The Big Five: Mom's Fifth-Year Death Anniversary

June 25:

After collecting the mail, I randomly thought about in memoriam blurbs in the newspaper.  There wasn't even a newspaper in the stack, but there was a collection of ads and coupons, which reminded me of the newspaper, which is how I got here - googling how to get an in memoriam blurb in the local newspaper.

It was surprisingly more difficult to find than I had anticipated.  Bringing me to the newspaper website was absolutely unhelpful.  That ridiculous AI-generated google answer finally helped me in the end, which is how I found a link to apply to get one published.  The difficulty now lies in figuring out what the fuck I'm meant to say.  I haven't asked Heather or Jeremy for advice, since I'm honestly contemplating saving it as a surprise for them (though I'm not sure such a thing can be considered a positive surprise, you know?). I opened my notes app and jotted down some initial thoughts and feelings, but nothing I say ever fully encapsulates how I feel.

I know in my soul that I will be writing about you for the rest of my life, and never fully feel a weight lifted off me because the words are so insufficient.  Your life, presence, and meaning meant so much more than any language could ever describe.  Five years ago I was tasked with writing your obituary, and now I've tasked myself with writing this in memoriam.  I write to try and feel better, but I don't.  Nothing could ever compensate for your physical person.  No one could ever describe you so perfectly that I could close my eyes and envision you beside me.  Nothing has felt the same in years, and yet I try to believe I haven't been completely whiplashed for my sanity.

That sanity I speak of?  Pretty nonexistent, because how in the world did I get here?  Anyway, along with trying to write the in memoriam, I'm also struggling to pick the photo for it.  I'm leaning toward one of our family, but the one thing that makes me hesitant to do so is that they're all ancient since we weren't a photo-taking family.  We'll just have to wait and see what I eventually decide on.

June 26:

It's still June; barely, but technically, yet I can already feel the anticipatory grief creeping up on me.  If I'm completely honest, it's been trailing behind me for weeks already.  Perhaps even since the new year.  July isn't even your deathiversary, but it is your birthday.  Another one you'll miss.  Another year where you're not turning exactly thirty years older than me and Heather.  Another year where I'll type 52 +__ in your birthday post rather than your age, because you're eternally 52.

And then two weeks later, on August 14th, you'll officially be gone for five years.  Five entire calendar years.  1,826 days without your smile, your laugh, your hugs, your cooking, your motherhood, your insight, your love.  1,826 days since I last saw you physically (at least, the last time I saw you as you always were, before whatever mortuaries perform to embalm us).

1,826 days since I have been altered so tremendously that I could never find my way back to that girl.

The one with a mom.

The one with consistency.

The one with balance.

The one with hope.

Mom had always come home from her stays in hospitals, until the day she didn't.  And somehow that day is imprinted in my brain even now, when countless other memories have ceased to exist.  It plays on a loop in my mind.  I remember every single moment.  I'm convinced there will never be a day when I will forget it.  At this point, I fear the day that I might, because then what will I have?  If I can't have you in life or in memories, then I will not have you at all, and that simply can't be.

But you've been gone for almost five years now, and it's gone so fucking quickly and simultaneously slower than molasses.  I can't believe we're almost to this point already, and yet I can't help but be confused how it hasn't been a decade already.

My concept of time has been so strangely warped within these years of grief.  Seconds drag on while years fly by, unreachable.  I am forced to stay here, existing throughout it all, with nothing to show for it.

I am nothing more than the girl who lost her mom.

I do not know how to be much more than that.

June 30:

I often think about the potential demise of cemeteries.  How it can't be physically possible to continue burying thousands of people into the earth for the rest of forever without running out of room.  Either that, or money-hungry corporations will come around and buy land to build more skyscrapers and over-priced apartment complexes.

