Losing Mom: A Journey Through Grief (Part 9)

June 14, 2021  (10 Months)

May 29, 2021

The quiet is my least favorite sound.  It's an all-consuming noise.  It fills my head with hints of you.  Pictures that I misinterpret as current, rather than from the archives of my memories.  I've found myself thinking of you a lot here in this quiet place.  I've wanted to say how I can't wait to tell you something.  I've wanted to bring you up.  I don't know why you're coming to me so fully in this place that you were indifferent about at best.  I can't even remember the last time we came here together.  And now I can't get you out of my head.  Normally I don't mind that, and today I really don't either, but just because thoughts of you are welcomed doesn't make them any less sad.  I wish you could be here.  Maybe that's why I like the chaos of my job so much - the screaming and playing of children, the always moving, the distraction - I'm not proud to say that though.  I don't mean to say I never want to think about you.  It's just complicated...  Grief is complicating.  Life without you is complicated.

June 7, 2021

I've been having a difficult time recently wrapping my head around your burial... Your death in general.  Every post-death decision felt impossible.  Our two choices were either to bury you beneath the earth with the dirt and bugs, or burn you up to ashes and keep them in a jug.  It's a pretty heavy burden to carry, because both feel wrong and terrible and sad.

We buried you.  Our mother.  At 25 and 22 years old.  I have genuinely been floating, my body weightless, my feet mindlessly guiding me through these last 10 months.  Ten.  We made it to the double digits.  I know 10 months won't hold a match flame to 10 years, but I don't even want to go there right now...

I've been missing you extra extra lately.  I still always feel like I can tell you a million things when I come home.  I still can't fathom that I'll never see your face anymore.  The whole of life without you has been confusing.  It's been dark.  It's been overwhelming.  I have no idea in the slightest if I'm doing the right thing.  If I'm making you proud.  What even happened these last 300 or so days.  300...  That's so many without you.  We're so close to a year, I could just puke.

We're considering going to the cabin.  Marcia, Heather and I.  Maybe Jeremy and Alyssa will tag along too.  It will be the first summer I venture up there without both you and Aunt Diane, and I don't know if I'm emotionally prepared for it.  A lot of the time, I don't feel emotionally prepared for most things.  But somehow I made it here, and I'll make it tomorrow.  I'll make it to your birthday, and the one year anniversary of your death, and the second, and the 10th.  I'll make it to my wedding day, though I'm sure you've heard my thoughts on that never happening these last few days...

You know, with trauma, well mine at least, I can't help but think that the rest of my life will just be traumatic.  I can't stop convincing myself that something will happen to me and I'll leave my husband wife-less by 30, and my kids motherless, and I already know how terrible that feels, so part of me can't even fathom committing to a relationship.  But then I think how sad a short life that would be, assuming my life is actually going to be short.  What a disservice to myself to deny my soul love because I could die at 30.  Well, I could die tomorrow.  And I could die at 103.  That's the reality of life, it's full of unknowns.

I know you weren't too fond of men and marriage, considering your own.  You always grimaced at the thought of any of us getting married, but I know underneath that shield was the hope that we'd find love.  That we'd be inexplicably happy in our lives, no matter how that looked.

I wish you were here to see however my life unfolds, but I'm confident that you're helping God guide my path from heaven now.  I couldn't possibly have a better, more selfless guardian angel than I do in you, Momma.  I miss you earth side too much.  My throat hurts from this suppressed cry I'm holding, so I'm going to go.  I love you endlessly.  I still look for you in the stars.  The brightest one...

Last Night in Bed - June 13, 2021

I don't know about other people, but my trauma experience has really just been followed by my brain convincing itself that more terrible shit will inevitably happen.  On this grief page I follow (Megan Devine I cherish your work), she posted about how "you cannot manifest death or health or loss or grief just by thinking about it.  Your thoughts did not create this."  Which is a true and accurate statement, but also hit me like a ton of bricks.  Because if I had thought this into fruition, mom would have died years ago when she was sick.  Again, as with my trauma, comes more emotional trauma.  I was so convinced my mom was going to die from her cancer, that I would have dreams of her funeral.  Eventually she got better, and eventually the dream went away, until suddenly a new one emerged.  This one meant that any time she even coughed I thought she was sick again.  I thought that every normal, seasonal illness meant she had cancer again.  Which was closely followed by my fear of her death.  It was a vicious cycle.

Now mom has died.  Suddenly, unexpectedly.  She wasn't even sick.  She just didn't feel good, with what simply sounded like the stomach bug, but turned out to be heart failure.  And then she was gone.  And now my secondary trauma is both being a little afraid of catching the stomach bug, and also staring creepily at everyone I love while they're asleep to make sure they're still breathing.  I do this to my grandma every time she takes a nap.

I'm beyond convinced that something terrible will always happen, because it only seems that bad things happen.  And clearly good things do come in the world, and they do exist, and it's possible to experience them both.  But I also thing it's incredibly important to talk about the grief that people don't see, that they didn't go to a funeral for.  The grief that doesn't even really exist, but is still grief (to me, anyway).  I wish grief didn't have to be all-consuming.  I wish it could simply be sadness, until we're a little less sad and can function again as human.  But it isn't just sadness.  It's sadness and confusion and anger and joy and secondary grief and fear and peace.  And we go on functioning as humans despite it all.

So if you're grieving, I just want you to know that I'm proud of you.  I'm proud if you got out of bed.  Or if you drank a whole glass of water.  Or if you made yourself a meal.  Or if you went out with your friends for the first time in a long time.  Even if all you did was cry, I'm proud of you too.  It's so brave to live your truth, even when it's hard.

All my love to all of you.  Remember to send your love to those you love, we're not all here for forever.