On Losing My Mother
Last week, as I finally went though the final contents of my late mother’s belongings, I came across a particularly hideous picture of 14 year-old me in a cap and gown, all jheri curl and acne and public aid glasses. I thought I’d gotten rid of any evidence of my Super Awkward Teenage Year but there it was, staring back at me in all its resplendent glory. It was as if she was trolling me from beyond. I like to think she was. She was that type of broad.
And it’s knowing that she was that type of broad that has made the holidays a little more tolerable this year. Women from far-flung places still message me about the essay I wrote when she passed. This is my third year without her, and adjusting to my new normal has been a lot of trial and error. Mostly error. I mean, you can sit on a therapist’s couch, read all the books about grief and loss and what it all means but really, you’re just fucking winging it. And that is totally ok, which is what I tell the women who message me. Grief doesn’t have an expiration date and healing isn’t a linear deal. You might tear up in the cereal aisle three years later because you remember how much she loved sending you to the store for Raisin Bran. You might not.
There are days when you’ll fight the grief and days when you’ll succumb to it, days when you will allow it to sit with you quietly as you go about your day. And you have to allow these visits because if you don’t, Grief will show up at your door like that annoying aunt who smelled like Bengay and Newports and always overstayed her welcome. So you let it in. You look at all the old photographs. You order Peking Duck from her favorite Chinese restaurant for Christmas dinner. You wrap yourself in her pashmina, her last Christmas gift from you, as you file stories. These things will cut short Grief’s visit and off it will go, wig slightly askew and support hose rolling down her legs as it slips out the front door.
I entered my thirties childless, and down one parent. In two days, I will enter my forties parentless and with offspring. It is strange to feel both purposeful and rudderless. Anyone can laud your ability to keep your kid alive and intact, but the one person you really want acknowledgment from is no longer here to give it. She is unable to help you navigate the terrain, so you search for clues in the detritus she left behind with the hope that you will be as good as she was, yet better. You stretch your memory as far as it will go so that you can remember every. single. good. moment.
Until Grief comes knocking again.
