Life’s been a journey. When his mother died in February, it felt like witnessing someone’s body being live-cut open. I think often, most when he sits on the edge of the bed to put on socks or rest, about when he sat in the same spot a random Sunday afternoon on the phone scream-sobbing. I could hear his father sobbing from the other end, wailing really. I didn’t cry at all the whole month — nothing prepares you for the sudden, tragic death of someone you never expected to suddenly, tragically die. I can’t say I was sad at the loss, but I was sad for his loss, I was sad to see him lose, to know that he had to feel this first before either of us. He was brave in his shock.
Just 5 days later was Valentine’s Day, and he had to cancel his original plans. Still, he gave me such generous gifts, decorated his family’s living room with balloons, flower petals, a rose bouquet, and the classic heart-shaped pancake breakfast to show some love. 5 days after his mother randomly died. I felt loved in a way I wished I could love.
I wasn’t supposed to see her body. We went the day after his father’s birthday, in late February, to the funeral home next door to their church. First, his father went in to see her, and then called his 3 sons by name. One of them asked me to come, too, and I couldn’t decline. Was I to say “I don’t like dead bodies, I’d rather not”?
I viewed her body in an international wooden casket, sunken and smaller, from several feet’s distance. I could hardly approach. I let her sons and husband stand before her and awkwardly shoved tissues in everyone’s hands while I stood in the back of the closed room.
He burst into tears first; for someone who is still learning the comfort in crying, he always led the charge with his brothers and father. It was a heartbreaking scene after that. I finally cried, kneeling before him on the ground as he sat in a chair sobbing into my shoulders — just as we were on the edge of our bed and floor when he got the phone call — and I cried with him.
If I ever saw my mother like that, I know my soul would lift out of my body and I would simply never return to who I was before.
I asked how it felt and he said “fucked up,” and we drove back home with his brothers. It was dystopian that we had work the following day — “I shouldn’t be in the office right now, I’m a day removed from seeing my mother’s dead body” — but that’s a story for another time.
I wish I could articulate just how much she didn’t mean to me. I mourned in a way the relationship we could’ve had, if she had been a better person, if she had known to love and welcome and accept. If she had been kind, thoughtful, gentle, nurturing, understanding; if her pride hiding her shame hadn’t been so choked up in her throat all the time. He mourns it too, the mother he could’ve had, that she could’ve been but somehow never quite…could.
It’s July now, and I try to be gentle when I rarely remember he’s a boy who just lost his mother tragically, suddenly, and who was grieving her even before February. As we plan our future and learn to love each other through everything, I continue to feel his grief and struggle to hold space. Part of me is angry he’s grieving, part of him is angry in general, and both of us are sighing through it and crying when we need.
Loss is a peculiar thing; I wonder if there’s something to be gained, or if it’s really meant to knock everything out of you.
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