Rose_Garden

a piece of my heart feels

whole again. 

Am I asking to be

hurt again? 

She’s always been 

that friend

the understands me, 

just “gets me” friend

Asks me to be more

than I am 

Asks me to better 

than I have been 

But she leaves me. 

Confuses me. 

Today is 5 months since I last saw you. Since I sat in the room with you and my family as you took the last breath you would take on this earth.

It seems oddly fitting that today I should get some wonderful work news. My elation was quickly filled with your absence when I realized that I couldn’t tell the one person I wanted to. My heart immediately ached with loss. With the reminder that I’ll never get to tell you anything new. I’ll never get to hear you say that you are proud of me again. It isn’t going to happen. So I called Jen, I called Dad, I called my best friend. And the void didn’t fill, but I know they are proud of me and I know they thought of you too.

The day you went on hospice, you asked me about my new job. I told you how good it was, how much I loved it, and I saw a calm fall over your face. You knew how much my “transitional job” (as I call it) made me miserable. You knew I was unhappy and I knew you wouldn’t want to leave this place knowing I was unhappy. You wanted to know that your children were at peace.

Well mom, today the job I love so much proved that they care for and respect me too. They promoted me. And I want you to know somehow. I need to write this letter because I need to tell you. You would be happy that how horrible this year has been, how devastating your death has been, how empty I feel most days, it hasn’t stopped me from making something of myself. It hasn’t been easy but I haven’t buckled in depression and sadness and fear. I have been in pain, but I have pushed on. You would want to know that. You would want to see it.

This is all because of you mom. You have taught me to work hard, you have taught me to keep on fighting, everyday. Wake up and fight. Not just how you fought your illness, but how you lived your life. You never gave up. You worked 3-4 jobs when we were kids because that’s what needed to happen.

When bad things happened to me, you let me be sad. But only for a moment and then it was always “what’s next” or “how are we going to fix this?” Do you remember when I was a teenager and lost a job I loved because of some trivial mistake I made, you came running home because I called you crying and you hugged me and let me be really upset about it, and then you said “let’s go job hunting” and we had fun doing it. And that day I found my career. I applied at hotel front desks at your suggestion because you said “I always thought it would be interesting” and now almost a decade later, I just got promoted at the exact right company, in the exact right position for me, still in the hotel industry. It’s because of you. All because of you.

It hurts not being able to tell you, but it makes me feel stronger knowing that if you could see me now, you’d be so proud. I will continue to make you proud. I will keep fighting everyday. I’ll do it for you, but for me too.

I can touch the pages where my deceased rabbit gnawed on my favorite book 

Not destroying it, just leaving his little marks.

There are certain parts of my memory that remain totally intact 

The way it felt when my mom held me as I cried, not knowing how close I was to dying. 

There are certain parts of my life that I can look at 

And see where I made the absolute wrong decisions, and how they led me on difficult paths 

There are certain parts that I know I made the right ones, 

Like when I see his face and know all the secrets he holds for me and the safe place he will always be. 

But my memory has holes, it is imperfect, just like me. 

And I regret that. I hold anger in my heart about that. 

Because I want to be able to remember every part of my moms eyes, even when they were in pain. 

I want to remember the sound of her laugh forever, and not just for now. 

I want to remember the conversations we had, the important ones, that my human memory already stored away 

I want to remember. 

The part of grief we don’t really discuss is the loss of identity. In the past few weeks, I have come to the realization that I have no idea who I am. I think I have always struggled with my identity, especially in my youth, but never so much as an adult and never so profound. My mom is gone. I’ll never see her again. I’ll never talk to her, I’ll never tell her the things that would make her proud of me. These things are no longer possible. I am also no longer my mother’s daughter. I am no longer her caregiver. When I add in the layer of all this happening during a pandemic, and the loss of identity in doing things I used to love, I feel overwhelming lost. 

I am trying to express myself in different ways. I got a new tattoo, I dyed my hair blue, I’ve been trying out different styles of clothing, but I all in all feel like a fraud. I feel like I’m faking my whole life, and I wake up each morning to work from home and then lay on my couch to watch shows that mean nothing to me. I’m not sure I ever had a full understanding of who I was as a person, as an identity, but now it’s like these huge dark void and some days I don’t see the point in trying to figure it all out. 

I miss my mom. But I also miss who I was when my mom was alive. I miss helping her, I miss having a purpose besides the mundane daily activities of my job. Before my mom got really sick, I identified myself by my career, now I don’t find the same passion in that. 

so many that it took losing her