Things my mother taught me by dying young.
My mother would have been sixty-nine years old today. If she hadn’t died more than twenty years ago. This day every year, and the anniversary of her death, always makes me a little melancholy and a lot thoughtful, no matter how many years have passed. So here are a few completely unfiltered thoughts I had today:
There’s a home video from one of my birthday parties when I’m a small child - I’m five or six maybe. My father follows my mother into the kitchen at some point and she complains about being on film, especially when my father mentions that she’s thirty-[whatever]. She sarcastically says, “Thank you, Dear. Because we wouldn’t want anyone to think I’m twenty-[whatever].” My dad jokes that they’ll watch this video when she’s in her sixties and marvel at how good she looks in her thirties. And it’s true, friends. She’s beautiful. She always was. So maybe that’s the first ‘lesson’ I take with me from my mother dying when I was young, or at least the first one I contemplated at some length today: You are beautiful. Right now. And you might not get a chance to look back and admire your own beauty later. So admire it now.
I think most situations in life can be looked at through the ‘good news/bad news’ lens we often use in my family. Not all situations - some situations are just plain shit - but most situations you can find some aspect to be grateful for, or ways you’ve been lucky as much as you’ve been unlucky. Almost every day I’ll be on the phone with one of my family members and someone will ask, “Do you want to play ‘good news/bad news’?’ Today my little good news/bad news was that my dog cost me $### in vet bills today. That’s pretty bad news. But I have $### that, while I can’t really ‘afford’ to spend it on his many, many issues, I have it. I won’t have to cut down meals or worry about a car payment or anything. It’s dwindling my savings at an alarming rate, but that’s kinda what savings are for. Good news. The good news/bad news of my mom dying when I was young is: Bad news, I lost my mom when I was thirteen. Good news, she was a fucking amazing mom for thirteen years. How insanely lucky was I to have a wonderful, loving, funny, smart, powerful mom for thirteen years? That’s thirteen more years than some people get. Though, admittedly, more bad news: She went to work one day and never came home.
I don’t want to belabor this post, so maybe I’ll end here, but on the note of ‘she went to work one day and never came home’ I’ll pass along that absolute truism, that lesson we all learn when we lose a loved one: Tell your people you love them. I was a big ol’ pustule of hormonal rage at thirteen (as many of us are) and I was constantly whiny and snotty and belittling and I regret bitterly that the last two years I had with my mother I was probably an ass 75% of the time. But, but, but… and it’s a big ‘but’… The last words I ever spoke to my mother were ‘I love you’. Very last thing I ever said to her. I hugged her that morning before the bus came and I remember her commenting on how she wished my arms fit around her expanding waist a little better, but I told her she was just the right size for hugging. And I remember she was wearing a black slip dress that was supposed to be anti-wrinkle because she was traveling that day. And I remember walking down the front walk backward, facing her, telling her, last thing before I turned away to walk to the bus stop, “I love you.” I know that’s a lesson that’s been shared a billion-bazillion times, but it’s so, so true. Thank goodness, for all my asshattery, the last words I spoke to her were true and if you gave me a thousand chances to rewrite the very last three words I could say to that woman, I don’t think I could come up with anything better. I really, really loved her. And I told her so. Tell your people you love them. All. the. freaking. time.
Okay, I lied. One more lesson that I actually think about from time to time throughout each year as it passes: Time does not heal all wounds. I think people came up with that saying, and keep saying it, because it’s supposed to be comforting. Or that story they tell about Abraham Lincoln giving a speech relaying some old king asking his advisors to give him a sentence that would be true and appropriate to speak in any circumstance and the phrase was: ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’ I think that’s bullshit. I am broken from my mother’s death in ways that will never heal (or at least they haven’t healed yet). My grief will never pass away. It is with me, ever present, on the edges of every waking moment, trailing along behind me, hiding in my shadow. But I do think, for me at least, I’ve learned to work around the broken bits of me, and I’ve grown fond of my grief in a way. They are the reminders that my mother was here, and that I loved her. The reality of my mother, for however long I got to have her in my life, is precious to me. I don’t ever want her to fade and the truth is you can't separate who I am as a human being from that formative loss. The uncomfortable truth is I’m probably a kinder person that I might have otherwise been. I’m broken, but I think I have more compassion for people this way. I’m quiet and sad and my emotions are all twisted up and hidden in a hundred boxes in my mind where even I can’t find them half the time, but I was selfish and egotistical before. I was also thirteen before, and to have had my mother guiding me all these years, maybe I would have been a better person, I suppose. I can’t really know. But I know that every scar and every jagged piece inside me from her death is 100% worth it to me to have had her and I wouldn’t trade them away now for anything except having her back. Eventually the pain of losing her became less intense than the joy of having her in the first place. I guess that’s what I’m saying. Or, I don’t know. Something profound.
This post is longer than I intended, but it was nice to get a few thoughts out. I wish my mom could have watched that home video today and we could have all commented on how good she looked when she was thirty-[whatever]. I wish I could know what she would have thought of who I’ve become and how I’ve turned out so far. I wish I could have baked her a half-edible cake today and watched her try to be diplomatic in eating it. I wish I could have seen what her face would look like, wreathed in wrinkles and the light of sixty-nine little flames.
I guess the good news/bad news of today is that her presence, and her absence, are still teaching me things even all these years later. They’re not lessons I’ve enjoyed much, but it feels like such a mother kind of thing, you know? To still be learning from her. To still love her, and miss her, is just all the more evidence of how incredibly lucky I was to have her.
