7 Things I Learned From My Mom’s Death
My Mom was diagnosed with stage IV terminal breast cancer in June 2011.
My Mom died on July 25, 2014 — a little over three years after her diagnosis.
The three years in-between her diagnosis and passing were some of the hardest years of my life, and yet they left me completely unprepared for the three years following her death.
Today marks the three year anniversary of her death. This anniversary has a bit of symmetry to it, and it seems like as good a time as any to share some of my experiences with grief.
Everything Hurts Like Hell
I had three years to prepare for losing my Mom and when we received the news she only had two weeks left to live, it still knocked the wind out of me. That’s the immediate pain — the pain that is numbed by choosing floral arrangements, selecting music for the funeral service, and answering far too many phone calls. It was a pain numbed by the busyness of burying my Mom and making sure everyone else felt alright about the whole situation.
The real pain comes later — when you find yourself alone in your grief.
The real pain is a month after your Mom passes going to pick up burgers for your family and going back into the restaurant because they forgot the fourth burger except you don’t need four burgers anymore because, oh yeah, your Mom died.
It’s watching your Dad wrestle with grief. It’s forgetting the sound of your Mom’s voice. It’s a year of long-dark-nights-of-the-soul in lonely hotel beds. It’s friends who stop checking in with you — and friends who never checked in at all. It’s wondering if you did enough with the time you were given. It’s knowing you could have been a better son. It’s idolizing a manufactured perfect memory of your Mom while still wrestling with the wounds she left behind — because she was not perfect.
No One Knows What To Say
An old college friend was in town a couple of months after my Mom passed away and we met up for dinner. “So, is that, like, still hard?” she asked. Uh, yeah.
I get it though — I never knew what to say before all of this either.
I still don’t know what to say oftentimes — when a friend has a loved one diagnosed with cancer I don’t know if I am supposed to try to offer some advice or if my very existence reminds them of the worst case scenario.
I’m not sure there is much any of us can say in the face of grief — even having experienced it myself I know that it is a completely different experience for each individual.
I think the most we can say is that we will keep showing up — and then doing it.
Everyone Has Such Perfect Lives
Social media is hard after you’ve lost a loved one. Death isn’t featured prominently in the carefully curated worlds of Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. It’s not only hard to know how to grieve online, but even more difficult having your network of friends’ happiness splashed in your face everyday.
It’s been three years and I still have to take breaks from social media. Holidays are painful — like really painful.
It’s hard to not get jaded. It isn’t fair, but I pulled away from a lot of my more casual friends after my Mom passed because their social media presence was genuinely offensive to me.
I started getting really passive aggressive during the first year and I briefly considered posting a photo of me crying everyday on Instagram. Just out here #living #my #truth.
It’s Easy To Lose Yourself
I’ve never been the most emotionally or even mentally stable person in the room. I experienced my first extreme episode of depression when I was 12 years old and found myself slamming my head into a cast iron skillet because I was a disappointment to my parents and there was no hope in the world.
For three years I imagined what it would be like to lose my Mom and only two things really worried me — what will happen to my Dad and what if I completely go off the deep end?
Two weeks after my Mom passed I was back on the road traveling every week for my job. I came home on Friday nights, met up with a friend on Saturdays (usually to cry at some point), and packed on Sundays.
It wasn’t a schedule or environment conducive to a healthy grieving process.
I cried almost every day. I had panic attacks. I woke up each morning with an ever-present and ever-growing existential fear. I was lonely. I was tired. So fucking tired. I cannot explain the unrelenting feeling of exhaustion I carried with me for over a year.
At times, I was euphoric. Often I was I-can’t-get-out-of-the-bed-this-weekend depressed. I drank and started smoking (I quit after six months) — I started falling back into unhealthy relationship patterns. I questioned everything. I felt weightless. I felt this weird new-found freedom in death that shit, nothing really matters.
It was a scary place to be and there were times I thought I was losing my mind. If you feel this way, I would suggest finding a therapist — preferably one that doesn’t forget your appointments and/or your name.
You Can Hold Your Breath For A Whole Year
July 25, 2015 — that was the finish line. That was the day I was finally able to take my first breath since July 25, 2014.
I did it. I made it through a whole year of shitty firsts.
First birthday without my Mom, first Thanksgiving without my Mom, first Christmas without my Mom, first New Years without my Mom, first Mom’s birthday without my Mom, first Easter without my Mom, first Mother’s Day without my Mom, and finally first anniversary of my Mom’s death.
There’s some weird power in knowing the earth can make a full rotation around the sun and I can hold myself together — relatively speaking.
It goes by faster than you would think, and it’s harder than you ever could imagine, but it was a mental turning point for me.
It Gets Better — Sort Of
So, you’ve made it a year, and you’ve done everything once. You know you can make it. The hard part is now you have to do it all over again — forever.
In a lot of ways it gets easier — the shallow roots of grief have grown a bit deeper. This makes it easier to say things like, “my Mom passed away, actually” and not cry. Most holidays are a bit easier, while others will still sting (fuck you, Mother’s Day).
You’re mostly done explaining to long lost family friends that your Mom passed away. When you do have to break that news, it’s more annoying than painful because you have to hold their hand as they process this new-to-them but oh-so-old-to-you news.
While the day-to-day of it all is easier, the deeper sadness sets in. You go to a wedding and you remember that your day, if it ever comes, will look and feel a lot different. You buy a house, but your Mom will never see it. You fall in love and will never know what your Mom would think of him.
People still apologize to you for talking about cancer in front of you and this makes you feel different — and you are. You’re different than most people you know because from the age of 24 you’ve been dealing with knowing your Mom is going to die, losing her, and grief.
Most of your friends don’t know what any of that is like, and that’s so great for them, but you know. You have this special knowledge of things to come and it’s sad, and dark, and scary, and isolating.
But, hey, at least you don’t cry all the time now!
You’ve Got A Whole Lot of Life in You Yet
Grief is this crazy diverging path each of us take to ultimately reach the same destination — acceptance.
I promise you’ll find it.
It doesn’t mean everything is better. It doesn’t even mean everything hurts less. Acceptance, for me, is recognizing that my Mom is gone, and that while her passing has left a huge and un-fillable hole in my life, I still have a lot of life ahead of me, and I need to figure out how to best live it with this newfound pain.
If that almost sounds like punishment — oftentimes it feels like one.
I know my life would be richer and fuller if my Mom was still in it, but that doesn’t stop me from living as rich and full a life as I can in her absence.
I mean, it kind of does, because I’m still wrestling with the emotional trauma of losing a loved one and confronting my own mortality, but you know what I mean.
We’re all going to die.
And that’s the essence of life really, isn’t it?
That there’s an expiration date on this whole experience.
That through all the angst, the joy, pain, and the exhausting ennui — it’s all so finite.
That despite all of our differences we’re all on the same path — we’re all connected to each other and to all those who came before us by this experience.
Life and death.
All we can really do with our time here is use it to the best of our ability. My Mom used it by giving back to her community, loving my Dad, and raising two boys who loved her unconditionally.
When she passed, I was afraid that wasn’t enough. I was afraid she had missed out on what life had to offer. I was afraid I had held her back.
It was enough for her though and I understand that now. I understand because her choices echo on into my daily life even now.
So, I want to love the people in my life so fiercely that when I die it completely ruins their lives — because I’m super passive aggressive that way (and I got that from my Mom).