I have genuinely wondered since shortly after burying Mom whether I would be able to visit her there for the rest of my life or not.  I'm sure some laws prohibit purchasing land that's already swimming with the deceased, though I've never looked into it.  There is a sort of bliss in ignorance, you know?  A fabricated version of peace that remains intact only until the truth is finally uncovered, whether on its own or by my own curiosity.  Because many things are known in this day and age, it's simply a matter of time until we learn about it for ourselves.

The irony in all of this is that I still seldom visit your grave.  You're buried just up the hill and around the corner from home, but it feels so far sometimes.  So out of reach.  So impossible to actually feel you there, or anywhere really.  But still, the prospect of your resting place no longer existing, or future end-of-life choices only allowing for cremation... It's unfathomable.  What if folks no longer get the same choice we did to lay you to rest in a physical place and visit you there?

Some days I question the choices we did end up making in the end, though all for nought, as they're now impossible to change.  Perhaps that's a story for another time.

July 5:

I took a two-hour drive in the Mustang today.  I should have worn sunscreen since I had the top down.  I recognized that about ten minutes into my trip, and could almost hear your voice saying the same.  Almost, but not quite.

I thought, upon buying the Mustang, that it would help me feel closer to you, but it doesn't.  I didn't know young Julie, who drove Mustangs and Broncos.  I didn't know young Julie with carefree smiles and laughter to match.  I didn't know young Julie, who hadn't had children yet and could exist with her husband and their friends as they pleased.  I will always argue that I knew the best Julie, though - mom Julie.  The selfless Julie.  The brave Julie.  The tender Julie.  The loving Julie.  Even, and especially when, the world was selfish, stubborn, unjust, and cruel to her.

I don't know how she remained so soft and kind.  That is a trait of hers I fear I have missed out on.  I can be rude, stubborn, and selfish myself.  Sometimes it feels fair to be this way when the world still is too.  As if a sort of balance has been restored, a take and give.

One day, the world is going to chew me up and spit me out so violently that I will have no choice but to surrender.  I'm sort of surprised that hasn't happened yet, but if I'm honest, I feel as though it's not far off.

The anticipatory grief of your five-year deathiversary has been testing me lately.  (I know I just wrote about this the other day, but grief is often like that for me - the same handful of triggers circling round and round me).  I can't fathom how it's only been five years, and simultaneously wasn't just yesterday.  I feel like these last five years have actually just been a culmination of "the day after Mom died."

Every day has simply been another tomorrow.  There has been nothing noteworthy, no specific memories to help differentiate the time.  There's night and day; there are seasons; there's a new year that we're meant to date our documents with.  They all prove that time is moving on, but that's all it is - time.  12 a.m. comes and 12 p.m. goes, and the pendulum swings, and the cyclical cycle continues on.

I have yet to learn who I am without you, and that makes it more difficult to live without you.  Though with some self-reflection, I can confidently admit that I'm not sure I've ever known who I was, even when you were alive.  Twenty-seven years seems like plenty to figure such a thing out, but when your own company was often your least favorite company, being alone with myself wasn't often something I strived for.  On the other hand, I now consider myself the most introverted I have ever been.  I barely have friends, I hardly leave home, I don't go out of my way for social events or gatherings, and I certainly don't invite anyone to my own house.  Life has sort of dealt me this lonesome hand, and I'm trying my best to remain in play with these cards.

Perhaps, all along, it's been me.  It's been my inability to keep and preserve lifelong relationships.  Meaningful connections.  I couldn't even hold tightly to the love only understood by mothers and their children.  Perhaps, maybe, that's why you're gone.  You were taken for granted one time too many, and God determined he had a better place for you.

I know in my heart that's not actually true, but in these seasons of immense feeling, I find it difficult to shut thoughts down.  It has been a bit helpful to write them out like this lately, though.

As always, I miss you a lot, and I love you tremendously.  I should have told you that more in life.  I don't often have luck on my side, but perhaps in another life you will come back, and perhaps in that life I will get to be your child once more.  I promise I would do it differently, do it better.

