It’s Mother’s Day tomorrow and every permutation of those damn “celebrate the woman in your life” ads is a knife to my heart. It’s only been two months since my mom passed away, and her death from lung cancer, though she never smoked a cigarette in her life is simply too raw. The trauma has only begun to unspool in all its surreal wonder.
In the hierarchy of bereavement, the loss of a parent is deemed more natural than most, at once extraordinary and terribly commonplace. But as I attempt to make sense of my puzzling new life in this, the land of the motherless, I realize that no one is ever truly ready for this known unknown. I’ll be spending the rest of my days as a reluctant citizen here. It’s a good thing I’m a fast learner.
The long goodbye
In the scant months from her diagnosis to her death, my world grew increasingly foggier. Cell by cell, the disease ravaged her body. Just when it finally seemed that the surgery and chemotherapy had worked their magic and at last she made it out of the woods, things took a turn for the worse. From the strong-willed woman who had given me a childhood of rare privilege, she turned into one that became too weak and zombie-like to even know where she was. The cancer had metastasized, her team of doctors told us.
On that otherwise unremarkable Tuesday night, she died at home, the period to the long goodbye. My dad was by her side. My brother, aunt and I were there, too, along with the wonderful people who had cared for her until the very end. (I had never seen anyone die before, and to witness someone’s skin and fingernails change their hue from normal to yellow, then to a bizarre bluish-grey as she gasped her last, is a sight that haunts me to this day.) I hugged her still-warm body, smiled and thanked her, for even as my family was muted by a palette of grief, I was also basking in the afterglow of parental love, one that would last me and my brother several lifetimes.
Unpacking my feelings
“Grief is an unavoidable and normal experience,” according to the Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide. “But it can take intense forms that surprise a bereaved person, including forms that in other circumstances would be called a psychiatric disorder.” As I start to unpack my feelings, I’ve learned to understand the inconsistency of grief, that by nature it tends to come when one least expects it.
After experiencing moments of silliness with friends, for instance, a TV show or song on my iPod would suddenly cripple me with unbelievable sadness. At first I assumed I was having a meltdown: Why did she have to go? Why not one of the Kardashians? Where are you when I need you the most, Mom? Fortunately, however, I’ve made the conscious decision to be kinder to myself during those instances. Sorrow may have no remedy, but time as the platitude goes tends to recalibrate the sharpness of the pain. I have a long way to go.
Motherless but not alone
Instead of focusing on the reality that a piece of me will forever be missing, I’ve chosen to remember the happy times we shared. And there are lots of them. (My glass is neither half-empty nor half-full. It’s overflowing.) Strangely enough I feel reborn, like I’m a stronger, wiser and better version of myself. I somehow sense that the whole world has opened up to me even more. The death of a loved one does make you a more compassionate person, in that you now understand grief, and after enduring such profound heartache, I know that I am now so patient that I can do anything.
“Those we cannot hold in our arms, we hold in our hearts,” a close college classmate wrote in a now dog-eared sympathy card. “Your mom will live forever in you and through you,” said another. For the first time I will be a motherless son on Mother’s Day. But I will definitely not be alone.
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