This year has brought significant life events in my life. This year has afforded me the opportunity to grow as a professional. I reached my much anticipated, Fiftieth birthday. Pepita the Destroyer joined my furry family, bringing with her much, much joy. This past year I also made some questionable choices which taught me so much about myself and helped me grow as a woman and human being. I learned to love and accept myself with a depth I hadn’t been able to quite grasp before. 2016 brought my honey brothers home, filling my heart with love and familial companionship. This is also the year in which I decided to start a new, more positive relationship with my finances. Injuring my knee and living with constant pain for over six weeks afforded me the opportunity to develop a new appreciation and awe at the strength my mother exemplified during her last 20 years of life; during which she experienced debilitating physical pain and limitations. It gave me the opportunity to develop a new level of empathy and deepen our connection.
I was fortunate to be sober so that I could experience mother’s last year on this earth present, imprinting memories that will carry me to the end of my days. The loss of mother’s connection has left me feeling lost as I try to become accustomed to the severing that came with her last breath. I find myself struggling to remember her scent, the feeling of her fragile little hands in mine, and the sound of her voice. Luckily, I have the recordings she agreed to do for me to at least keep her voice alive in my memory banks.
Since her funeral, I can’t seem to be able to allow myself to cry. To just let go. Tears creep up, some even shed, but I can’t seem to allow myself to just cry and let this pain out. At times, I question my desire to continue onward and push to talk myself out walking towards the darkness that is always within reach, just outside my line of vision creeping around my peripheral. I keep telling myself that there is nothing unique or exemplary about my loss. That it is the natural order of life. Our parents die. As if this rationalizing will make it more bearable. There’s an odd need to protect this agony inside me; that if I dare let it out I will lose more of her. Feeling my throat tighten while forcing my body to not give into the need weep, somehow keeps her “real.” There is this sense that she will just fade away from me with the release of this emotional flood. Holding my pain close inside me keeps her with me somehow. Sometimes, I fear the day that I don’t feel despair. This pain is all I have to give me a semblance of connection to her. I am terrified that if I say the words aloud, I will feel the void of her absence. These conflicting states feel maddening at times. I want the pain gone, as I vehemently hang on to the emotional turmoil, even as I fear it. It consumes my every waking moment. It makes my head fill full and chest tightens as I try to breathe. As I lay in bed, before sleep, my lips ache longing the feel of her forehead and my hands burn hoping to feel the softness of her cheeks. I feel invisible without her smiling, mischievous eyes looking at me.
I miss my mother.
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