You always think you have more time
You always think you have more time.
My mom was 25 when I was born, and 19 when my brother was born. All my adult life, on every birthday I would calculate how old my brother and I were when my mom was my age; it was a study in how different our lives were. Last summer when I turned 33, I did the standard math: when Momma was 33, Matt was 14 and I was 8. A high schooler and a third grader! I remember being 8, which means I remember my mom at my age. Meanwhile I was single, no kids, no responsibilities other than my job and my friends. My mom’s age was my age plus 25. The math was always so static, so comforting. Now the math is broken.
On December 10, at the maddening age of fucking 58 years old, my mom had a heart attack at home and died instantly. She had woken up early to make coffee for my dad before his early work shift as she did every morning, and she just collapsed. My dad called 911 twice, screaming that she wasn’t breathing, trying to give her CPR. The paramedics did their work. It was all too late.
She had been in perfect health, visited her doctor regularly, took a massive assortment of vitamins that crushed us when we found them in the kitchen cabinet. PROTECT YOUR HEART! implored a bottle of fish oil capsules. IMPROVES HEART HEALTH! bragged the Vitamin E. I had never realized what an act of hope it is to take vitamins, to worry about preserving your health for your old age. You always think you have more time. The sugar cream pie we found in the freezer; it’s my brother’s favorite and she had surely hoped to surprise him with it at Christmas. The vacuum-packed Greek olives I brought her from my trip to Athens last year, stacked carefully in the refrigerator drawer. Saved for a special occasion. The post-it note near the stove where she had taken notes during our last phone conversation - she took notes on post-its every time we talked on the phone. I was thinking about buying my dad a golf membership for Christmas. I’d asked her for her lasagna recipe. GOLF. LASAGNA.
I woke up that Wednesday morning to a missed call and a voicemail from my dad. My dad never called me, and I remember thinking that maybe Aunt Sharron was in the hospital again, or god forbid it was Aunt Edna’s heart. All I remember from that conversation with my dad is his numb clinical monotone giving way to a gasping wail and me repeating “I’m coming home. I’m coming home.” All I remember from the flight home is some asshole who noticed me crying on the plane and said “bad breakup, huh?” That guy can still go fuck himself.
An important thing to know about my mom is that she fucking loved the song Love Remains by Collin Raye. Dozens if not hundreds of times, she said “When I die, I don’t care if you put me in a Hefty bag and roll me down a hill as long as you play Love Remains.” This was a classic family joke; we all laughed because we knew she would outlive us all. As we sat sobbing and broken and staring straight ahead at the memorial service, Love Remains playing, my brother whispered “the front fucking row.” I still don’t know if he knows I heard him, but those words haven’t left me. It’s really happening. We’re in a fucking funeral home and we’re sitting in the front fucking row because that’s where the fucking family sits and what the fuck. It was (and is) unthinkable.
Another important thing to know about my mom is that she was always, always, always thinking about other people. Always. At buffets, she would come back to the table balancing 6 tiny plates, one for each of us. “Stef! I remember you saying that you loved the pork and pineapple at that new chinese place you tried last month and look, they have it here too!” Trips to the grocery store were the same. "Matt! Look! They had that salsa you like!" She was an encyclopedia of how to make everyone around her feel loved.
In those days immediately afterward, it became incredibly important to me that people acknowledge that this was the most tragic, fucked-up thing that had ever happened. I listed all the reasons, repeating them over and over in my mind, thinking that if I could just articulate the perfect sentence about how wrong it was, I could somehow undo it. She was only 58. We didn’t have any notice. It was two weeks before Christmas. 8 days before I flew home for the holidays. It was 3 months before my dad retired and they had so many plans. She had lost her own mom at 15 and loved us with a ferocity that could only come from surviving that hellfire at such a young age. And oh goddammit, her grandbabies, her FAVORITES. The “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament we found in her car is now a symbol of heartbreak rather than celebration. Even when friends and acquaintances who had also lost their moms generously reached out to comfort me, the darkest and most jagged part of me thought, “Yeah but your mom had cancer. You knew it was coming! You had time!” as though extending the horror over a few months or years could ever possibly do a thing to minimize it.
