Editors Note: This took a lot of courage and strength for our writer to collect these thoughts. We are unbelievably proud of her. That being said, please be respectful to her experience. Also, if you ever have grief, problems with depression, or have harmful thoughts, please seek help whether it be professional or personal. There’s always hope.
I will say; it’s really hard for me to write this. I’ve thought and thought, written and written, and every time I try to put my grief on paper, words escape me. How can I possibly communicate how tightly my mother’s death grips me? How shattered my heart is? Or describe the feeling that comes with picking up the phone to call her, only to remember nobody will be at the other end? Trust me, I’ve tried. I journal until it makes me too sad; and the tears smear the ink on the page. I’ve written letters to my mom that she will never receive. I have written texts to her that I will never send because the number isn’t hers anymore. I am drowning in the emptiness, I’m screaming into the silence that rings in my ears and buzzes in my brain, the silence that is so loud I can hardly hear myself think.
I went home in September when she entered hospice care. She wanted me to go back to school three days in, “I’ll be fine,” she said. As moms do. She wanted to be fine; she wanted me to go live even though she wouldn’t get to. She had had cancer for almost five years; she outlived every statistic and every prediction. She told me in the beginning, when I was sixteen, she wasn’t going anywhere—“this isn’t a death sentence.” And it wasn’t. She fought it with everything she had, she lived despite the diagnosis that the doctors defined her with. She was my mom, not her colon cancer. Our relationship was normal. We were really close. I could tell her anything without fearing judgment, and knowing if I needed help she would help me. Even if I didn’t need help, she would still help me. That was just who she was. But I had trouble telling her every single thing because I didn’t want her to worry, as moms do about their children, because worrying is not conducive to healing. I needed her to heal more than I needed to tell her about another girl being mean to me, or that I didn’t feel well. That is one of my deepest regrets—I didn’t show her my whole self during the time that I had with her. That is just one tiny fragment of the mountain of grief I scale every moment of every day, and it’s one I forgive myself for, because I tried to be selfless like her. I think I saved my parents a lot of unnecessary stress, but when my mom was dying I felt like there was a lot I didn’t say, and a lot that I wanted to but didn’t know how. But I did it, because I needed her to heal. We would talk about it later. There was a lot we always said we would talk about “later,” a day that never came.
When I got home that day in September, it was normal. She was sicker than usual, and pretty uncomfortable, but it was normal. And then all of the sudden, it wasn’t. All of the sudden, she couldn’t eat, then she couldn’t talk, then she couldn’t drink water or open her eyes. We stayed up all night to give her pain medicine, and to comfort her. There were so many nights I wanted to curl up into her bed and hold onto her and never let go, beg her to just be better again. Of course I knew it wasn’t her fault. I just wanted my mom again, the woman that laughed and sang and called me “sweetheart.” When it got really hard for all of us, I had to remind myself it was so, so much harder for her. I knew she wanted to stay. I knew she wanted to live. I knew she wanted to eat and drink and laugh and smile and watch movies and garden and walk the dogs. I knew she did.
And then one day in October, almost a month to the day I went home, it was over. They took her body and I felt like I was dreaming, watching it happen from ten feet away. Since that moment, I’ve still felt detached from reality, like I’m just watching my life happen from behind a curtain. It’s frustrating. I miss her.
When I first came back to school I felt the eyes of my classmates on me like they were red-hot. I am forever changed, and in the beginning it showed. Whether they knew why I was gone for six weeks or not, I was different. Nobody told me what losing my mom would feel like, or look like; how my reality would look normal on the outside but really be anything but. And nobody could tell me, because nobody can know. Every day I walked a thin line between being fine and breaking down in front of people who didn’t know how to help. And even my closest friends still don’t know what to say. I don’t blame them. What can you say? What can you say to someone who just watched the person who brought them into the world leave it?
Truthfully, if I have one piece of advice for the person reading this in the hope of consoling someone who’s experiencing a loss, it’s don’t try to make it better. Don’t say “your grief will go away,” that isn’t true. Don’t say, “she’s in a better place now,” she’s not. She wanted to be with me, her husband, her other daughter, her parents, and her friends. I do hope wherever she is now is wonderful and free of suffering, and maybe that’s what you hope too, but you don’t know how badly I want her to be here, healthy and happy. Don’t tell me the story of when your 95-year-old grandfather died peacefully in his sleep (may he rest in peace, regardless), and tell me it’s the same thing. I know you mean well, and I am grateful for your effort, but know that it’s not helping. What helps is someone who asks about it. Asks about her. Asks about me, about us.
I feel like my mom’s death is the elephant in every room, and granted as I’m a 21-year-old, that isn’t something my peers know how to address. But even just asking how things are going, how they’re really going, and not getting weirded out if I cry or say “bad.” It’s really hard to suck the air out of every room because your mind is consumed by pain. That’s why it has taken me so long to write this, because for the larger part of the four months my mom has been gone, I haven’t let myself feel it. I cry for stupid reasons like when I drop the bottle of olive oil or when my car breaks down, so that I can cry at all and feel something, even if it’s over some stupid mess I made or how much homework I have.
I am learning to let myself be. Not let myself do anything in particular, just to let myself be and exist in the way that I exist right now. I say hi to my mom every day, I tell her what she would want to know. I do things for her, even though she will never be able to tell me she’s proud of me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to give up, because without my mom I feel like I have nothing at all, like nothing matters if she can’t see it. Why graduate if she won’t see me walk across the stage? Why intern if she’ll never see me land a real job? Why try at all if she isn’t here? The truth is, I still do all of this for her, that never changed. I use my life, this life she gave me, to honor hers. In this way, I fight for myself, for her. I fight for myself the way she fought for herself, for me, my dad, my sister, her parents, her sister, and the rest of our family. I will become the person she raised me to be, I’m becoming that person with every breath that passes through my lungs and with every step I take. I will make her proud. I will fight because she did. She didn’t lose the fight. She just passed the fight to me, and together, we will win.