It’s that thing that makes me feel like a crazy person - that thing where you have knee-jerk reactions, responses, thoughts as if a person who is no longer living is living again . . . if you know what I mean . . .
For example, something will happen during the day - something funny, sad, stressful - who knows, but then I’ll think - and just for a split second - I’ll just think “I can’t wait to call Mom and tell her, ” or “I really need to talk this over with Mom.” Like my body forgets that its reality has changed and my cognitive habits revert back to what they were in another life. And when the brain jumps back from that reality to this one, goddammit there’s a wicked jet lag.
This happened regularly, of course, for about the first year after my mother died, but then - thankfully - this involuntary thinking slowly waned until it happened - well, never. But last week I went to a drawing class that I take from time to time (taught by an adorable old french woman who’s fascinated with what she can learn about me from my style) and I just thought, “Damn my mom would have been great to learn this from. She was such a better teacher, a better artist, than this woman,” and my yearning for that other reality (what I sometimes feel lives as a parallel, alternate reality to this one, a reality where I have a living, loving mother) once again bubbled up in my chest (a sensation not unlike debilitating heartburn).
And since then, for the last week or so, I’ve been doing that thing that makes me feel like a crazy person, that thing where my brain involuntarily denies its living reality. I got through the holidays, the anniversary of my mother’s death, and myriad familial challenges this winter - but one, benign, 2-hour art class set off a week of accidental moments of grieving.
another black day on the calendar approaches. this one has me more upset than i expected. my birthday is tomorrow. without my mom it seems unnecessary somehow. i wish it wouldn’t come, it wouldn’t happen. it’s a terrible reminder of the loss now, not a fun celebration of my life. i know she would want me to make new memories in my new life - but it’s so hard to do this when all my favorite memories of birthdays include her.
there are times- mostly around days like celebrations that feel like an anniversary of loss - when i just don’t want my life to keep marching forward into all this newness. i just want to halt time, just stop it so that i don’t move any further away from the time when i had a life with her in it. it’s too hard. i just want to go back to where my life with her happened - where there are marks of her all around, on my things on my garden, on my people, on my clothes - where there are reminders of her, where her presence is tangible. i hate being somewhere where no one knew her.
and i want to go home to her home, where she once wished me happy birthday and kissed my cheeks.
A few weeks ago I came across a friend’s photo album on (that ubiquitous time-waster) Facebook. In his album entitled “family” he’d included an image of his father’s headstone. I happened to view this image around the time of the 12th anniversary of his father’s death and so “eavesdropped,” if you will, on a posted wall conversation. This friend, whom I’ve known since just after his father’s death, unabashedly adopts this loss as a visible part of his public self-identification and I realized suddenly how very different this is from my own relationship to my loss. And I realized that mixed in with that horrible emotional cocktail of loss is shame.
Since losing my mom this loss and all the weirdness that it entails (moodswings, sudden fits of weeping, social anxiety, neediness, a constant sense of unsteadiness and suspision) lurks beneath a thin veneer of normality like a nasty pustule covered with badly applied make-up. As if I’m trying to pass for someone that doesn’t have the sorrow of loss festering constantly. When I meet new people I feel like this is something I have to confess in order for them to know me: I wait for the right moment and then attempt to slip it in the conversation without provoking the common condolences and awkwardness. Neither of these are usually avoided. Loss makes others feel awkward, embarrassed of their own normalcy, uncertain of what to say. This fact has made it nearly impossible for me to feel comfortable around new people (and of course, since moving to a new country I am constantly surrounded by new people). Alienation has become my new home.
Seeing my friend’s declaration of continued loss-identification on such a public (albeit virtual) forum I realized that on some level I don’t want people to know this about me. Loss has made me weak, different, broken, dark, fragile, uncertain. They are qualities that frustrate and trouble, and I want nothing more than to cover and ignore them. I am ashamed of this elegiac residu and by extension I am ashamed of my loss. I feel that this loss has marked me as something of a social pariah, having experienced things that people - in particular people my age - are largely uncomfortable with.
So, while I do ackowledge my mother’s death on my own facebook page, it’s not as blatant as all that, and doesn’t generate conversation from anyone other than my sister. and even that makes me uncomfortable. I don’t want the loss to be there, to exist, to have happened in the first place, and therefore I want to keep it as private as possible. And of course, this conflicts on the other hand with needing it to be acknowledged, with needing the recognition and acceptance of others.
Then again, I keep this blog (largely imagining that only strangers read it, if anybody).
Here is a list of things that have helped me through the past year:
1. Puffs Plus tissues (seriously prevent nasal chaffing)
2. Gardening - tending to, caring for something, getting outside, being distracted but also having a space to think if you want it
3. Pets - also get you outside, distract you, comfort you, snuggle you when you’re more sad than you’ve every imagined
4. Melatonin - helps me sleep. I take one little melatonin and half an hour later I can sleep. After my mom’s passing, before I started taking this, I wouldn’t be able to sleep for hours and would usually wind up bawling as memories and thoughts of my mother and life with her flooded my brain. This started again following the first anniversary of her death.
