Five years ago, on this day, I held my mother in my arms as she breathed her last breath. It seems so long ago, both in time and in experience.
I remember laying my head on her chest after she stopped breathing and watching the shiny metal of a stethoscope being placed in front of my nose. That is a strangely vivid visual memory, even to this day. My first moments in life without her.
I can think of the events of the last 31 days of her life now without getting upset. But sometimes it still hits me. Some small thing will remind me of her suddenly. I might be feeling slightly vulnerable or sad at the moment, and the fact that she is no longer here will hit me like a ton of bricks.
I saw a women in a Volkswagen van yesterday, driving down the road. Chin length straight hair, glasses. It looked so much like her for a moment. I see her like that sometimes, in a passing face. Only for a second, and then she is gone again.
The child in me likes to fantasize about life. For the first couple of years after she died I used to imagine that it has all been a ruse. She was really a spy for some secret government agency and she had to pretend to die so she could go off and have secret missions. I imagined that one day I would walk around a corner and there'd she be. I knew this was ridiculous, it is pretty hard to come back after a coma and weighting only 85 pounds. My adult self would laugh and indulge this tiny five year old living inside me, who just missed her mom.
The thing the hurts the most now is that there are so many people in my life who never knew her. Who never knew who we were to each other. I can tell them she was my mom and that we were close, but I can never explain to them what those simple words mean. The people who are close to me and knew her, they understand. I can look at them and say I lost my mom, and that I miss her, and they understand what that means to me. They understand the complicatedness of what that loss did to me.
People tell me it's sad what happened. That my mom died, that she was young, that she died so fast from cancer. And it's true. It is sad. But it was so much more than that.
Watching her die was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.
Waiting for someone to die is like stepping out of the flow of time. Unless you have experienced it you can't imagine how strange it is. There is no time, no future, no past, there is only one more breath from the person lying in that bed.
Looking after her as she lost the ability to do almost anything for herself felt so right, it felt like a full circle, repaying her for my childhood. For feeding me when I couldn't feed myself, for dressing me when I couldn't dress myself, for hugging and snuggling with me when I was sad or in pain. For never putting me down when I was little, even when she went to the bathroom. For letting me dress myself, which included not wearing underwear to school. For being afraid for me and standing back anyway, for letting me do things on my own. For being there for me whenever I needed her.
My mother's death was a catalyst and was truly transformative. My life looks completely different now (fuck, I wear scarves all the time now mom, you'd be so proud). I am pretty sure that my life would look different if she hadn't died, nothing stays the same. But I also know that my life wouldn't be what it is now. Her death altered the flow of my life in a profound way.
In a good way.
Other people have a hard time understanding how my mother's death could have been good for me. I try to tell them about how it felt right for her to leave. It didn't seem tragic to me, she wanted to go, I could feel it. I told her it was ok to go. I tell them how it put everything into perspective (the "you could die tomorrow" phenomena). My whole life suddenly looked different.
I once told someone that my mother dying caused my whole life to fall shattered into thousands of pieces at my feet. But afterwards, after I came out of the daze of grief (and a month of all 7 seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) I got to decide what pieces I picked up again. I definitely left some of those pieces lying on the floor. And I know I am better for it.
Even with all that being said...
I still miss you mom.
Love, the egg.