Perhaps, maybe, in this other life, you would even be granted a longer life.  Perhaps then I could care for your elderly form the way you cared for grandma.  Perhaps I would have more time to get it right.

July 11:

Facebook AI recommended I make a story using a Japanese (I believe) animation filter.  The pre-programmed picture was of you - you were younger, maybe mid-twenties, wearing a sweatshirt with a snarling bear and holding a sparkler.  Your smile was radiant, beautiful, the same as it had always been.  And for a very brief moment, it felt as though I had just snapped that picture of you.

But I hadn't.  I wasn't even alive when the real picture was taken, I don't think.  And now you aren't either.  It caught me a little off guard, to the point that I took a screenshot and sent it to Heather.  It's since taken me multiple looks back at this screenshot to even realize the prompt on the AI filter reads, "add if you have a pretty mom 🫶"

Of course I have a pretty mom.  She was the most gorgeous being to ever grace this earth, down to her very core.  I wish I had more time with her, maybe I would have said it more often.

July 18:

This morning I was scrolling through my photos, and a curated album of you was in my people section.  Except this particular album was separate from the other album of you.  This second album doesn't have a name, where the first one is called "Mom", it simply says "Name This Person".

Well, to name her would be to call her Julie, like her parents chose.  To name her would be to call her Aunt Julie like her many nieces and nephews, Jules by a few, and Mom by 3.

I was one of those lucky 3.  It's been incredibly difficult for me lately to be without her.  I've suddenly stumbled upon some more things I wish I had the opportunity to ask her in life: Did you ever struggle with loneliness?  And if so, how did you manage it?  (Part of me thinks her answer might have something to do with visiting her mom, something I can't do.)  Is being alone worth the bouts of loneliness, or do you miss partnership?  Did you perhaps feel more lonely when we kids were with dad, and less lonely when we returned?  Or did you live in a constant state of anticipatory loneliness, because our return home only meant we would soon have to leave again?  Did our coming back home ever feel overwhelming, like maybe you wish you had one more hour or day of quiet?

I can't help but feel so alone lately, and it's been making me wonder whether you ever did.  The sheer thought of you feeling even a fraction of how I do is making me cry (genuinely, I'm actively crying).  If this was how you felt on top of being a mother, a caretaker to grandma, working when you were physically able, and also just simply being alive, then you're even braver than I already knew you to be.

Personally, I think there's something quite terrifying about feeling alone on this vast planet.  I'm certainly not, but I would also argue I hardly play an active role in anyone's life outside of my own.  And honestly, I can't help but think most people are okay with that.  Those I've simply lost contact with over time are not racing to reach out to me.  I can't imagine I cross many people's minds.  Sometimes, I honestly consider whether moving off somewhere and truly being alone would lessen the ache within me.

If you don't have anything, you have nothing to lose, right?

July 19:

I think I sort of figured out why I desire aloneness within the loneliness - aloneness would be my choice.

There was a downpour today (finally, the grass is brown), and I couldn't stop myself from wanting to walk out under it and let the raindrops be my only company.

I did in fact end up outside, but of course, when I emerged from the house, the rain had slowed to a gentle fall that barely left me wet.  Not that getting soaked was the point, but feeling the rain was, and I unfortunately didn't, but I digress.  I went outside under the guise of clearing the gutter, but that puppy has been consumed by a root system of some kind, and my yanking and prodding wasn't budging it.

Naturally, for my luck anyway, when I returned inside, the downpour started again.  I had already changed into dry clothes and felt defeated, both from a failed original task and a failed secondary task, so I've decided not to adventure back out.

I can't help but think, somehow, that you had some say in the heaviness of the rain on me.  I can't help but feel like the gentle rainfall was intentional while I was outside.