5. Counseling!!! I don’t have this anymore, as I’ve relocated to France with my husband and don’t yet have health care here. But I was in counseling leading up to my mother’s death and for eight months afterward. Just having a safe space to be sad, without causing anyone else to bear a burden, is an amazing help. Not to mention profound psychological insight and advice about self-care . . . If you can’t afford a private provider there are many grief support groups and even free counseling often offered by hospitals and hospice
6. Websites - www.theatreofthemind.com — it can be a little cheesy and new-agey but since I don’t have therapy anymore, and things have been rough since the anniversary of my mother’s death, this website has helpful podcasts that address grief and depression. Truly they helped pull me out of one of the deepest depressions I’ve ever experienced.
7. Books. Two books have been really helpful: Motherless Daughters by Hope Edelman addresses the specific grief of a daughter who’s lost her mother. It was really really helpful, particularly in the first 6 months of my grief. The author has collected a good deal of stories and accounts of other women who have lost their mothers and so helps you to feel included in a community, eases your feeling of isolation in grief and assures you that what you’re going through isn’t completely unique (though of course, everyone’s grief is their own in some way). It doesn’t however provide steps for recovery, so to help me with this - particularly after the first year - I turned to the book Grieving Mindfully by grief counselor Sameet M. Kumar. This book relies on the practice of mindful meditation to calm anxiety and depression, helping you to live in the moment and cope in a healthy way. I honestly haven’t yet implemented a meditation practice, but even just reading about it, the way that Kumar explains grief processes, has been very helpful. Particularly as he acknowledges that a part of grief is understanding who you are now - mourning not only the loss of your loved one, but the version of you that had that loved one - that grief is a process of identity change, not just loss. This was the first time I felt that that was really recognized by anyone, as I’m still struggling to know who I am now, post-mama. After a year, I still don’t know.
8. Exercise - I started jogging after my mom died and that felt like the greatest release/relief of anything. I felt like I was out-running the manacles of sorrow, could feel them breaking with each lap. Getting outside, getting moving - these are very important things to do whether you are actively grieving (so sad you feel like you’ve been punched in the stomach) or more passively (that acute sorrow is packed away somewhere beneath the surface). It helps your body feel alive, helps you feel a part of the world again, not to mention all the physiological benefits. Yoga, is also helpful- calming anxiety, helping you be within yourself, finding a space that is perhaps not as inhabited by the grief.
9. Nature - for me being in nature is the most calming, comforting space.
10. Cleaning - it’s important that you continue to take care of yourself and your space even in the most painful throws of grief. Cleaning is also something you can do to keep busy, not to distract yourself from the grief, just to prevent you from being swallowed by it. You’ve got to continue to take care of yourself, even when things are at their hardest. Now honestly, I think I spent two weeks on the couch after my mother’s funeral (when all the visitors are gone and all the hubbub dies down) and I spent a good 4 days on the couch a few weeks ago around the anniversary of her death. Each time I got myself going again by cleaning, taking care of things around the house, of myself. Really, you’ll feel better, more in ownership of yourself again.
if you have any other suggestions for coping - please let me know!
I haven’t dreamt this much about my mom since last year - after she died i dreamt about her nearly every other night. Perhaps it’s the melatonin I’ve been taking to sleep at night.
This time it was after she had chemo. She was finished up and healthy again and her hair was beginning to grow out. We had picked up old books from her classroom (she was a second grade teacher for over 20 years) and socialized with some of her former colleagues (most of whom I haven’t heard a word from since her death). She was smiling so much - it was beautiful. We drove home, laughing and talking and I realized that no one made me feel as good about myself as my mom did. Discussing my future, she told me that I could do anything, highlighted my abilities for me. When we got home we played with one of my brother’s children, talking to my brother, smiling at each other, at the child, watching her play with some playing cards.
It was as simple as that, and waking up I was so sad to leave her presence. Since her death, I haven’t felt as good as I felt in that dream. My life has been fine since losing her - I got married, have been living in Paris, trying on different different occupational hats. But nothing has felt as right as sitting in the kitchen with my mother. Because everything I’ve done since losing her has been without her.
But a dream like this, is a blessing. Although it reminds me of my loss, being in her dream presence is is a relief and a gift - to be able to re-experience, even fleetingly, our relationship is amazing and a little respite from the grief.
The 17th of January marked one year since my mother’s passing. Everyone told me that the first year after a loss was the hardest, that the pain fades and the grieving gets easier. So I expected that, after getting through the holidays and the first anniversary of her death, grieving my mother would indeed get easier with time. But this is not the case.
Grieving isn’t something that runs its course all on its own, it’s a project that one has to devote time to. I suspect that for the greater part of this last year I was in shock, experiencing the requisite sorrow and pain, but feeling distanced from memories and thoughts of my mother in a way that protected me from the pain. And indeed I even suffered memory loss - unable to remember specifics about the month surrounding my mother’s death and the few years preceding. Now, as the shock wears off and my memories come flooding back to me I find that the pain of loss is again as intense as the first day I lost her. I expected that the grief would run its course all on its own, that whatever I instinctively did to deal with it would be the best thing to do. But it doesn’t run its own course, it can hide from you sometimes and then jump out to surprise you when you least expect.
