Every year around Thanksgiving, I start to think about my mom more. When I was in eighth grade, my mom passed away from cancer, and it happened on December 16th. So the holidays are typically a harder time of year, and since it happened so close to the holidays, it just comes to mind more often. I have tried to write about this before, but I keep failing to accurately articulate how I feel, but I will try again.
The thoughts always starts to seep in around Thanksgiving, and with good reason. At this point, in eighth grade my mom was in the hospital, and she was in rough shape. So I had to go and have Thanksgiving with my sister’s boyfriend’s family, and it was nice of them to host us, but it is hard to celebrate and appreciate something, when you know a loved one is someplace else suffering.
But it is not just the thoughts of Thanksgiving and Christmas that plague this time of year, but also the whole journey of the loss. Months before my mom passed, we found out that she had cancer, but it was not just any cancer, it was lung cancer, and it had spread, and this put it into the category of stage 4, which is the worst.
My mom was an incredibly healthy person. She cared about what she ate, and she got up early every morning to work out in our basement and would use the elliptical trainer or the treadmill, but over the course of months, this strong and healthy person I loved slowly deteriorated. It is a horrible process to watch occur. Someone who not too long ago was so strong was now weak enough to the point where she needed someone to push her in a wheelchair, and she needed an oxygen tank too. It was and still is impossible to fathom.
The hard part is that my mom said to remember her from before she got sick, and of course anyone would want their lasting memories of someone to be the positive ones when everything in life felt perfect, but it is almost an impossible task. These sad traumatic memories dig their claws into you, and they do not let go.
At this point, I have lived over half my life without my mom. It has been 14 years. That is a long time. So what really hurts is that the amount of memories that have persisted in general is low. I recently heard someone say that each time you remember a memory, it is slightly altered and distorted, but also the details become fuzzier and fuzzier. So knowing what little memories remain are slowly going to fade and be distorted is a harsh reality. It is like looking at an old picture, and you know where you are in the picture, but what happened surrounding that picture has completely evaporated from your memory.
My grand ma also passed away this time of year, and when she passed away, the hospice put up this online obituary on their website that also allowed for people to share their thoughts and stories about her. Every year they send an email with the link to the page, and every year I click on it and go back and read some of the posts, and although no one has posted anything on it in over a decade, it is still good to have something to go back and look at, and I wish something like that existed for my mom. I did read something on there that my dad wrote that stuck with me this year. (I hope he doesn’t mind me quoting him) When talking about his mom, he said, “I am an extension of you, so you will forever be here with me.”
When I went to Asheville recently with my friends, a couple of us were talking about losses that we had experienced, and one of my friends said that whenever he sees a deer, he thinks it is his dad looking out for him (or something along those lines). My other friend said that whenever he sees a specific type of bird, that it makes him think of his grandmother. Then they asked me if I had anything that I saw that makes me think of my mom, and my answer was no.
This question did really get to me though. I thought about it and thought about it, and the conclusion I came to was much closer to my dad’s response. I am an extension of my mom. Just like her, I became a teacher, and undoubtedly that was highly influenced by her, also she worked with students with special needs and students that needed smaller classes. She also loved to get up early and work out, and she spent a lot of time moving on her feet, although it was on the treadmill/elliptical, but probably the time I think about my mom the most and reflect on how she has influenced my life is while I am running. She also loved to watch rom-coms when she was on the treadmill, so I know where my enjoyment for those films comes from too. I would even say the way that I eat and am mindful about what I put in my body also originated with her, and there are many other ways in which she has influenced me that help me feel close to her, so it is okay that there is no physical manifestation that makes me think of her, because I live my life in way that she would.
Although this was a horrible time, there were some silver linings. While my mom was sick, basically all my family descended on our hometown from both my mom’s side and my dad’s side, and that was probably the closest I felt to everybody. Even in the following year after we lost her, it still felt like there was a strong bond, and I loved that and miss it, because it did slowly evaporate over the years. Also my friends’ family and our church was incredible. We had people bringing us food regularly, and they all helped me out anyway they could, so I am forever grateful to all of these people and to the large number of people that showed up to the funeral service that were there for us. My family has also grown in other ways, and I am so grateful for the friends and family that I have garnered up in New York that I love greatly.
Also it lead to me having a great relationship with my dad. There were a few years there where it was just me and him, and even in the years following the loss of my mom, we went through a few more losses, which was really tough, and this time of year, I feel the compound of those losses as well.
There is one memory that is forever engrained in my head. Our dog, Gator, ate something that he should not of, and we took him to the vet, and after we dropped him off, we went to dinner assuming things would probably be fine. When we were coming back, the vet called my dad, and they said that they had to put Gator down. When I got home, I had to go pick up my neighbor’s newspaper/mail, because they were out of town, and when I was walking back home, I just broke down into tears, and my dad was standing in the driveway waiting for me, and he gave me a hug and said, “One day we will catch a break.” A line that just went straight to my heart, and it still does every time I think about it. In that moment, we were just two guys who had gone through way too much loss over the course of just a couple of years and were in a lot of pain, but we had each other, and that has carried us a long way, and of course he has done most of that carrying. So thank you.
To say that I am sad for the whole course of the season would be an exaggeration those. I think the best way to describe grief is that it is like a shadow. Sometimes the sun is out and high in the sky, so there is no shadow whatsoever, and everything feels fine. Other times, when the sun is low, the shadow gets longer, and I can feel the shadow of grief lurking behind me pulling on me, but it all comes in waves.
I still almost never talk about my mom to anyone, because when I do it still hurts, like I get a pang in my chest, and I can feel my heart drop. I have gotten a little better about it over the course of the past two years, but it is still tough, and I still think I am not quite articulating this how I wanted to, but out of all of my drafts I like this one the most. Seasonal Affective Disorder is very real for me, and it is not just because the days are shorter. It is because my thoughts are more likely to wander and remember the sadness that we went through at this time, but in a way it is nice to know that the grief is still there, and that my heart is doing its best to keep what it can of my mom alive.
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