Nine years ago this October, my life changed very suddenly. I went from a typical ten-year-old, worrying about typical childhood things, to a husk of the child I had been. On October 20th, 2016, my mother was alive and healthy, and on October 21st, she was gone. I’ve spent the last nine years learning what it means to grieve, and what it means to heal.
Despite the near decade that’s passed, every year, as the air begins to cool and the light starts to fade earlier, I find myself drifting back to those weeks that followed. I remember how I spent my fifth-grade Halloween just trying to get through the night, and the blur of relatives I met in haste. The days stretched endlessly, and even months later, I still felt like I was stumbling through a fog. It’s safe to say I struggled through not just the weeks, but the years that followed my mother’s death.
Still, when I think back on some of the hardest moments of my life, I can’t help but also remember the people who helped me carry the weight. It was impossible for ten-year-old me to truly understand everything my mother had done for us until she was gone. Only then did I realize how many little things kept our world turning, like rides to school, my very specific sandwich for lunch, and a plan for dinner every night.
When she wasn’t there to do them, others quietly stepped in. My friends’ parents drove me to practice and let me spend weekends at their place when I needed it. My grandmother came over and let me help her cook dinners just like I had with my mom. Those moments of kindness may seem so small, but to me, they meant the world.
Sometimes, I still find myself getting jealous of my friends and their relationships with their mothers, or their seemingly normal childhoods. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve started to realize that my situation also taught me things I might never have learned otherwise. I grew up quickly, and I learned to be an independent woman at a young age. I learned the real value of having a community. My mother may not be here to see the person I’ve become, but I’d like to think I carry around parts of her in my mannerisms and the way I cook. So even without her here, she’s still a part of everything I do.