When recovering from grief it’s necessary to confront it, to be certain that you are not trying to escape it or allowing it to become burried. After I got married (about 6 months after my mother’s passing) and moved to France, far away from the objects and spaces that are imbued with my mother’s memory and spirit, it was easy for me to focus on other things, to distract myself from grief. I could even imagine that she was at home waiting for me. But when I returned home from Paris for the holidays, i was struck by my mother’s things, literally feeling as if slapped in the face, by her unmistakable presence in my parental home. The loss was made real to me all over again and I grieved like I did the first few weeks after her death.
Now I’m back in Paris and once again able to ignore the grief if I choose. Only now I know that it’s there whether I pay attention to it or not. If I try to ignore it, as I did this past fall, it’ll only come back to slap me again in the future (Hope Edelman attests to this in her book Motherless Daughters). So I need to force myself to deal with the grief, to continue to grieve despite my compulsion to avoid the pain.
To actively work on grieving I have begun to keep a journal of memories of my mother, writing down sketches of the past as they come to me, to force myself to remember and to ensure that I will ALWAYS remember. I have also begun to look into books which discuss grieving and how to work through the loss, make peace with it.
It’s necessary to feel the pain in order to heal, no matter how unbearable and gut-wrenching it may be. You have to let yourself know the loss and embrace it as a part of you and, like a bad roommate, you just have to learn to live with it no matter how miserable it may be. And one hopes, eventually, that the loss will improve, will lessen, and you’ll incorporate it into a new version of you - it will meld to you and change you and despite its constant presence you may find peace.
I had a bad dream. I had returned home for the winter holidays, as I will two weeks from now, and only my father, my sister, and I were in our parental home to celebrate. We weren’t sure what kind of decoration to install; usually we have a very festive and beautiful winter home full of folk-y paraphernalia collected by my mother over her lifetime. But this is the first Christmas since losing her, so to string the house with objects she loved would only serve to remind us constantly of that loss (again, this is both real and applies to the dream). So instead, my sister decided to purchase what in the dream amounted to an avant-garde christmas tree: a small upright log standing on end in a flower pot, from the tip of the log sprouted 6 large green leaves in a perfect ring. Orange fruits dangled from the stem of each leaf. Christmas came and passed and it wasn’t until is was finished that I expressed my deeply-felt disappointment in the avant-garde tree. I was so mad that no one asked me what kind of Christmas I would want (in the dream, and in reality, I want a proper tree, not too big), hurt that they made decisions without me, and truly disappointed in the sad log that served as our holiday centerpiece.
I woke up suddenly, and immediately settled into deep sadness. I’ve been struggling with unshakable melancholy for a week (since Thanksgiving) and now I can really recognize why: a time of year that I usually find warmth and comfort and womb-like happiness is missing its locus. What was a grandiose 16ft. tree with an abundance of light and ornament is now sad, avant-garde log with droopy fruit.
With my mother gone, many of my holiday traditions are null: shopping with my mom, shopping with my dad for my mom, making cookies with my mom, making pierogi with my mom, opening pajamas on Christmas Eve that my mom has chosen for us, Christmas stockings with tchotchki chosen by my mom — she was the heart, the identity of my family and now, when it comes to things like Christmas, I have no idea what to do or what to expect.
The first holidays after a tragic familial loss - particularly, I think, losing a mother who orchestrates the entire holiday season - are uncharted territory. And it is terrifying to face this change. Such a sorrowful change. It feels as if there’s no home to go home to anymore. And while I was caring for my mother, I was home - home was my identity and my mother was home so therefore self and mother were conflated . . . now home/mother/self doesn’t exist anymore and I’m lost.
So this morning, after the dream, I forgave myself for my melancholy (I’m often frustrated with myself for being sad) and realized that, shit, I have a right to be f–ng sad. And I also have a right to be confused - i’m reconstructing a self that was half-lost when my mother died. I feel that, at 27, I should know who I am, I should be more comfortable with myself, more certain of my purpose. But my mother largely gave me my purpose, both in the sense that I had purpose in caring for her my entire adult life (for the past 8 years) and this caring imbued my life with its meaning and its necessity and also in the sense that in talking with her, by receiving guidance from her, I was directed, soothed, assured of my value. All that is no more. I feel more naked and more vulnerable than when I was shipped off to college when I was 18. At least then I felt that a whole world of possibility awaited me. Now I know that life’s only constant is the promise of loss, the threat of our very human-ness.
I was aware of mortality and life’s brevity at an early age, particularly as my mother was in and out of the hospital since I was a baby. But as a younger person, this just planted in me the idea that one needed to live as much life as they could, to experience as much as they could, as quickly as they could. So, I was a reckless and adventurous child and teenager - but all this experimentation was allowed by the fact that I had a warm home waiting for me with its beautiful glowing-hearth-open-arms. It was my net under the tightrope. The building that is “home” still exists, but its heart is gone. And my heart is broken. And my dreams (I have lots of dreams since my mom died) distill what are normally rather nebulous floods of emotion into visual symbols and metaphorical scenarios. Dreams, I’ve decided, have for me become an essential element in mourning and recovery.