I will never get over your passing, but I will get through it. I’ve also learned that you ARE still here. You have seen Hawai'i, met the people here, helped me apply to college, and you share with me the joy of receiving acceptance letters. You will see me graduate this spring, no matter what the case may be.
You have been here every single second of every day since you left, and you will continue to be until I get to see you again.
I hope you are dancing among the stars or reading a book under an apple tree.
I will continue to make you proud. Everything I do has always been and always will be for you. I dedicate these past ten years to you, along with every year to come. I love you forever, Mom, and I miss you beyond words.
Angela Amoroso Abinales is a senior at Hawaii Baptist Academy.
