2 Years But Who’s Counting?

I wasn’t prepared for the fact that grief is so unpredictable. It wasn’t just sadness, and it wasn’t linear. Somehow I’d thought that the first days would be the worst and then it would get steadily better – like getting over the flu. That’s not how it was.

Meghan O’Rourke

My WpgBesty’s brother died when I was 16.

That was the extent of what I knew about death..in my early years.

My cousin’s best friend committed suicide and and I had a friend who had a brother that did too.

As an adult it all began to change.

I had a really important person in my life that married my ex-boyfriend’s older brother. He was gorgeous, a musician, sensitive, philosophical, and from England.

He was also a guy who suffered from a mental illness. A guy that became a drug addict. A guy who left a wife and son.

My Granny died in 2006. My Bro, Sis and I were living together in Winnipeg. Mom and Dad had already moved to Penticton.

It was horrible. My grandparents were very private people. I talked to my Granny at least 3 times a week. One time I didn’t call over the weekend and I forgot to tell her we are going to the cottage and when I got to work on Monday morning I had 38 messages on my voicemail.

27 of them were from Granny :).

When she went to emergency for the pain, they had no idea she was at the end of stage 4 lung cancer.

My Grandpa wouldn’t listen and the Dr. spoke with me and I asked “like should I call my parents?” In shock.

and he said “yes.”

The whole family came in and it was a sad, somber and sobering 2 weeks.

A month later my Mom called to tell me my Poppy had a heart attack. I flew out 2 days later but 1 day too late

*****************************

2 years.

It takes Mars 2 years to orbit the sun.

I know people have told me to get over it… It’s been 2 years. I don’t give a rats ass if it has been 2 or 20 of 40, I don’t see the light at the end of this grief tunnel.

I am never going to get over this.

You only have 1 mother. How does one get over that kind of loss?

**Don’t get me wrong, I am moving on. My grief is not stopping me from loving my life and the people in it… I just really, really wish my Mom was here to experience it all with me.

People always talk about the bond between a mother and a child. What about the bond between the child and the mother? I went out to a meeting with some ladies from the PAC that don’t really know about me or my life. I found myself explaining the loss of my mother as “losing my soulmate”.

Later on I thought how weird is that? I’ve thought about it so much since then and I came up with the fact that there’s a bond between a child and the mother that is so strong because in actuality she was my soulmate for nine months… And my constant throughout my life.

This is what I thought of as I sat down to paint my nails and I grabbed my pregnancy journal for a “table”. (When I was early on in my pregnancy with HBear I started a journal for my eating habits, I found out St. Patrick’s Day and the journal’s last entry was April 17 lol)

I hate opening up blank journals. Or really anything with blank lines waiting to be written on.

All I want to write is Mom.

Over and over and over again.

I used to love opening up a brand-new lined book.

The thoughts that could be written out and the lists that could be made… it seemed like endless possibility.

If you wrote it enough times it Shall Be.

Maybe that’s when or why I switched more to my phone and the laptop. Because I just can’t write my feelings down.

I still have to remind myself that she is not here. And every single time I’m completely shocked LOL you would think, after daily reminders for 2 years, you would think, it wouldn’t surprise me any more.

To give myself credit I accept this to be fact.

Even though I can’t breathe for a second every time I remember the horrible truth, I then move forward through my day.

Ninja is very sympathetic but he has never lost anyone. He doesn’t have a hole in his heart that can’t be filled by anyone but her.

I still cannot watch videos of Mom and HBear. Actually I practically run out of the room if I see a video with my Mom in it at all. Is this ok? Am I normal? Shouldn’t I want to see her? It just breaks my heart to see her with HBear and know that it will never happen again.

I had the worst sleep a while back. My Mom was talking. All night. About nothing in particular but I could hear her like she was standing beside me. Shouldn’t this make me happy or something?

This has been the year of Anger.

I don’t want to even say it out loud.

I feel like if I say it, she will know and she will hold herself to blame and I can’t bear the thought that she is angry at herself.

At the same time, I am so MAD at her.

I just looked up to see if her tears are falling down around me because I just broke her heart. I know I did.

The thing I picture the most this year is her last hour with us. I hate that my most vibrant image is that!

Her laying in that damn bed looking up at us, at me, and saying her final words…

I’m sorry.

Seriously, that was the last thing my Mom said to me.

I’m sorry.

I don’t want to be mad, especially at her. I just can’t help it. I haven’t gone up to visit her as often as I did the first year. I feel like I need to yell when I am there. Last year it made me feel close to her, this year I want to jump and stomp and scream at the top of my lungs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

You know what I’ve found myself doing?

I think of the time I had with her and how I squandered it. Like, I totally took it for granted even after she was diagnosed… I took it for granted.

I didn’t know that I would wish to have that night when I would come out for water and sit and chat with her for hours about Heart of Dixie or the Bachelor or Dallas LOL. Btw she would hate Nick and we would have debated it for hours lol!!!

