Grief is a word that I would define as: distress over a
loss. It is a word we think we
understand to mean sadness, mourning, and heartache.
When you suffer a loss, you are immediately thrown into
grief. There are stages, you are
told. Some say there are 4, some say 5,
and others say there are 7. To cover all
the bases, the 7 stages are: shock or disbelief, denial, bargaining, guilt,
anger, depression, and acceptance/hope.
My mom, Kelly, who turned 57 on October 9th,
2016, passed away on November 5th, 2016, after a 7-year battle with
a cancer called leiomyosarcoma. It is a
rare cancer, that doesn’t have a treatment plan that is known to work. It must be treated aggressively, and even
then, most people only make it 18 months past diagnosis. The chemo can be cruel, stripping its’
recipients of their hair and good health.
You are left damaged, and less than you were. I was lucky that my mom made it for 7 years.
But no matter how you define grief, it is different for
every person. I was confused directly
after my mom passed because I was just fine.
I felt guilty – MY MOM DIED – and I was FINE. That doesn’t add up. Shouldn’t I have been laying in a puddle of
sadness, bawling my eyes out? Instead I
had this one single moment just after I found out she had passed where I
imagined her walking into heaven, into the arms of my beloved Papa, and that
made me tear up, but then after that – nothing.
I didn’t really cry that much for the next week until I spoke at her
funeral, and then the weight of the moment got me, and I broke down as I spoke,
or rather read, what I had to say about her.
And then, I was fine again. Emotionally I was okay. I equated my “fine-ness” to the years I had
to prepare myself. I would find myself
talking to my husband and friends, saying, “Shouldn’t I feel sadder?”.
“You’re in shock,” some of them would say. And then I felt like I needed to brace myself
for the impact of a 2x4 to the gut, because at some point, that’s how hard it
would hit me. Instead, my grief has come
in “pinches”, as I like to refer to them, paining me suddenly and sharply, and
wearing off somewhat quickly.
People would ask me how I was feeling, and the answer was
always the same – “Fine,” I would say.
Although, in my head, in every conversation I would have, I would be
thinking, Why are we talking about your
new outfit? Don’t you know my mom is
dead? Shouldn’t we be talking about that? My mom is dead. My mom died.
She’s gone. I will never see her
again. AND YOU WANT TO TALK TO ME ABOUT
YOUR NEW OUTFIT? {theoretical
conversation, btw – if you’re reading this and think you offended me by showing me
your new clothes, you didn’t.} Yet at
the same time, I didn’t want to talk about it, because I am privately emotional
and I don’t want to cry in
front of you. Confused? Me, too.
Grief is like its own entity, floating around, making me
feel differently day-by-day. I went to
her house a couple days ago for the first time since we picked out her casket
outfit – [She looked so lovely by the way. The best-looking person who wasn’t living I’ve
ever seen in my life. That’s true. She looked amazing.] When I went to her house, I saw the place
where she lived her last few months. It
was the house they moved to less than half a year before she passed. That house reminds me of her being sick;
barely able to get around, and struggling to breathe. I saw one of their dogs who is very sick, and
will be put down soon – it was as if somebody took a Hoover vacuum, stuck it
down my throat, and turned it on. The
air was sucked from my lungs. I didn’t
expect it. Grief.
I walked into her bedroom, and I looked through her things. I found pictures of us as little kids beside
her bed. I stood in her closet and
looked at her clothes, bringing them to my face and inhaling deeply; desperately hoping to smell her scent – her eau de Kelly.
They didn’t smell like her; I was sad to find out. It’s in those moments when you understand
that material possessions are just stuff.
I chose a few shirts that I wanted to have, and
wear. I found a few of her dark brown,
curly hairs on the backs of some of her shirts.
Normally I would have flitted them away, as you do when you find a hair,
but I couldn’t. Those hairs were from
before she lost it all to the chemo the final time. They were long and beautiful, the way she
liked to wear it, and I knew there would never be any more of them - those were
it. The last physical pieces of my mom
that still exist, apart from her ashes. I found a hoodie of
hers and I tucked the hairs in the hood.
I went into her bathroom and I found a bottle of her
perfume with only a few squirts left, and I thought this must be “her smell” if
she used so much of it. I put some on my
wrist and smelled myself, and I didn’t smell like her still. {Later in the day I caught a whiff of the
dissipated smell, and then I DID smell like her. I realized that I must have never smelled it
fresh, but only ever after a few hours.}
I took some of her scarves, and some trinkets she had
gotten while on one of her European vacations she had taken; trying to
live-it-up after her cancer diagnosis. When
my girls arrived home from school that day, I gave them each a scarf and a
little red phone booth from London to have.
They wrapped themselves in the scarves, cherishing them like a hug from
their “Ma”, and even wore them to school the next day.
Other days I feel nothing. I don’t feel sad. I think of her fondly, and I wish I could
text her. I see something funny, and I
want to show her. Last night at dinner,
the funniest thing happened. We were out
to eat at our favorite Mexican spot, and there were two ladies seated next to
us having dinner. They were just about to
leave when the waiters/mariachi band came around the corner singing and plopped
a sombrero on the head of the younger of the two women. You would expect happiness out of the
supposed birthday girl, but instead her face was perplexed. She began saying, through their singing, “But
it’s not my birthday,” repeating herself several times until the song
ended.
Afterwards I said to her, “It’s really not your birthday?”
Afterwards I said to her, “It’s really not your birthday?”
“No. My birthday
is in April,” she responded.
We all laughed together.
Even my kids were laughing.
I wanted to text my mom.
She would have thought it was hilarious.
I can imagine her cracking up, and telling me a story about her days
working at Chi-Chi’s Mexican Restaurant where something similar might have
happened. I can imagine her face
lighting up as she told me the details, and the excited tone she would use as
she told the story. I will miss going to
eat Mexican with my mom, who could always tell me a detailed description of
each and every dish, after years spent in the restaurant biz. I order her favorite dish, fajitas rancheras,
every time we go for Mexican, and imagine her building her perfect taco.
It’s been 3 months and 6 days since her death, and today
is different for me than that day was, or even how yesterday was. I want my mom. I don’t want to be 29, and mom-less. Or spend my 30th birthday without her. I don’t want to experience more of my life without
my mom than I did with her. I don’t want
to have to find a new normal, and I keep grasping at ways to keep her near
me. Today, it’s writing this blog. It’s talking about her. Tomorrow I might have to go lay in her bed,
surrounding myself in her stuff again. I’m
not sure, but thank you to those of you who have prayed for me, and reached
out. To those of you that haven’t, I
understand this is hard, and I hope you will someday, because to be surrounded
by the people that loved my mom is the closest I can get to actually being in
her presence. I want to hear your
stories about her, and for you to tell me the reasons why I remind you of her,
or don’t. Those memories are precious,
and keep her alive for a few moments.
Thanks, Mom for the wonderful years, and for loving us so
deeply, with all your heart.
I love you.
