Better Living Through Literature
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Tomorrow is the five-year anniversary of losing my mom. I said to Matt earlier this week, trying to rally myself to handle it, “It’s not like she’s going to be more dead on that day,” but it’s still hard. And unbelievable and also at the same time, horribly, normal.
I’ve been going back to the “ball in a box” analogy I saw five years ago. It’s definitely getting more randomized but it doesn’t hurt any less when it hits.
It’s been three years since my mom died. It feels like so much longer, and I don’t know if that’s just how grief works or if throwing in a global pandemic has anything to do with it, too.
Like the image (from this account) says, I don’t want to celebrate a day that brought so much pain, but I can’t ignore it, either. I’m still figuring out how to mark it–the first year I got a tattoo, the second year I got bangs. But this year I’m just going to get through it.
I don’t have much to say this year, except that it doesn’t get easier but it does…change, I guess. I think of her just as much but there’s (usually) less of a stab of remembering. It’s easier to talk about her. And when I find myself saying something she would have said, I don’t worry that I’m turning into my mother–I feel proud, instead, that some part of her is in me and shining through.
Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of my mother’s death. I didn’t write anything yesterday because I can’t adequately express how a loss like that cuts your life in two (I still can’t). Everything now is either “before” or “after” and as much as you ache to go back to the “before,” you can’t.
I didn’t start therapy or medication until she was sick; I’m not sure how much longer it would have taken me to do it if she’d stayed well. I struggle so much with that: I don’t want to admit something good came out of her illness, but she’d be so proud of the work I’m doing. At the same time, I wish I had the tools I have now to use in our relationship when she was alive.
I know Mom would be proud of the whole family–I am, too, for not just getting through it all but also coming out stronger. We are gentler with each other. We are more open. We talk about feelings with each other more than I ever have in my life (much to my family members’ chagrin sometimes, but hey, therapy works!).
I don’t expect living without Mom to get any easier going forward, but it’s slowly, slowly becoming the new normal. That new normal has us closer to tears than we were before, but we’re also finding ways to enjoy this new “after.” She would have wanted that.
We miss you, Mom, and we love you.
It would have been my mom’s 71st birthday today; it’s nearly three months to the day since she died.
I knew intellectually going into this year that it would be hard–we would mark these holidays and most likely she wouldn’t be here for them. But living a hard truth is exponentially more painful than just knowing it.
There is so much that hurts because she’s missing it, and so much to be angry about: she didn’t see Skyler grow up, or her 50th anniversary, or my wedding, or even her garden waking up for the spring. She took such good care of herself; how can people who eat McDonald’s every day and never exercise be alive, and she can be gone? So much anger.
But–and this is the hardest thing to live with–there is nothing we can do about it. She’s gone. We can be angry at what she’s missing or we can remember everything she was here for (sometimes we do both). She got to see me with a career, with a house, with Doc, and starting therapy. She got to see her son marry and meet her grandson and make memories with him. She had 46 years with my dad, full of partnership and respect and love.
She left us with so much: what she knew about flowers and cats and loving people, what she knew about style and art, random pronouncements over the years that come back to me. I know she wouldn’t want me to be bitter so I try to focus on those things instead of the colossal unfairness of her death.
It’s hard. It’s so hard. But she did so many hard things–she did the hardest thing–and she did them gracefully and beautifully. I owe it to her to do the same.
Happy birthday, Mom. I love you.
My mom went into surgery Thursday with hopes for a full recovery and came out of surgery with…very different hopes. I was just going to post this quote–which describes what we’ve been feeling all weekend perfectly–but Doc and I were on a hike Sunday and you know what? The literal act of putting one foot in front of another is going to be the metaphor around here. You just keep going. You carry the weight you have to and you adapt to it. You put one foot in front of the other–and you see beautiful things along the way.
We can do this. We still have hopes. We still have time. We still have love.
