Griefaries: Six

 Monday, July 18, 2022

9:48 p.m.

Sometimes, if I think about her too abruptly, I almost believe she was just a figment of my imagination.  Like this whole time she was never real.  I never touched her.  I never heard her speak or laugh.  I never felt her love.  Because sometimes, in this immense grief, it can feel like she's been gone forever.  It can feel like she never existed at all.  And other times, I feel as though we last hugged just yesterday.  I just heard her laugh this morning.  I just saw her smile.  I could still tell you what she looked like.  I could pick her out of a crowd even now.  I think I would run to any woman who even slightly resembled her, just out of habit.  They would simply vanish once I got too close, just like she did. 

She just disappeared, if you think about it.  One day, she just vanished.  That's what her death feels like to me I suppose, like she just went missing.  Sometimes I wish she had.  At least then I'd have a sliver of hope in seeing her again.  In finding her and bringing her home to me.  But she isn't.  She's gone gone, for real and forever.  There is no milk carton or telephone pole or bulletin board in a grocery store that I can hang a missing persons poster from, because she is not missing.  She's just gone.  So gone that, again, sometimes it feels like she was never here.  I hate those days - when I'm so sad that I feel insane - insane enough to believe my sad thoughts that turned my beautiful mother into a figment of my own imagination, as if I could ever create something so effortlessly stunning in all ways.

I just miss her.  Do you know what it's like to miss someone?  Like really, truly miss them?  I guess first, that depends on how you answer the question: "did you love them?"  Because if you loved someone, without a doubt, no questions asked, that is now gone gone, with no chance of seeing them physically ever again?  Yeah, that's a pretty painful misery.  It's a heartbreak that cannot be cured.  It cannot be loved over.  I could not simply go out into the world and find another mother, the way we all find new partners after breakups.  I will always have mother-figures in her absence.  Hell, I even had them in her presence, but they could never replace her importance in my life.  The void that her death has left in my soul can never be filled.

There's a plaque on our living room wall that the Grand Rapids Press sent us of her obituary.  I'm not sure why we chose to display it, but this entire rambling novel was created from staring at that thing for two seconds too long.  An obituary that I wrote, for my own mother who gave me this life.  Who then lost her own and had to be cared for and buried by her own children, because who was here to do it for her?  Who else had the power to answer the donor man's questions?  Who else?  Why wasn't there anyone else?  Why were we all 20-something-year-old babies with absolutely no idea what we were doing, but now we could put together a funeral in 10 minutes?  What is the purpose of her death?  What is the purpose of my remaining alive?  What is the purpose of earth and life and everything?

I do not know.  I have a little peace in knowing that I do not know, simply because all of those things brought my mother to earth, who then brought me.  And what an honor it was to be hers. <3

In 2016, something minor must have happened to me, that at the time must have felt like the end of the world.  I'm not sure why, but I typed it up in my email, and it's been a draft ever since.  It says - "I feel like breathing is hard. Like I've lost something necessary for every day life that I haven't even noticed all my life because I've taken it for granted. And now its gone and everything seems hard and I can barely type this without wanting to cry."

I say the incident must have been minor compared to the heartbreaking words, because I have absolutely no recollection of what could have happened at that time.  But to read these words again all these years later, it's kind of profound.  On one hand, I had absolutely no idea what I was talking about back then.  No idea of the real severity of life, and the genuine soul-shattering heart break that it could bring.  On the other hand, it does not take away from what I experienced back then, whatever it was.  At one point in my life, for whatever reason, I felt just as I do now.  And there is some odd comfort in that.  Similar to when other grieving people sit with you in your grief and support you.  Or maybe they're not grieving, they're just nice.

At some point, no matter who, what, where, when, why, or how, almost everyone has experienced very similar pain and sadness. There is community in that.  There is understanding in that.  Maybe that is why I care so deeply when it comes to expressing mine - it doesn't necessarily help me in my own grief journey, but maybe I'm helping one of you.  I hope I am.  I hope this pain is not all for naught.