I’ve lost a lot of things this year. I lost the ability to take much needed antidepressants due to my Sjogrens. I lost days to mental and physical illness. I lost faith in some important things for a time. I lost my gallbladder. But none of it compares to what happened in September.
Two months ago, I lost my mom.
It’s hard to believe I’ve been living for two entire months since she passed. Right now I feel the grief come and go like a tide. Sometimes I’ll even forget that she’s gone. But then I’ll hear a song that she would have loved and I remember I will never be able to share it with her. Or I’ll be sitting in the backyard and see one of our favorite birds and not be able to text her. I had a “first” with my boys and I couldn’t share it with her. It makes my heart ache like a muscle that’s being strained to it’s breaking point.
The smallest things hit me hard. For example, we had to replace our child safety gate on the stairs and it prompted a question about my childhood home. I realized I will never have an answer to that question because the two adults that raised me are gone from this earth. And so are my chances to know anything more than I knew when they took their last breath.
At 32 years old, I don’t have either of my parents.
Even though she died two months ago, I feel like I lost most of her 11 years ago. That’s when she had her first stroke; I was in college at the time. The stroke changed her as a person and it changed our relationship. Her brain had been fundamentally altered and the ramifications of that weren’t always pretty.
It always bothered her – the scar that formed around the dead brain tissue. She would say it just wasn’t right. She felt the same way about the left side of her body, which had been affected by the stroke. These days, my youngest son is looking like he will be left-handed – and almost every time I see him use his left hand it reminds me of my mom complaining about how much her left hand would hurt and how frustrated she would get about it being useless.
Our relationship was strained before my mom had a stroke, but it got harder afterward. Some of the best parts of her were gone, or at least not seen very often, and some of the worse parts prevailed. I am grateful that we had a relationship, even though it was full of flaws.
The doctors are certain she died from a second, massive stroke due to the way it happened. She didn’t so much as kick in her sleep or push her covers off. For that I’m grateful – she did not feel pain. And she is no longer in pain.
I knew a second stroke would come one day, but I thought we had longer. In my grief, I have realized that I grieving my “pre-stroke” mom over a decade ago, because she was a different person. I can see now all the ways in which I could have done things to improve our relationship. I could have talked more and made attempts to be closer.
That door is closed now. It’s hard to wrap my mind around how final it is – there is no recourse. She is gone. It was her time to go, but I will never had another mother. She left without getting to meet her youngest grandson. I don’t see a way past some of the pain – yet. Healing is a long way in the distance and it will never be complete. There will be scar tissue left behind no matter how many years pass.
I didn’t expect so many things to remind me of her. In the months before her death, our relationship was strained and I became complacent and, quite frankly, grumpy over some of our interactions. This has led to a confusing kind of grief. Because if she were still alive, it would almost certainly be the same. I wasn’t willing to change at the time – only after the loss. So I’m grieving for scenarios that were unlikely to ever exist.
It was the same way when I lost my Dad. I kept imagining all these great things we would be doing together if only he was still alive. But my ideas weren’t based in truth; if he had still been alive we would have still been fighting and those lovely things I dreamed wouldn’t be happening.
I was truly estranged from my father in the months before his death eight years ago. I still think of him so often and now I wonder what the grief for my mom will feel like eight years from now. How am I going to cope with the decades of grief ahead of me?
The loss is hard. It’s like a waterfall – every day I wake up and the loss continues to pour over me. Some days I talk about it. Some days I cry. Some days I feel like I’m falling into the loss. Sometimes it pulls like the ocean trying to take me away from everything else. I lost my mom and I feel overwhelmed in a complicated sorrow.
I lost her counsel. I lost her insight and the memories she hadn’t yet shared with me. I lost the chance to learn more about her, in ways I didn’t realize I wanted to until after she was gone. I have to many questions. I’ve lost her physical touch. I lost the ability to hear her voice telling a funny story. I lost so much.
I miss my mom.
