Living through it
The anniversary no one wants to celebrate
Well, I had something planned for you, but then I remembered that today is the one-year anniversary of my mother’s passing.
I’ll be honest, it kind of snuck up on me and the realization took the wind out of my sails.
It’s not so much that after a year I still miss my mother with the intensity of those early days and weeks after she left us. Of course I do.
What hurts are the memories of that last awful day. It’s a day I wouldn’t trade for anything but also a day I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
I keep a journal. I don’t write in it every day but I use it to document my travels, acknowledge milestones, work through my feelings. I didn’t write in my journal for a week after my mother passed. I remember working on multiple projects during the weeks leading up to June 7, 2021. Afterward?
Nothing.
I looked at my phone to see what photos I’d taken that day. Just two. A sad photo of her last meal and the empty bed after she left her home for the last time. Those photos just about did me in.
There’s comfort in this grief. There was a time when I thought I’d relive her final moments every day. After she transitioned, it’s all I could think about. The grim circumstances of her death eclipsed her life.
But, like all eclipses, this was only temporary. For the most part, when I think of my mother, I think of happy memories from my childhood or things I’d share with her if she were still here.
It’s true what they say. Healing takes time. But has time ever been screwier?
Although the date snuck up on me, it feels like my mother died a lot more than a year ago. Because her death and memorial service were immediately followed by my father-in-law’s diagnosis and his subsequent passing, it feels like all we’ve been doing is grieving, even though that’s certainly not the case.
Those are only feelings. What we’ve been doing is living. And that’s what I’ll do today.
Here’s a rare photo of my mother smiling. Pretty sure this was taken during our first trip to Ireland together in 1999.
I'm right there with ya, Jim.
I just had my Mom's 2 year in June as well. 3 years ago she fell in the shower. She bumped her head pretty good I guess. So, she went to the hospital after 2 days of nausea where it was discovered she had stage 4 brain cancer. It was a total shock to everyone. She never smoked, rarely drank (and even then it was never to the point of being drunk), and was still mountain biking, sailing competitively, skiing etc as a 70+ year old. It was unfathomable that she, of all people, would have been given such a horrific and brutal death sentence like that.
There was always talk over the years about how her Mom lived until 105 (a few weeks from 106!) and how we were blessed with great genetics as a family in that way. Mom's gotta have a good 20+ years in her at least, right? Guess not.
As I moved home to help take care of her during her decline she told me that she WOULD NOT die at 77. She didn't. She died on the morning of her 78th birthday.
It's really hard to look at all the pictures from that year or even think about individual events including the morning she died. I don't really get terribly sad about it all anymore, at least not as much as I used to, but I still say "hello" to a picture of her every day and wear a few of her baseball hats on occasion. Shit, I still have her number in my contacts list on my phone for no rational reason at all, I just do. Maybe in some way that makes me feel better knowing that she's with no matter where I go? I dunno.
I don't know if writing this tiny snippet of my experience was of any help to you (and hopefully didn't bum you out), just saying that you are not alone in this particular emotion. We were extremely lucky to have Moms that mattered to us enough to care about such things as anniversaries. Not everyone gets to feel that. How I look at it anyway...
Take care,
BD
So sorry for your loss. Keep striving to do exactly what you said- focus on the positive memories and living your life the best you can (and forgive yourself when you don't because she would want that for you too).