It both makes me feel grateful and upset: grateful that you care enough to spare me from a sure drench, but also upset that I didn't get what I wanted.  The thing about what we want is it's not always what we need.  I'm not sure I need to go out and stand beneath the downpour to feel a part of something, but in this instance, it felt right.  As time creeps closer and closer to your birth and death dates, I can't help but want to isolate more.  I've become noticeably more impatient with others or less talkative.  I enjoy the company of singers that don't know me, through the privacy of headphones that never seem to die, but sing songs written specifically about me.  I enjoy playing Hot Pursuit on my Switch, and the freedom I imagine one feels speeding so fast on the asphalt, since my anxiety would never allow me to drive so fast in life.  I enjoy the company of Freddy Fazbear and his animatronic friends, the feeling of a jump scare to spice up the monotonous nothing as of late.

I enjoy the wind whipping around me as I drive the Mustang.

I enjoy the water holding me from all angles as I swim, even when it's frigid.

I enjoy the company of the sun, which shines down brightly on me even when I don't want it to.  Especially when I don't.

Just like the morning we lost you, I step into every day lately and am completely verklempt that the world dares to move on despite this tragic loss.

Don't they recognize that a necessary cog is missing?

How do they not notice that daylight is a little dimmer?

That time is a little slower, but also way faster?

How are people able to smile when joy is more difficult to come by now?

Why didn't the world stop when mine did?  

How dare it have the audacity to spin around 5 more times, and leave me dangling off the edge so emotional and alone?

You were a constant, a promise, a comforting ending and bright new beginning always.  And now you are gone, and you have been for some time, but despite all that time, there hasn't been a soul who's come along and filled that space.  Your space.

In the beginning, I was terrified of someone doing that.  Now I dread the possibility that no one ever will.

July 22:

I went to the cemetery today to water your new flowers.  We had just replaced the old (and very dead) ones on Saturday, and these ones are already close to death now, too.  Something about it is incredibly disheartening to me.  It's not lost on me that I do not have a green thumb - we had never really been a big plant family, so caring for them isn't in my nature.  However, this is your resting place, and since most general decorations aren't allowed anymore, the best I can offer is plants.

Apparently not, though.  Thankfully, I'm surrounded by kind and thoughtful people who remind me that the health of the plants isn't what matters.  Jeremy even reminded me that you always felt the same way about flowers, so it was okay that they didn't look great.  I told him that I know, but it didn't stop me from feeling bad.

Grief for me has always been love and sadness hand-in-hand.  There is not one without the other.  Similarly, caring for your resting place brings about those same feelings.  Love that we had the opportunity to lay you to rest somewhere near family, and get to visit you there whenever we want.  Sadness that I can't keep the damn plants alive for you, and honestly, sort of regret the choice of headstone we made.  But it's not about those things in the end, not really.  They're just reminders of how I probably tried but didn't achieve many things while you were alive.  But it's late now, and I should be getting to bed rather than opening that can of worms.  If I still feel the same tomorrow, maybe I'll write it down.

July 25:

I went back out to water your flowers today.  There's another little heat wave going on, and since I can't trust them to be self-sufficient (relatable), I figured I should check on them.  They're definitely doing better than the beginning of the week, but naturally, the soil was desert-dry and needing a drink.

With how dry it's been here lately, the grass has been dying just about everywhere.  But it happens to be especially obvious in the cemetery.  You and Aunt Diane are buried right next to each other, and pulling in today, I was blatantly reminded of that.

Again, the grass is dry everywhere, but the rectangles of both your graves are yellow.  It's quite eerie to be able to see that particular shape in that particular place.  If I stood right next to mom's rectangle, I could imagine her funeral all over again - standing beside her casket, the wind whipping my hair everywhere.  I could almost imagine the weight of her casket in my hand as I helped carry her to her final resting place.

If I stood in the middle of it, I could imagine floating above the rectangle and looking down.  Her empty vault is open, awaiting her gentle descent down.  There's always been something about the knowledge that her body is genuinely buried beneath the earth that has been difficult for me to swallow.  Those feelings come back tenfold with visions like this.