I never thought tomorrow would come.

That the day would come that I couldn’t go sit and have a hilarious chat with my Mom.

Don’t get me wrong my Mom and I fought and sometimes a lot Lol. I am very much like my Mom in a lot of ways. But no matter how much we fought we always had conversations. And now there are none.

I think about every fight, every horrible thing I ever said, every time my Mom looked so hopeful to go shopping with me and I shot it down because I wanted to go with my friends instead. I remember The Bryan Adams concert at Birds Hill Park when I was like in grade 8… She was so excited to buy me those tickets for the family, Everything I do I do it For You had been on repeat for at least a year LOL. It poured rain and was utterly miserable, I remember her sad face when I begged to go home. We didn’t even see Bryan Adams. When we got home she suggested a family game night and I took off to a house party.

I can’t make that up to her.

I read those things on Facebook that are like each decade of how you feel about your Mom and about the time you get to your 40’s you are making up for all the bad things you did. I need more than a half a lifetime to make up for the shitty things I did to her and now I can’t.

How do you live with that?

Knowing how much I love my girls I know how many times I repeatedly broke her heart.

Don’t get me wrong I know that at the end she forgave me. I know that her unconditional love for me, for all of us, did not have her remembering those stories at the end.

But really is that supposed to make me feel better?

My Mom was such a huge personality that she dwarfed people around her. Everybody knew her. It is so weird to me to talk to my friends and them be like “oh I wish I would’ve known her” or “I wish I had met her she sounds so cool.” My mom was Brown Owl, she was the president of the Winnipeg Ringette Leauge, she was my baseball coach, and head of the graduating committee. She was in my life in all aspects so to have nobody know her is completely foreign to me.

It’s like, nobody really knows me.

What really gets me, I mean gets me like a knife being plunged into my heart, is when I think about the girls. When I think about them not knowing her. What the eff?

HBear always asks in the shower, “Mommy will you tell me a funny story about Nana?”

I don’t know if it’s the pain that is causing me to block it out but I can’t think of anything. I keep thinking, give it time… but now I’m scared that the longer time goes on the less I will remember.

Terrifying.

I don’t think this fear or other fears are going away.

The fear of Cancer.

The fear of illness.

The fear of something happening to the girls. To Ninja.

To my family… my Besties…

Me.

I NEVER want my girls to feel like this.

Loss.

So many types.

All despairing and all so fucking scary.

Another thing that makes me feel sick to my stomach is that my girls won’t know her. I can talk about her all I want… but they won’t know her laugh, her gusto for life and all the stories about her life and mine. My Nana passed a month before Mom so I really feel like we are missing a ton of our history now.

My Mom would have adored SBean, her sassiness would’ve tickled my mom pink LOL. In fact that may be the 1 good thing to come out of all of this… she isn’t here to let SBean get away with everything with just 1 cute smile LOL!!!

HBear was just invited to join the Penticton Gifted Program. Mom would have been bursting at the seams with pride…

And SweetPea, oh SweetPea… she didn’t even get to meet her. It breaks my heart. I know that phrase gets used so much that it doesn’t really mean anything anymore but honestly the physical pain I feel in my heart can only be described that way.

SweetPea has a special bond with my Mom. She talks to her, my Sis sees her and asks “Sweetie who you talking to?” And SweetPea smiles, looks up and replies “Nana.”

Mom’s smile lit up a room, like seriously she had big white teeth and she smiled often. she also laughed often and she was usually up for anything as she always said “I’ll try anything once twice if I like it!”

On Saturday, her 2 year anniversary we tried to pass on some of her happiness by handing out flowers at the farmers market.

I generally dread this day. I think about it for months and the whole day I repeat a mantra in my head… I can get through it, I can do it, I can be strong for the girls, I can be strong for my Dad, I am a strong person I can do this. By planning something like this, it helps me. I can actually smile throughout the day because I know my Mom would LOVE that we are honoring this way.

After our morning at the Market, HBear went to a birthday party for her friend. This sweet birthday girl actually chose to forgo presents this year and asked for donations for Myla. Myla is a kindergarten girl at our school that was diagnosed with cancer this year. All donations that we received at the market also went to Miss Myla. Birthday Girl and friends raised $300!!! So proud of those kids 🙂

While HBear was partying it up and SBean napped, Ninja and I did what I do best when I am sad… we painted 🙂 or in this case stained LOL

I will never get over this. BUT, by getting this out there. Putting it out into the Universe it allows me to move forward.

There is a difference.

This year is going to be about moving forward. We started by having a WONDERFUL Father’s Day on Sunday 🙂

Dad, Ninja, the girls and I went to Denny’s for brunch and then we met my In-Laws for a little bit of Geocaching and dinner in Kelowna. It was a beautiful day and a much needed relaxing day 🙂