Late one night as I lie on my parents’ couch staring at the ceiling and hoping to a god I don't believe in that somehow this was all just a big misunderstanding, I got a notification from OKCupid and, desperate for something else to think about, I opened the message. It was a thoughtful, interesting few paragraphs from a handsome dude with a great beard who had clearly actually read my profile, and through my sleepless grief, I remember thinking, “Oh. There he is.” I replied a day or two later with a brief summary of my situation: “you seem great but I’m kind of in the middle of the absolute worst moment of my life soooo.” At a time when I hated everything everyone said, I didn’t hate his reply. I found out later he’d worked on it for hours.
Our first date was about a month later, a shift at the food bank followed by several hours of talking and crying and laughing and eating barbecue. I’d worried as the date approached that I wasn’t capable of happiness, not then and maybe not ever again, but Jason was just so easy to be around that eventually my worry shifted to guilt about being SO happy when I was still grieving so hard.
I’ve been staring at a sentence that starts “Jason is” for about 20 minutes because it’s just impossible to articulate how effortlessly supportive he’s been, how endlessly comfortable he’s made me feel, how patient and easygoing he continues to be when I have to cancel plans because I saw someone wearing a sweater on TV that my mom would have liked and I need to cry for a while.
There’s something fundamentally heartbreaking about meeting the love of your life so soon after losing the person in your life who was most fanatically committed to your happiness. For weeks I would pick up my phone to text my mom about something wonderful Jason had done or said, and one morning I actually took a picture of him standing at the sink washing dishes, smiling as I composed a caption that was sure to delight her. I still can’t quite wrap my brain around how much they would have loved each other. How they would have bonded over being the only two people in the family who aren’t obsessed with football. The swooning look she would have given me the first time he offered to wash the dishes. How excited she would have been to dance with him at our wedding.
I don’t believe in an afterlife, which means I think my mom has entirely ceased to exist. She didn’t get to see how it all turned out. She will never know the name of the person I’m going to marry and if I have kids, she won’t know their names. She won’t get to find out whether my nephew keeps the red hair she was so proud of because it came from her.
If I can use this space as a public service announcement just for a moment, please allow me to beg you to not assume that someone who is grieving shares your religious beliefs. Please. While there’s usually not a right thing to say, there are definitely many wrong things to say. Those things include:
“She’s in a better place!”
“It’s all part of the plan!”
"Everything happens for a reason!"
“She’s smiling down on you!”
“She’s your guardian angel now!”
Please don’t ever, ever, ever say any of these things unless you are 100% certain that the person to whom you’re speaking shares your religious beliefs. You know what though, probably not even then because think about what you’re saying when you say “she’s in a better place.” Not only is it deeply presumptuous, it is usually fundamentally fucking untrue. There just isn’t anywhere, earthly or otherwise, my mom would rather have been than her living room on Christmas morning, watching her grandbabies tear into the presents she had so thoughtfully picked out. Or at my wedding. Please understand that when you say this, you are saying that there is a "better" place for my mom to be than at my fucking wedding.
Also, I never imagined this would need to be said, but absolutely under no circumstances should you give someone who is grieving the sudden loss of a parent a greeting card that says “I heard you’re having a tough time. Do what I do - use it as an excuse to go shoe shopping!” Really. That actually happened. An adult human made that decision.
It's been 8 months now and there isn't an end to this story; there's only a string of heartbreaking firsts. The first time I went on a trip and didn't bring her home a refrigerator magnet. The first time I moved into a new apartment and didn't send her a million pictures. Dylan's first birthday, first steps, first words. Katie's first day of fourth grade. It doesn't get easier, but you do get more used to it. You have to remind yourself fewer and fewer times per day that it actually happened and that it wasn't some hideous nightmare. After a while you even get so used to it that you can begin a thought with the awareness that it will happen without her instead of being slammed to the ground by it halfway through. But it still isn't fucking okay. We were supposed to have more time.
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