Losing Mom: A Journey Through Grief (Part 3)

September 14, 2020 - One month.

It's been a month.  Four entire weeks.  Thirty days and countless hours since the worst day of my life.  I remember it all too well.  I think those memories will be branded in my mind forever, but they're the last ones I want to keep.

It doesn't help that every day since has practically been a blur.  Nothing seems to make sense.  Most things are quiet - the house creaks and the crickets chirp and stupid nuts from that dumb tree hit the roof - those things are loud.  But the every day sounds of life seem to have stilled.  The house just doesn't feel... alive.  And I know it's because you're no longer in it.

The same could be said for my life too, I think - it's still.  It's quiet and it's empty without you, while many annoying, unimportant, and rather negative things are all too loud: your bed is forever made, and your clothes forever unworn.  Your car is abandoned in the garage.  Was I a terrible daughter?  Should we have dressed you in pants so you're not cold in heaven?  But then I remember that you can't feel such mundane things anymore, and that only makes me sadder...

When a parent passes, how do you stop yourself from thinking you were the worst child on earth?  I've been battling with the weight of that question recently.  It's usually after someone leaves you, moves away, or passes on that we realize what little we gave to them when it all mattered: right now.  I had no way of knowing my mother was going to pass, but that is no excuse at all.  We have all become so accustomed to screens in our faces, that we seemed to have forgotten the importance of all those people on the other side of them.  Don't take them for granted.

August 14th will forever be the worst day of every year for me.  But if I'm being honest, really no day since has been any better.  It kind of feels like I'm spinning aimlessly in the middle of a forest, and every way I look looks exactly the same.  Suddenly I start spinning faster out of fear, and that only adds to the confusion because everything has blurred together, and there's no way to know which way I'm facing at any given moment, but that's irrelevant because I never stop spinning, and time and space are simply escaping me...  Did that make any sense?  Probably not.  But that's okay, because that's exactly how I feel - disoriented and confused and sad.

One thing from that day that I remember so vividly is how everyone else's lives around us just continued.  I had heard a similar quote in a movie or something once and thought it was a silly thing to point out, because of course everyone else's lives continued, they weren't all affected by the earthquake that just rocked you.  But how not?  They're standing right here, in this very same hospital.  Working on the roads just outside these doors.  Driving just one block north.  We're all awake at the same time, in the same county, or state, or timezone even.  Why do their lives just get to continue?

I think mine stopped that fateful day.  I know that's overly dramatic of me, because obviously it didn't and mom's did, but it's how I feel.  I feel sad most of the time.  I think myself into even darker and heavier places.  I wonder if she misses me too, and admit that I wouldn't blame her if she didn't as much, because I can't stop thinking back on her last months and the mother that I took for granted.

I keep expecting you to come home eventually.  I keep expecting you to text or call.  I keep expecting you to be sitting on grandma's couch when I go there, where you were usually always sitting, where you had basically been living for the last months of your life.  That fact alone makes it difficult for me to go there sometimes...  

You're everywhere I go - our house, grandma's, the store, my car, Marcia's cabin, my dreams - and yet you're not there.  It is both incredibly beautiful and suffocating.  I don't want to be here without you, and yet I've managed to be for a whole month.  I will never understand why I have to be.  But I don't understand a lot about life, so that's no surprise...

It gets harder and harder to write about my feelings the longer time ticks on, because it becomes clearer with each passing day that I'm not dreaming.  This is not an incredibly horrendous thriller with box-office-breaking records, this is my life, which is more terrifying.  Reality is the scariest thing to overcome, and I have to do it without my idol and mentor.  There was so much more wisdom for you to bestow upon me.  If I were a little older, I would have better understood the role a mother plays in the betterment of our lives.  It's unfortunate that it became so obvious through such tragedy.

I miss you terribly.  I love you to the sun and the moon and all of the stars.  I know that you're apart of them now, shining down on me through all of my darkness.  You always did have a way of being the brightest in the room, without even trying.  I miss your presence.  I miss your smile.  I miss your hugs.  I miss you being angry with us.  I miss your laugh.  Please come back...  I need you to tell me not to dwell or fret.  I need you to hear that I got a job.  I just need you.  I don't want to miss you anymore, it's too hard...  

Even re-reading this this morning felt so out-of-body, like reading a memoir from someone else's perspective.  But alas, it's mine, and I sure am a clunky writer.  At least I keep my emotions honest in these posts, though.  I kind of like the winding uncertainty or them, because that's a clear reflection of me right now.  At one moment I can feel everything, and the next nothing at all.  Today is one of those nothing days, but I think it's just because this milestone is so unbelievable.  One month?  Already?  I don't understand how that could be...  If 4 weeks can go by so quickly, the rest of my life will happen in the blink of an eye.

I'm afraid of time continuing so quickly, if I'm honest.  I fear that will make me forget important things about you faster.  So I'll do my best to hold you in my heart and mind forever, Momma, the way I wish I could hold you in life just one more time...

With all my love (and a sprinkle of sadness),

Your Sarah girl...