It’s two weeks since my mom passed away and I find myself struggling about what to write about her and her death. So many feelings are cascading over me constantly – like a tsunami – washing away what I felt just seconds before and sweeping in new ones.
I think my overriding feelings are twofold:
I’m feeling great fatigue. Bone tired fatigue. The kind that a good night’s sleep doesn’t relieve. I’m tired from the myriad details pressed upon all survivors. I’m tired from the ever-present uppermost thoughts in my mind to set a good example for my grandchildren – to show them that even through the death of our beloved matriarch, there are rituals and traditions to comfort our shattered heats, calm our fears, and guide us through the discomfort and unknown. And I’m tired from responding graciously and authentically to the many whose lives my mother touched and whose death leaves an immense void.
I’m also relieved. My mom was a free-spirited, decisive woman who had had a rough year. And I had spent many days tormenting myself over her living far from her children and grandchildren – though her choice – but having too much responsibility for advocating for her own care. As a wise friend counseled me, “When a parent dies, we all feel like what we’ve done is ‘never enough.’”
And I’m experiencing a lot of incremental losses. Saying goodbye to my mom’s friends who have known me – not only before braces and boobs – but before baby teeth and sippy cups. I’m saying goodbye to my mom’s hairdresser who always worked me in and knew exactly how to trim my bangs. I’m saying goodbye to the waitress at First Watch who knew without asking not only what my mom was ordering – a Cobb Salad without avocado and bacon – but also what I was ordering – a turkey burger with accompanying greens. To the maintenance man who changed my mom’s air filters at the drop of a hat and the apartment security card who my mom brought dinner to almost every time she went out to dinner too.
Sure I’ll still visit my hometown. I’ll still see my sister-in-law and brother-in-law and niece and nephews and mother-in-law. And I’ll still run into my high school cronies and lunch with irreplaceable confidants whose friendships span decades. I’ll even have her two bedroom apartment to return to for the next couple of months. But something has fundamentally changed when returning to the city of my birth and to the city I’ve lived most of my adult life. Quite simply, my parents are no longer there.
When I flew up to meet her and her caregiver at the hospital emergency room just days before she died, I snapped the picture below. It’s the escalator I ascended after deplaning. It’s been many years since I’ve gazed up at the top of those moving stairs to see my mom and dad eagerly scanning the approaching crowd – waiting with unbridled excitement to see me emerge from the crowd. And even when they could no longer make the relatively complicated drive to the airport, I knew they were eagerly awaiting my tap on their apartment door. Even when my dad passed away five years ago, I knew my mother would still be in that same apartment – fully dressed, hair perfectly coiffed – ready to zip out the door with me in tow – as soon as I deposited my suitcases in the spare bedroom. Off we would go for lunch and shopping.
I haven’t cried much. I haven’t gone though her closet with my younger brother and sister separating what we will keep and what we won’t. I haven’t even received her official death certificates or written one thank you note for the many who have reached out to express their sympathies and condolences. I know the long process – I’ve walked the walk with many friends and family members who have buried their last remaining parent – many of them at much younger ages than I have.
All I keep picturing is that long escalator inching me forward to baggage collection. I know for the rest of my life, it will never be the mom and dad – who welcomed me into the world and raised me – certainly not perfectly – but absolutely the very best way they could – who will eagerly be scanning the crowd of arriving passengers looking just for me. And I – who adored them, was immensely proud of them and loved them just as imperfectly – will now step off that moving sidewalk stoically, collect my bags without fanfare, call Lyft with my phone app and begin the visit to the city I called home for so much of my life – without them.
I know I am identified in many ways – wife, mother, nana, sister, friend, writer, speaker and author. But as long as my mom and/or my dad were alive, I was still somebody’s little girl.
The world may see in me a woman whose gray roots are peeking through, whose hands are sporting a few age spots, whose eyes are ringed with bags, whose balance is a tad compromised and whose knee caps jiggle as she walks. But to my mom – to the very end – I was always that little girl with the sparkling brown eyes, wildly swinging pony tail, and skinny legs – running home from the bus stop to show her my newest creation.
A friend and fellow writer said it up best, “I know as long as my mom is around someone is really reading what I write. Someone is really proud of how I’m stringing my words together. Someone is remembering weeks later a quote I used, a new word I embraced or a new slant I expressed.”
I’ll miss a lot of things, but I think that unrestrained love and devotion is what I’ll miss most.
Keep Preserving Your Bloom,
Iris