Grief… that big, scary word!
Tags: Loss, Disease, Loss Of A Parent, Grief

My last memory of my mother isn’t my favorite one. I guess anyone outside of a movie will tell you that as well. Our lives are not these magical and perfect things we see on TV. They’re messy and hard and painful, and mine fits right in.

As a kid, my mother was always the figure of authority in my house. Not that my father wasn’t, but mom was always the person that could as easily inspire love, as she could fear. For most of my childhood I bumped heads with her. I think we always have this love/hate relationship with the people that shape us: we blame them for every small thing; we scream and fight against every word of disapproval; and we choose sides when there’s really no side to choose. However, as years go by, we appreciate it all, because we know how much it shaped the people we are now.

My mom suffered for quite a long time… By the end, she was only a shadow of the person I now choose to remember; the cancer having stripped away most of who she was. However, as I watched her take her last breaths, I finally saw who she truly was. Not the strong person I was afraid of; not the sick and fragile person in front of me; but just her… human and flawed. At the time, I was 14 years old, so obviously I couldn’t put it into words, I couldn’t even really come to terms with the fact that I was loosing her. It’s funny… For so long I wished she would just leave me alone, and yet the moment she started to slowly fade away everything in me was begging her to stay.

Now, over a decade later, I can put into words some of what I felt on that night. Other things, it might take me longer to be able to write down or even to just tell myself; but for now I keep her in my memory as a constant source of love, a strong woman, a flawed person… a human being.

For a big part of my mother’s disease I was not aware of everything that was happening. I would like to say that it was mostly because my parents shielded me; but the reality of it is: I didn’t care enough. I was scared of what could happen, I was childish and I chose to distance myself emotionally. If I could go back now, hold her hand one last time and tell her I loved her, it would probably have a different weight to it. Not that I didn’t mean it when I last said it but, looking back now, I wasn’t really present.

I’ve grown since then, both physically and emotionally. I’ve learnt that each person deals with grief and disease in their own way, it’s not a one way street. You don’t wake up one day and all the pain and sorrow is gone. There are good and bad days, even after twelve years there are still days when I wake up and the pain comes back. Sometimes, I realize that I haven’t thought of her in a week and I blame myself for forgetting. Other times, like graduations or special life events, I wish I could look over and see her smiling up at me. In those moments, it hits me that many other times will come and she won’t be there. However there are moments when seeing her favorite flower (a yellow rose) will bring a smile to my face. Or walking down the street, I’ll pass someone with the same perfume and it will take me back to being a kid and trying on her clothes. Like I said, there are good and bad days… you just need to lean into the good ones, so you can overcome the bad ones.

I’m not religious and I’ve never believed that there was anything after death. I’ve spent many hours wishing I believed in an afterlife, some way that I could one day see her again. I’ve imagined her walking towards me and telling me she’s proud of the woman I’ve become. That she’s proud of the life I’ve made for myself. That she’s never stopped believing in me and that she’s always looking. For now, I chose to say these things to myself and believe that she would’ve agreed.

I hope to be proven wrong…to come to see that life after death does exists. I hope that one day I’ll be able to see her again, apologize, tell her I love her and, that having her as my mom has shaped the person I am now. I hope I’ll be able to tell her that she showed me that we don’t need to be anything more than who we are… humans. Flawed and imperfect but special in our own way. Truly, I just wish I can tell her that I’ll forever be in awe of who she was.