July 28:

Today's your birthday, and it's been hard.  

July 30:

I think, if I were awake the morning you died, I would have felt my soul split in two as half of me went back home to you.  I saw a post on Facebook where Brooke Hogan said, "It felt like part of my spirit left with him.  I felt it before the news even reached us..." when referring to her dad, Hulk Hogan's, passing, and I know I would have felt the same had I been conscious.

I know that I was, technically, when you were officially pronounced dead.  Mere feet away, in fact, sitting in Uncle John's car in the cement hell that is a parking ramp.  My heart was in my throat then, as if my body knew something my brain didn't yet, which is probably true.  However, I don't think your soul was fully with you since Grandma's house that morning.

All these years, I have felt guilty that I didn't wake up and answer that early morning phone call from you, but perhaps that's just because God knew I couldn't.  If I had been awake, let alone present, when you had technically died that first time in Grandma's living room... who's to say who or where I would be right now?

Living without you is enough of a weight to carry, but to witness as you died?  I'm not sure I'd have made it out myself.

I carry an immense amount of gratitude for Aunt Marcia for trying to save you, and for Uncle John for swiftly coming over to assist in the same.  For the nameless and faceless paramedics and hospital staff after them.

It crushes me that, after all that hard work, you were lost to us anyway.  But, with time and against my very wishes, I have come to accept that you were ready to rest.  That will never mean I was ready to let you go, though, as evidenced even 5 years later, it's quite obvious that I still have a death-grip.  

I'm hoping the cynics of grief are one day proven right, and time will inevitably heal me.  But year 5 has not been the one yet.  I do not look forward to the next 5 either, and am not eager for them to come simply to answer this question.  But come they will, because time has no feelings, nor does it care what it takes from us.  Because in the end, it does take arguably the single most important facet of a life: time.

I will forever wish I had been granted more of it to share with you.

August 6:

August has, for reasons unknown to me, been decent so far.  I try to hold onto these moments of okay-ness, because by now I'm well aware that they do not stay forever.  Yet something like guilt twists the goodness and turns it sour, as if I'm not missing you as much when things are good.

That's simply not the case.  I miss you even when I'm happy, because I wish you were here beside me to bask in the joy.  And because I know, inherently, without a shadow of a doubt, that I would be even happier with you there.

August 12:

It stormed today.  Finally.  It was much needed.  But these facts are not the important ones.  When I got out of work tonight, I took the highway west toward home.  It wasn't actively raining where I work, but as I crept closer and closer to home, it got increasingly more auspicious and wet.

The thunder rumbled loudly and repeatedly.  Lightning flashed so brightly it was as if it struck the ground around my car.  The rain poured so heavily that the visibility on the highway was poor, and we were only traveling at around 45 mph.

I immediately thought that it must be you, feeling all sorts of complicated feelings as we stand just 2 days shy of this monumental anniversary.

As I type this now, the thunder continuously rumbled for over 10 seconds, and something in my soul tells me I'm right.

You must be at peace in heaven.  You have to be, it's the only answer I accept.

But I would also be lying about who you inherently were as a person if I pretended to believe that you didn't simultaneously miss us.  Maybe even miss life.

There were so many more years you could have - should have - had, all gone with you.  So much joy you had yet to reclaim.  Experiences you were deeply missed at.  I can't imagine it's any easier there than it is here when it comes to these feelings.  Perhaps I'm wrong, but who's to say for sure?  

Selfishly, I hope you miss us.  I hope you miss being alive.  I hope you are still pouring love into us from heaven and lighting our ways.  I hope you're with me, beside me, always.  I almost thought I could feel your arms wrapped tightly around me again beneath the pressure of the storm system.  I may never wish to see the sun ever again.

August 13:

Tomorrow is the day.  I have no idea how I will feel because it's not here yet, but one truth has remained true throughout the years:  I miss you so much, and I love you tremendously.  You are my star, momma. 💙