Members of the Club

I haven’t written in a while because I get tired of writing the same thing, and if anyone actually reads this, I’m sure they are tired of reading the same thing, too. I’m OK with sharing my feelings and insights on the subject of my mom’s death, but I feel like repeating the same feelings and insights over and over is a little ridiculous. How can you really move on from such a thing if you focus on it at an almost constant rate?

For me, things come now more in spurts. Sadness. Loss. Things like that, they come in spurts here and there. Nothing looms over my shoulders anymore, but sometimes sad memories from the hospital or anger pop up every once in a while when I least expect them. “Boo! Gotchya!” They like to catch me off-guard, just when I start to feel a little normal again.

At my psychologist appointment tonight we talked about shock and how it doesn’t let us process things—how it blocks things, because your body doesn’t know what to do with the information. I wonder when this shock goes away? Tonight, as she asked me questions about my mom, all I could do was smile and say, “She was sooo cute.” She really was. She was absolutely adorable, in every way, shape and form. Just precious. I always felt bad for her that I was always messing with her, pinching her and lovingly patting her, mostly to make her laugh and giggle but also because she was so stinkin’ cute I could barely stay away from her. She’s the type, if you didn’t know her, that no matter how old she is, you would want to pinch her cheeks and make a stupid noise. “Boop!” And you wouldn’t even feel dumb for doing it. She was just that cute. I just adored her.

As I turned on my computer, a picture of her popped up on my desktop. A really sweet one of her: no hair, in her hospital gown, the day of the transplant, with a plastic, silver wand in one hand, flicking it towards me as if casting a spell, and her face is shaped with surprise, her eyebrows raised high and her mouth pinched to make an “o” sound. She was actually singing “Bibbity Bobbity Boo” from Cinderella. I just looked at it, feeling a small pang of loss, that rush of “wow, that really happened” hit me again, and I reached my hand out to touch her on the screen. “I miss your face,” I whispered to her as I ran my fingertip over her nose. I hope that doesn’t make me unhealthy, to want to just touch her again, even if it’s on my computer screen. Or that I talk to her sometimes, even though it’s just a picture and I know she won’t respond.

I also talk to my aunt Polly’s picture. Aunt Polly’s death was so different for me. I couldn’t even think about her let alone look at any pictures. It took me months before I could put her picture next to my bed. After mom died, I couldn’t stop looking at pictures or thinking about her. It’s still very hard to realize what has happened.

I look at aunt Polly’s picture next to my bed, and I think about her with my mom in Heaven. I point to her face and say, “You take good care of her.” I am sure that she is, and that they are happy up there, doing who-knows-what.

Sometimes, I feel like she is on vacation. My heart still feels that way, like she will be coming back any day now. There are different types of ways to miss someone. There is one, the way I miss aunt Polly, the way you miss someone when you know they are not coming back. Gone for good. There is another, the way you miss someone who has gone away for a while, a semester abroad or an extended vacation, and even though your heart aches, you are comforted in knowing you will see them soon. This is how I miss my mom. I miss her like she is on vacation—not the way I miss aunt Polly. I’m still surprised at how different their deaths were, and how different I feel about both of them.

The reason I really am writing this tonight is because a thought came to me as I remembered something that happened nearly two weeks ago: when you lose your mom, you are automatically in a club of sorts. It reads all over your face. It oozes from your pores. You reek of it. “I don’t have a mom anymore.” These types of people really do have a different look about them. Two weeks ago, a close family friend lost her mother. She would have been 89 last week. My boyfriend and I walked into the funeral home, and I caught my friend’s eye from across the room. She tilted her head, forced a smile (I definitely know this part well), and she left the receiving line and walked towards me with her arms out to hug. She said, “I was very lucky to have her so much longer.” Meaning, longer than I had my mom. While this woman is in her late fifties, she lost her mother, and that feeling is like nothing else. She was the newest member of the club.

Being a member of this club isn’t exciting in any way but it is exclusive. That feeling of loss is like nothing else, much different from losing other loved ones or friends. Losing your mother, your best friend, the beautiful woman who brought you into the world and would have died to do so—it’s a whole different ballgame. It leaves you un-whole, incomplete, torn apart and put back together without all the pieces. Sometimes, the look of shock and utter disbelief can be seen in their eyes. Dull and glazed, with a sadness behind them that is different from any other type of sadness…and that is what my friend’s eyes looked like as she reached out to hug me. She was definitely a member of the club. Her eyes said it all. I recognized them well, because my eyes look like that too. I see them everyday, and they are so foreign to me, I almost don’t even recognize myself in the mirror.

This club isn’t something people talk about, but it is unspoken and quietly understood by the people in it. You meet someone who knows how you feel, who thinks the same things you think, who understands what you understand. No one else on Earth can relate except the people in the club. “You lost your mom? So did I…” your eyes say to one another. “Don’t worry. You don’t have to say anything. I totally get it.”

I have been told by a couple people that these posts help them process worries and anger they too must face because of the death of a parent. Some of these people I knew of their loss, and others I knew nothing about. How odd that such a tragedy can bring us closer, even strangers with nothing in common. I am pleased to hear this, seeing as I write this blog to talk about feelings and tangles inside me for the sole purpose of releasing them to begin putting back the pieces. I never expected to reach out to anyone, nor did I try. I am happy they are healing now as well, and that my thoughts and similar struggles can be used in a positive light. They are in the club too, and while none of us actually want to be here, we are. We are in the club.

Instead of looking at this “club” as a bad thing, I am trying to view it as somewhat beneficial to me. I worried about my mom for months and months, worried about her health and happiness, worried if I would get to have her at my wedding, worried if she would live through her transplant. I was convinced that no matter what, I was alone in this and that no one else knew how I felt, to watch my mom suffer month after month of chemo and hospitalizations and illnesses. I couldn’t imagine anyone else in the world going through this like I was. My friends and people I was surrounded by insisted on complaining about schoolwork and being tired from homework. “Try being woken up by your mom screaming your name because she is too sick to move and you have to rush her to the ER…then tell me how tired you are,” I would think to myself. It never occurred to me that there were other people just like me, suffering and worrying just like I was. But there were. And now I know there are people out there who know what it feels like to be mother-less, even at such a young age.

This club may not be so bad after all. Even though it feels like it sometimes, I am not alone, and there are others out there like me. Members of the club. Members of this club are little ragged and not quite whole, but they are more appreciative, more understanding, more patient, and stronger in love and life than most others out there. This club may not be something to be desired, but after you join it, you emerge from the other side a completely different person, changed for the better.