Written on May 30.
Tomorrow is May 31st, 2015. It should've been my mother's 60th birthday. My own birthday, February 1st, was the last time I saw her. Less than a week later she passed away. On June 6th, I will count the number of months on my fingers – March, April, May, June. Four months without her.
Loss is kind of like sitting with your legs crossed one way for an ungodly amount of time.
It's holding yourself together while perfect strangers come up to you crying, giving you a hug, and apologizing for something that they really have no need to apologize for. It is enduring the sympathetic smiles. Loss is not shedding a tear at the funeral, but not being able to fall asleep without your chest aching.
Loss is holding a winning hand in a poker game, and then the dealer snatching them up because he decided it's time to play 52-Card Pick Up.
Loss is lying on the floor sobbing, surrounded by your Accounting 229 notes, because you were already a week behind and it's only getting worse. You're thinking maybe coming back to school was a mistake and you have no idea how you're going to get it all done.
Loss is like emptying a pitcher of water onto dirt.
You feel obliged to be dreary until you feel absolutely drained. You're sure that your life has never been so grey and dull, and all you want is to return to a semblance of normality, and a sinking feeling that you never will. Little things catch you off guard, like people talking about Mother's Day or hearing an old George Strait song that you and her would dance to in the kitchen.
Loss is being human and seeing humanity.
It is seeing depth of compassion people are capable of. It is time with family who share in your grief and people bringing far too much food. It is sitting with your friend at 2 a.m. and really talking about everything on your mind for the first time since you came back to school, and wondering why she's crying and you're not, being astounded that anyone could feel that much for someone else.
Loss is not letting your grief control you. Loss requires resilience.
Loss is going back to school after a week because that's all you know how to do, not because you're brave. It is shoving against the anger and the sadness and laughing through the tears, because life isn't meant to be lived on the edge of your breaking point. It is finding the good things in the bad times.
There may never be a light at the end of this tunnel. I'll carry this particular grief with me for a long, long time, and there is more grief to come in my time here. But along with grief, there will be joy. Such is life. There is a quote that I found from a children's story called Kafka and the Traveling Doll that resonated with me:
“Everything you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form."
Happy birthday, Mom. I hope it was a good one.
