13 Years & Canada Day Treats

My Mom taught me to read a book about what I was feeling to help me understand my thoughts. Books were literal therapy in the 1990’s lol. To honour my feelings around my Mom’s 13th anniversary, I read, The Long Goodbye: A Memoir by Meghan O’rourke Out of Your Comfort Zone. Nothing prepares you to lose your mom. Not even knowing it is coming. In the first 2 pages the truth bombs begin. As O’Rouke explains, Your mother is your entry point into life. I took this out as an ebook and I had it on my phone to read. Her mom died on Christmas at 55 of cancer, my mom was 54 and it was the beginning of summer when she died, different but the same. Grief is universal and her words could be my words. In fact, I have written some of her sentiments in my blog over the years. I like reading books that puts my grief into perspective, for instance, she flat out says we don’t sit in our grief. We try to self help ourselves out of it and fall, trapped in the five stages of grief to try to get to acceptance as quickly and as privately as possible. It’s funny because we all remember my mom‘s driving the most too lol it was fun. She was a good driver, but everyone around her was “an asshole“ lol, she liked to go fast and she would make the car dance. Funnier yet, now it’s me making the van dance for my kids. They also told us that my mom‘s cancer was in remission. She died two months later. It was interesting to read how Meg unsettled herself when her mom’s cancer came back. I can relate to the feeling of being out of control when the person that grounds you is dying. I relate to Meg wanting to do research and learn about her mom’s cancer while her brothers took different approaches. I remember realizing knowledge was not going to help her and she just needed to be kept comfortable and I remember numbing out and just going through the motions when I was feeling scared. The shopping trip after Thanksgiving was an emotional part of the book for me. I remember buying my mom pretty nightgowns, new under things, and a beautiful jewellery box… For her ashes. We were done watching Lost, but we were watching The Mentalist at the time that my mom was at the end of her life. I remember thinking you’re dying and we’re watching a TV show. After she died and we found out who Red John was, I was devastated that she didn’t know the ending. I hate the show for that. The caretaking chapter resonated with me on different levels. I never want to be a bother on my husband and children. In that chapter, I could relate to both her and her mom and it was pretty gutwrenching. Dying with dignity and MAID, these are things that I was so rigid on before my Nana (2 months before my Mom) and my Mom died. Seeing the people that have been your rock, your caretakers your entire life, needing your help up from the toilet is humbling for everyone involved but it was natural. My Nana and I used to laugh that she used to change my diapers as a baby and then when my mom was too sick to help her mom, I helped her in the bathroom instead, a full circle. Part two is the aftermath of her mom‘s death and her next steps in her journey through her grief. The dying part is awful I agree, but not being able to talk to your mom again, ever, that’s the absolute worst. When I talked out loud to nature, to my mom, especially early on, I too, tried to ease her guilt. Part two is when I quickly went through a box of Kleenex, reading about her grief and despair. She feels her mom in the wind, I too, feel my mom in nature. Through the wind in the trees, the butterfly on the breeze, even the green sprouts in my garden. Mother Nature is around me, everywhere, so in essence so is my Mom. It is comforting for me. As an intellectual person, I also read books to help me understand my feelings, I talk to people who are “part of the club” and I also attend therapy to help me cope with my loss.

The dreams started for me a few months after I lost my Mom. They felt so real, like she was there, like I was talking to her, I could hear her and feel her presence. Then I would wake up and feel her loss all over again wishing that I could just go back to sleep and talk to her, now when I have those dreams, I feel comforted by them, and I wake up feeling, complete. My mom didn’t cry at the end either. When I told my mom, I would miss her. She also said, “I know”. She was so calm and accepting that it made it easier for all of us because that’s what moms do. I often think about how “lucky” I am that I got a long goodbye, but there’s never enough time. You are always left with unanswered questions, unsaid apologies and really how lucky is it to have months of anticipatory grief? And as she says later in the book, when you’re in pain, optimism is a survival tactic. She talks about Western societies idea of mourning and it’s something I’ve talked about before, keeping your sadness inside and private has been proven to show more harm than good. We’ve lost the physical process of mourning rituals as society expects people to move along, let it go and not make anybody uncomfortable. Loss and grief are uncomfortable. The thing is, who do you turn to with all of that grief when the person who usually comforts you is your mom and she is the one that is gone?

I really understood when she said “the reality of her being dead was so different from her death.” After my mom died we had a few more deaths in our family. The last one being my 10-year-old nephew just under a year later. I remember asking what they ask, when is it over? When are we done with all of this, death? And then you become that person that has a dead mom. Then you feel guilty because you are “letting go” even though that’s impossible and it’s ok not to be thinking about your dead mom 24/7. It’s a lot lol. This author does a good job trying to make sense of grief. She is searching for a label something to define her grief realizing that it’s a transformation. It’s not something to get over because your life has inexplicably changed forever. It is the worst kind of breakup because you can’t argue your case to make them stay. At the beginning of May, my mom was told she was in remission by mid May, she was back in the hospital. May and June are my hellscape months where I slip right back into memories of dates, lab numbers, and all the lasts. I too received a message from a person from my mother‘s past, a friend that also wanted to apologize. I accepted it, and in a way it helped both of us, even though I don’t fully know what the apology was for. Mostly, it means something to me that my mom meant something to someone else, and that they felt incomplete without finishing their story. It’s interesting and I will have to think about it some more the thought of my grief lessening while my sense of being motherless has grown, but that sounds correct to me. I cried a lot in this book, but it felt good to have someone feel and say the same things that I have felt and said over the past 13 years.