Friday Things // 06.11.2021

The one about my mom.

Jun 12, 2021

Hi friends.

It’s been a while. How are you doing?

I’ve been thinking about my mom a lot in the last few days. Soon — next month — it will have been a year since she died, and I can still barely use that word (“died”). I rarely even say it out loud.

It still doesn’t feel real. More like a terribly bad joke or a cruel misunderstanding or some nightmare I long ago thought I’d wake up from.

For a while, it was all I could write about. All I wanted to talk about.

Lately, the closer we get to the year mark, I find it’s harder to write about. Harder to talk about, even with close friends. Harder to acknowledge this no good, impossibly bad thing that happened in my life. Happened to me, to my family. ((If you’re new here, my mom was diagnosed with cancer in spring 2020, and passed from a chemo-related complication.))

That anniversary makes it all suddenly feel extremely final in a way I guess it hadn’t at first. Like okay, she’s really not coming back. This is just life now.

But, it’s on my mind.

I think about the Friday before she passed, and the PTSD I still have any time my phone rings in the early morning. It was a 12 hour period of call after frantic call from nurses and doctors telling me suddenly everything was going wrong, everything was failing. My mom was fighting to stay. I will never be able to eloquently explain the level of trauma that one day held, waking up to the worst call of my life, and giving approval on medical treatments I knew nothing about, to doctors I’d never met, from hundreds of miles away — and knowing my mom had only 12 hours prior talked to me on the phone. (“What are you doing,” I’d asked, knowing she was of course stuck in her hospital room with no visitors allowed because of the new pandemic policies, and had been having severe trouble breathing in the past couple days; “Going dancing,” she’d joked, her voice raspy but with the same humor as always.)

I think about the call I got two mornings later, the nurse telling me he was pretty sure my mom was officially dying, that her body was trying to let go. Telling me it was time to say goodbye.

I think about that Sunday. Getting dressed in the first things I found in my room at my parents’ house: deep pink yoga pants and a black sorority sweatshirt from college. How absurd to wear pink yoga pants to watch your mother die, right? And two masks — couldn’t forget those.

I think about standing for three hours at my mom’s bedside, in flip-flops that I refused to touch never mind ever wear again after that morning, a line from a Taylor Swift song playing on a loop in my head: “I think I’ve seen this film before, and I didn’t like the ending.”

And I think about the moment when she was suddenly, actually, completely gone.

I ran out of the room, out of the hospital, and into the dry, July Vegas air. I couldn’t see her like that anymore. I couldn’t stand there a second further.

When we got home to my parents’ house afterwards, I took a shower, and sat like a zombie for what felt like hours. Days. My husband and sweet friends who ordered delivery are the only reason I ate during that period.

I try — very, very hard — not to think about the enormous hole in my heart. Not to think about what my mom looked like in the hospital bed when I made it to Vegas. I will never regret being there with her when she left this world, but good Lord, someone should prepare you. Someone should tell you what it’s going to feel like. Someone should warn you. And being unable to hug or touch anyone (other than my husband) on the worst day of my life? I can’t do that again. I don’t have it in me.

So, I don’t like to talk about it anymore. Not really.

But, here’s what I’ll say, in case you too are grieving, or dealing with what feels like an unsurmountable loss of some kind…. it gets better.

It doesn’t go away. (God, no.) But it does get easier to sit with. Your brain and your heart are incredibly resilient, whether you know it or not (whether you believe it or not), and it becomes more natural to take steps forward. To want to smile, and to laugh, and to be able to have a day go by without spontaneously crying during a run or at the kitchen table.

Grief is extremely personal and unique to each person, but I believe we are all capable of being strong, and moving forward. It doesn’t mean you’re healed or you’re “fine” or that you’ve forgotten; it just means you have space in your heart for two things at the same time. You can mourn and feel cracked without feeling completely shattered anymore, and with the ability to sit in the sunshine and genuinely feel joy. You will likely never be the same, but maybe you’re better for it. At least I like to think so anyways! It’s really the only thing that makes any of this feel like something you can endure, and that lets me get out of bed every morning.

If you’re having a hard time, I see you. You’re not alone. 💛 (I hope you find some sunshine this weekend!)

So Many Somethings

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