The loss of a mother – that statement and what it entails can only be imagined by the people who have survived this unbelievably tragic loss. January 1, 2017 marked the 17th year that I began without my mother. I feel her loss as prominent today as I did seventeen years ago. Seventeen years ago I was a heartbroken girl, on the outskirts of adulthood. I knew my life was forever changed when that doctor walked in that waiting room and all the air was sucked out of it. The only thing I did not realize at the time was what it was going to mean to me for the rest of my life. I did not realize that there were going to be so many unbearable moments. I did not know I would sit on my sofa 17 years later and still wonder how I survived all of those years without her. I have at this point almost lived more of my life without her than I did with her, and that came at a great cost.
I am by far no expert; I can only tell you a story from my point of view, and how my loss changed my reality. I can tell you before it happened to me that grief was a cliché of what others had said about it. I never thought about it much at all until the enormity of it changed my world at its core. The loss of my mother defined me and my life for so long that I do not really remember who I was before. I was a different person seventeen years ago. I was a happy invincible person. I grew up in a world that was safe and secure. I knew bad things happened to other people, but they did not happen to me – until it did.
I see the blissfully happy child and the glorious delusional teen and young adult that believed life was a series of fairy tales that you would get to live through until you died of old age happy and safe. I see those people in pictures, they share my name and my face and my memories, but I do not really identify with them anymore. My fairytale halted and I had to relearn to live another one. It is a forever process in a forever changed world.
I knew I was going to feel sadness and heartache, and to some extent, I was prepared. I knew it was going to be harder than anything life had ever thrown at me. I knew all of those things rationally. Except, rational was no longer a characteristic that I possessed. Anything would set off uncontrollable fits of tears. I was not prepared for all the hidden emotions I never knew existed. I was not prepared in the beginning. I kind of just felt stuck when everyone else went back to their lives. I did not realize I would no longer fit inside my own world. I did know that it would feel like I was in an alternate universe where everything around me was still the same, yet everything inside of me had changed.
Anger drove me more than sadness – anger so deep inside I never thought it would ever stop. I never knew how cheated by life I would feel. Cheated for everything that we would both miss. Cheated that because my siblings were many years older than me that she witnessed their weddings, their college graduations, the birth of their children. They had the opportunity to share so much more of their lives with her. The envy I felt towards my friends for still having their mothers made things worse. It was not their fault, it was not anyone’s fault. It was life, but at times it was unbearable. My friends were so supportive, and I will forever be grateful. But, because they had no idea the magnitude of pain that entered my world I almost resented them.
I did not realize that life would become a learned process. A series of tasks to help you become a semi version of the person you were before. I did not realize every Mother’s Day, Christmas Eve and April 29th (her birthday) I would find myself in a cemetery with flowers to put in a vase with her name on it. I never expected every milestone in my life and the life of my children – the children my mother never had the pleasure of meeting - would be bittersweet. I never knew that my wedding day would be both happy and sad. That a small part of me would always be missing and waiting for someone to walk through a door or call just to check in.
I did not know all these things because it is too hard to say. No one likes hard. People like to put everything into neat little boxes. Some things are too big to stuff into boxes. Some things happen and stick with you for the rest of your life.
In my deepest thoughts where I allow myself to go in brief moments of indulgence, I imagine that she is here and she was here when my children came kicking into the world. I imagine that she loves them with that special love only she ever gave. I imagine that they know her, not only through photos and stories. I imagine that she is loved by them as much as my dad is. I would like to think that she would be proud of the woman I became and not just the girl she left behind. Even though I know we will never share those moments, the thoughts bring me comfort.
Through trial and error and a thousand mistakes, I have learned that even though some of it is more than I ever thought I could handle, I would not trade her for a lifetime with another mother. I know a part of me is always hesitant to believe in total happiness. I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop and take it all away. I also learned it did get easier. I always want her here, but I learned to be grateful for the blessings I do have. I started to find joy in memories instead of sadness. I started to smile when I thought of her instead of cry.
My children renewed my faith in life and they made me stronger than I thought possible and they created a better reality for me to live in. I now share sacred moments with them that I once shared with her. She left behind a legacy as precious as the old recipe cards she made. She left behind a family that, seventeen years later, keeps her alive. That in itself says how blessed I am to have had her touch my life.
The most critical lesson I learned from my loss is that above all love does not die, it keeps us going and keeps those we lose alive. We find them in a special recipe or an old tradition. A familiar smell or a term of endearment that means so much it brings them back to us and at the end of the day we know we are better because we loved them and more so because they loved us.
