Grieve her again

It’s Mother’s Day. It’s Mother’s Day, and I know someone whose mother died last month. 

When I found out, I sent a simple text. It was maybe a <3 or something because I never know if someone actually wants to talk when they’re grieving; they did, and I expressed my deepest condolences. Among the messages I exchanged with this person, I believe one was, “When my mother dies, I think I’ll feel the earth crack apart”. I meant it too. I’m a mama’s girl and an intensively anxious one.

As a little girl, I developed such severe separation anxiety that I couldn’t eat or sleep without being near my mother. She gave me ways to work through it, but for years I didn’t leave the house except to go to school. For the first five years of my life, she had been a stay-at-home mom. After their divorce, I lost both of my parents. My dad lived “somewhere else” as my mind knew it. My mom was always either at work or resting. Kindergarten was a difficult transition for me - from having a soft, 1950’s TV mom to having a tired uniformed one. During that period, I had nightmares about losing her. She would be arrested for something she didn’t do and be taken away to jail; she would die in a car crash; she would disappear. I don’t think I ever told anyone about those dreams. Now, I know I was grieving.

Later, during my senior year of high school, my mother and stepfather got divorced. It was another heartbreaking and tiresome transition. Some things fell by the wayside, including my loan paperwork for Baylor University. In August, they called to inquire about my $17,000 fall tuition. By then, we were homeless. I didn’t go. I moved in with my boyfriend. We got roommates. We worked service industry jobs. I was crippled by gut-twisting depression. I can feel the ghost of that feeling in my core as I write this. We were so young. We had no children, no debt, no health issues. Why didn’t we see the world? Why did I, with all my intelligence and curiosity and youth, stay in Williamson Freaking County. I’ve dealt with a lot of regrets about that time, including not following through with seeking therapy for my depression. I don’t judge myself for it anymore though. Like before, I was grieving.

These small losses were, in hindsight, not small at all. Though not the same as death, they were still trauma to my young mind. They made me depressed and anxious, but they also made me a loyal daughter and a fierce mother myself. I so appreciate what I have in this broken, beautiful life that I never for a second let anything trivial hurt these relationships, or any female bonds I cherish. So as I think about my friend’s mother’s passing and, with my ever-anxious mind, about mine, I ask myself, “My God, what will I do when my mother dies?” 

I know what I’ll do, and I’ll do it with joy and gratitude. I’ll grieve her again.