Grief, and Lipstick

Occasionally I dig my hand into a purse I haven’t broken out for a while, and in fumbling around, I’ll find objects that represent years past. A movie ticket stub. A matchbook from a favorite bar.

Today, my fingers fumbled over an unfamiliar shape. I drew it from my bag, pulled off the top, twisted the cylindrical base to bring out its rose-colored peak. I ran the smooth, rosy wax over my lips, savored that clean makeup smell, pressed my lips together, and promptly broke into tears.

The smell, the color, the sensation of the wax — it all coalesced into a sensation of overwhelming sadness.

It has been 5 years, 1 month and 3 days since my mother died, and the universe decided to remind me. Today, grief came to visit.

After she died, I pillaged her bathroom drawers and pocketed every lipstick of hers I could find, and I still carry them in my purses. Knowing that traces of her DNA remain on this cotton candy colored balm bring her closer to me and yet remind me of her absence.

I have very vivid dreams of Mom.

Often I’m seated at the round wooden kitchen table in my childhood home, in my favorite ratty mismatched pajamas. Next to me, in her pink terrycloth bathrobe and her coke bottle-lensed glasses, she sits. We’re both in ensembles reserved for very early morning and very late at night because we would sure as hell not leave the house in what we have on. But on this comfortable morning, it’s just us two.

Both early risers, we’re up before my dad or sister, and we chat over coffee and the newspaper. Mom’s got her enormous blue mug — she dubbed it her “bucket of coffee” and it’s actually a soup bowl with a handle, like the ones served at Central Perk on Friends. Makes for fewer refills, she says. She sips it so slowly, it’s tepid by the time she’s halfway through it and she never ends up finishing it. This habit makes no sense to me, and endears her to me further.

The sun is just peeking through the windows, and frost flecks the lawn outside. We split the newspaper, she with the World News and I with the Entertainment section, and then we each break out a pen and try to untangle the rearranged words in the Jumble. Our conversation ebbs and flows between chatter and silence in a way that only happens when you’re utterly, deliciously comfortable. It is a perfect moment in time.

And then I wake up. I don’t want to wake up. I shut my eyes and try to force my brain to grasp onto the vestiges of the dream that’s fading away like smoke into the air.

As with all my dreams, delightful or horrific, the content matters less than the feeling and emotion it summons. The feeling that dwarfs all others at this moment is complete peace. It is my perfect moment.

I am not religious, but my dreams of her are my prayer, my opportunity to speak to and be with her.

Now wide awake, I want to call her, but of course, I can’t.

Mom was that person who lived for others. At her standing-room only memorial service, everyone from my childhood swim coaches to the lady from the dry cleaner attended. Whether you’d met her once, or were related by blood, she treated pretty much everyone with the same courtesy, humor and respect.

I’m not exaggerating when I say Mom knew just about everyone in town, and while I reflect happily on this now, her friendliness made for some ridiculously long errands.

Picking up paper towels suddenly became a 45 minute endeavor, as she’d stop to chat with an average of 11 people in the grocery store, while I said an obligatory, falsely perky hello. (I was a deeply awkward and therefore sullen adolescent but I learned to mask the annoyance when Mom made it very clear in an intimidating stage whisper that “you do not have the right to be rude, Liz.”) After finally checking out and making our way back to the car, unpacking brown grocery bags into the back, I’d huffily chastise her: “Seriously, you don’t have to ask the checkout guy 35 questions about his daughter’s soccer tournament.” To a teenager, unabashed kindness is a sign of weakness, apparently.

In high school, it was not uncommon to see Mom’s big SUV parked in front of the quad. Another day, another sick friend who, of course, called Mom for a ride home. She was the emergency contact for roughly 78% of my class so she was always around. I imagine this is what it would be like if your parent were a teacher at your school; it felt simultaneously comforting and yet a bit of an intrusion.

“Oh. Hey Mom. What are you doing here?”

“Hi sweetie! Krista has a stomach bug, so I’m just taking her home. Here, I brought you a burrito for lunch.”

“Thanks! Kgottagoloveyoubye.” At 15, you jumble all those syllables together rapidly so you don’t lose street cred, lest one of your peers hear you profess your love for a parent.

Though her memorial service is a bit of a blur to me, I do recall speaking. I was 24 at the time, and I recall revealing that it used to bug me when people said “you’re so much like your mom,” because, as a teenage contrarian, I wanted to be unique, and unlike anyone else. But then, and to this day, I feel honored at the comparison.

I dread going to the cemetery because, frankly, I feel like a crazy person talking at a stone slab. I amble up, and launch into babbling one-sided updates on my life.

I give her updates, as though we’re talking on the phone and she’s muted her side. “Work’s really good!” I break out my phone to display photos of my sister’s darling daughters. “Look at how big Coco is. She started rolling over.” And, of course, “God, you’d just love Matt.”

This is the gut punch that is most unbearable. Contemplating the landmarks (my wedding, the birth of my future children) that she will not witness. The people who are so dear to me whom she will not meet.

When it becomes too much to bear, I stop talking, shut my eyes, and picture her. I sometimes think I hear her respond.

The dreams are not always good. Sometimes in my dreams she is absent, and I get the sense that she’s left because of something I did to drive her away. Some disappointment, some failing on my part. I think it’s my brain trying to understand and make sense of her departure. We want to believe in reason and consequence, and it’s apparent that my brain still can’t fathom that she is gone and that it’s not because she chose to leave. And that I’m not being punished.

The fact that I continue to exist while she does not, at least in the physical sense, feels wrong. That’s a goddamn raw deal, and it’s fair for neither her, nor us.

Is this what survivor guilt feels like? The sense that you are somehow wrong for going on with your life? I can’t help but think, why do I get to be alive and she does not?

I try not to think about it, but at some base limbic level, her absence will always boggle me a bit. It doesn’t make sense.

I try to honor her by embodying her. I hear her encouraging me and like a child, I conduct myself with the ever-present consideration of whether my actions would make her proud.

Honoring her is the way I keep her alive. By acting like her, it makes me feel like she’s still here. To make small talk with the Uber driver because I know she’d do it. To smile and let the old man in the grocery store go ahead in the checkout line because it’s courteous, even though it will make my errand 37 minutes longer because he’s moving at a glacial pace. Good girl, I hear her say.