Today is #throwbackthursday, which is a thing the kids do these days, apparently. As I am desperately clinging to the last two years of my twenties (while, of course, effortlessly embracing the divine thirties because I am completely self-actualized), I also often participate. Through the magic of that fancy TimeHop app, I am able to see all my Facebook posts on this day since the beginning of my account. The thing is that around this time two years ago, my mom was diagnosed with cancer and around this time one year ago, her short five month remission ended and the cancer came roaring back to life, ultimately ending hers five months later. I look back at TimeHop every day for clues about how I was feeling, how much I let slip in public, a sense of how I must have been feeling because to be honest, I do not know that I remember it accurately. I remember a lot of crying, many nights of being angry, an inability to process, and a ton of loneliness settled thick over every aspect of my life.
I have been missing my mother lately. When I was a kid, from
around the age of eight to fourteen, I got homesick. I would plan a sleepover
with a friend, have a great time, and once it came time to get in bed, become
an absolute wreck. A giant knot would form in my throat and without fail, I would
call my mom and she would explain to me that she would pick me up in the
morning and everything would be ok and it was just one night. And then, as
always, she would get in the car and come pick me up right then. This was quite
an ordeal, as I was usually at my best friend’s house who lived an hour from
me. Mom did not complain or get angry about getting up in the middle of the
night or tell me to tough it out. The truth was that she wanted me to be home
as much as I wanted to be home.
That homesickness is a very specific feeling and one I
remember well. I missed my sisters and my dad and my bed and everything being
familiar, but most of all, as embarrassing as it was to admit, I missed my
mommy. Like a toddler, I wanted to go home because I missed my mommy and
nothing was ok without her. I have felt that way every night for almost a week
now. I go to work, come home, make dinner, spend time with my husband, get
ready for bed and everything is fine until my head hits that pillow. Suddenly, that
knot forms in my throat and I get that distinct feeling in my heart and I want
to go home because I miss my mommy and nothing is ok without her. It is the
feeling I had when I got the call that she had died, while I got ready to fly
to Alaska, as I took multiple plane rides there and sat on the airplane, tears
streaming down my face. I want to go home because I miss my mommy and nothing
will ever be ok again without her.
So what is a girl to do? How do I, as a full grown adult
woman, console the little toddler Lizzy when even grown up me knows it is never
going to be ok again, at least not in that way? And I guess that is what I am
trying to figure out. For the rest of my life, there will be a mommy-sized hole
in every life event. One day, I will give birth to my own little baby (or, as
the case may be, get the call that someone else has given birth to my child and
he or she is waiting) and there will be a mommy-sized hole. I will start new
jobs or change careers and there will be a mommy-sized hole. My kids will have
kids and the mommy-sized hole will remain. There will be new homes, new
experiences, new hard things that will happen and mommy will never come pick me
up again. And there is absolutely nothing to do about it.
So why am I putting all of these deeply, awfully sad
feelings out here for the entire world to see? Here is the thing: I want you to
know what this feels like. I have come to three understandings in the last two
years:
1. We as a society are absolutely terrified of genuinely
engaging with people in their sad, angry, negative feelings. We are awful at
it. We live in a culture of relentless positivity and pulling up by bootstraps.
Frankly, we deny ourselves the full range of human experience because sadness and
grief is part of the rent we pay for the ability and privilege of loving and being
connected to other human beings. We are not very good at empathy and in the
face of genuine pain, we often shout useless platitudes because we are so
uncomfortable with the plain, raw sadness of it all.
2. Vulnerability is the most empowering thing ever.
Not only that, it empowers people around me, which is just beautiful. Am I the
easiest person in the world to be around right now? Probably not. Will I say
sad things that make you feel awkward? Yes, probably so. Will you feel safe
telling me that you too have felt sad things and safe in the knowledge that I
will not judge you for telling me you feel those things? Hell yes. And that, my
friends, is a beautiful thing. It turns out once you share your demons, they
lose some of their power and other people can share theirs too. It has made me
a better friend, better wife, a much better social worker. This is not to say I
let my grief overpower others, but that it has made me a more empathetic human
being. And I absolutely love that.
3. The pain I feel now is the rent I pay for being
fully human and for having and getting to love my mom. Maybe if my mom were a
bad person or a bad mother, I could be happy to be rid of her. If I had known
what this feels like, would I have prepared myself by loving her less?
Absolutely not. And this is the crux of grief: the more you allow yourself to
love people, the more you are going to feel it, so get used to it. Get used to
the idea that you will feel pain, that life is impermanent and fleeting and
that you only get someone for so long. And that is ok. Do not deny this part,
the grieving part, or push yourself through it because this is also part of
loving: the losing.
It may never be “ok” again. I will miss my mommy for the
rest of my life, every single day. Some days, I will think of her and smile.
Some days, even the smallest remembering will send me into hysterics. I am a
new person now, a different person because I have experienced more of the range
of being human and allowed myself to live it. Do I wish that were not the case?
Oh hell yes, but it is. So here I am.
