Mother’s Day. I never know how to feel about it. Being a Mom, deep down I wish to be pampered and celebrated. But being a Mom without my own Mom makes me want to pretend that it doesn’t exist, and I try to convince myself I’m not big on being pampered. Grief has a way of changing on its own over time, but it also grows in ways you don’t think it will. After seven years without my own Mother, you tend to not speak on it much. You think most people are tired of hearing about it, so you hold the space for her in your heart like a secret no one will care to hear. Recently, I had a conversation with a woman who made me think about the loss of my Mom in a way I haven’t before. I had told her that there was a life with my Mom, and now there is life without her. They are two different lives. When she died, that old life died. But, in this new life I can carry her into it in ways even though she physically isn’t here anymore.
Life seemed to implode once she passed, it completely turned upside down. In this conversation I had, this woman told me to view it at a different angle. Mom is now crossed over, in a place where she has fully healed in every aspect and she could see herself that life for us here was not the life she wanted for us, and it wasn’t the life we wanted either. Even though all those changes and struggles hurt like hell, over time it opened a whole other level of beautiful things that wouldn’t have happened. Even though all that other stuff was so heavy and felt like the world was crumbling on top of us. I never looked at things this way, instead I always questioned what lesson the universe was trying to teach me. But really, it was Mom.
When I was twelve, I watched my Mother grieve the loss of hers. It changed her, completely depleted her. It brought us closer, but a part of her was gone. The same way a part of me is gone now too. But that’s ok. We are our Mother. Her blood, her legacy. For me, as much as the death of her has ripped from me and hardened me, I never want my son to feel as if he can’t access all the facets of his Mom. I am the only parent he has. He does not know a life with my Mother, he was born three weeks after she had passed. But he knows all of her because he is loved with all of me. The broken and the healed parts. I want people to know that you can be both of those things, and you don’t have to be shiny and fixed to give all of yourself to the things that you love and that matter to you. If you held back because of the broken parts of you, you’d be doing a great disservice to yourself, your future, and the people around you.
I’m almost to the age now where my Mother had me. She was newly thirty-four years old that November of 1989 and was only newly fifty-nine when she passed in October of 2015. There was never enough time with her, and I often find myself wondering where life would’ve taken all of us if she was still here now. I know she’d be the best Grandmother to my son; I see so much of her in him. I know she’d be so happy to just be here, and I will always try to hold the space for all the things she didn’t get to see. Shortly after she passed, I saw a medium. I am big on connecting to the things we cannot see and although I’m not a religious person, spirituality is very important to me. I feel her energy always. That medium told me my Mother would sends me feathers to show me that she was around. When I tell you, I always find them when I need her most just laying in the driveway as if they were placed just for me in my path. Living in my childhood home with my own son, is both happy and sad. I love all the happy memories we’ve made here and the connection it has to my Mom, but I don’t think I’ll stay forever. The sad parts are tough, and I know she’d want me to make my own memories and build a life elsewhere too. The older I am getting, the more I can see that. But I think she will tell me when the time is right. She already is.
If I could go back to a younger me, I’d tell myself so many things. I’d tell myself that she was growing too as a woman, not just me. That she didn’t have all the answers as a parent, and she was learning her way the best she could. I’d tell myself to take more time with her, to argue less about the silly things that didn’t matter. To thank her. To tell her how hard she fought for her kids and life while she was battling cancer for eight years. To tell her she didn’t have to hang on for so long. To tell her she did an amazing job, and that she rocked being bald from all the treatments she did. To tell her she was a bad ass with her body covered in tattoos, and it was never embarrassing because it made her the coolest Mom. To tell her I love you one more time and breathe in the smell of her that I will never forget for as long as I live.
To all the Moms out there, thank you. For being a Mom 100 percent of the time, even when you didn’t feel it. Even if you don’t have any help and you still show up. You’re doing amazing. To the ones who find Mother’s Day hard, I see you and I hold so much space for you in my heart. Create your own stories because those are the things your babies will remember most about you. Happy Mother’s Day.
I love you, Mama.