Love, Loss, and in Between

Today would have been my Mom’s 57th birthday.

She passed away in May of last year and this is the second birthday she hasn’t been here for. She has missed two Mother’s Days, two Thanksgivings, and one Christmas. I’m not entirely sure why I feel the need to count the missed holidays, but I do.

Today was also, one of the first snows in Denver this winter; Which made me chuckle, because my Mom hated the cold. Like the picked up and moved to the southern most part of New Mexico kind of hated the cold.

I know that we all grieve differently, just like the same person’s death affects people differently, even within the same family. It’s one of the intricacies of this life that will leave my mind spinning if I contemplate it too much. But I also know, that I am not the only person to have lost a loved one in the last few years. Plainly put I am not the only person to have lost a loved one, period. And when I came upstairs, and got into bed, my plan was to stream K-drama until I fell asleep or couldn’t read the subtitles anymore. I definitely wasn’t planning on writing about my Mom spur of the moment like this, but I also feel like it’s time.

I love my Mom. She was by no means perfect, but I still loved her a lot.

She is where I got my sense of adventure and my love of road trips. I can’t even count the number of times we would be driving home from somewhere and she would essentially announce to us kids, “Let’s get lost today” and then take random turns until we no longer knew where we were. Once we were thoroughly lost, she would keep the mountains on her left and drive north until she saw places she recognized. Don’t forget, this was all before GPS and smart phones, so… eventually she had to upgrade from the AAA State Maps we got for free from my Grandparents to an inch thick state atlas that had every inch of Colorado mapped out. She taught me how to read a map; not just north, south, east, west, but like how many miles in between towns and what your exit number is going to be.

She shared with me her love of language and learning. She always encouraged us kids to learn Spanish. I don’t know where my siblings have landed on the Spanish vocabulary spectrum, but my ability is pretty well limited to ordering food, asking where things are, and a pathetic joke regarding my lack of vocab, which leaves the hearer thinking, “Oh, poor gringa. You’re so not funny, it’s almost funny.” She also homeschooled all three of us kids for most, if not all, of our K-12 academic careers, so until college, any Spanish we learned, we learned from her. I still remember her trick for memorizing the Spanish word for dress, “El Vestido. Just think Elvis, in a Speedo.” I’m not completely sure why it worked, it may have something to do with, as a six year old, the trauma of picturing a fat Elvis in a Speedo, but I have never forgotten the word for dress.

When I was younger she would take me to dance classes or gymnastics, help me learn my lines for church skits or play piano while I sang a solo at church. She used to braid my hair, curl my hair, even perm or dye my hair; but most importantly, she would try to fix my hair when as a child I would try to cut my own hair. She taught me how to cook, how to follow a recipe and how to cook without a recipe. I remember one time I decided I wanted to earn money by running a “post office” for our house and she fully supported that entrepreneurial spirit. She let me put addresses on everyone’s bedroom doors and I even setup a little “kiosk” where my family could buy stamps for a penny, leave their letters, and I would deliver them. She even sent me a letter, which I then got to deliver to myself. It was pretty great.

When I was in my pre-teens, my Mom started having health problems. To this day, I can’t tell if it was the physical pain, the medication side-effects, or just her own disappointment in her life, or maybe a combination of all the above, but for the later half of my childhood I slowly watched my mom fade. She went from a vibrant, intelligent, loving, supportive woman (who, albeit, could have a rough temper and probably should have been in counseling for some other things I won’t get into, because this is still the internet), into a mound on her bed, surrounded by pets. When I was younger, I didn’t think much about it. I played with friends and my siblings, and I watched TV. Homeschooling turned into “Un-schooling” (picture, Montessori, only less structured), which eventually turned into no schooling.

As I got older, it got a lot harder. The ratio of loving to criticizing comments shifted to the latter. My Mom’s once energetic support was replace with exhaustion fueled doubt, and sometimes I would be told that my need for affection was draining. Don’t get me wrong, my parents loved me and I love them too. My dad worked his tail off to provide for our family and was a steady rock. When she had the energy, my mom would spend hours listening to me talk about boys, or watch my favorite TV shows with me; she tried to share in the parts of my life that she could. But there were also a lot of times when she would make me feel like I wasn’t enough. Not broken enough to need her help, not capable enough to do things on my own. Not worth her energy, her effort, or heaven forbid her discomfort. And that hurt. A lot.

Oof, that got heavy real quick, didn’t it?

So, why would I share the difficult as well as the lovely aspects of my Mom today? Because the hardest part for me, about grieving, hasn’t been missing my Mom. I do miss her sometimes. I miss getting to talk to her about things in life that excite me or stuff that annoys the crap out of me. In the last year or so of her life, our relationship was getting better. What I have been mourning the most hasn’t been my Mom, but rather all the years that were wasted; because if I am honest, the saddest part about losing my Mom, is how quickly I moved on and how little it feels like it affected my life. I had stopped expecting her to be a stable and consistent part of my life a long time ago, because for a period in my Mom’s life, if a relationship or situation wasn’t comfortable, fulfilling, or satisfying for her, she stop seeing a need to invest in it. So for a time, I learned to not need my Mom, and it was a pattern I easily stepped back into once she was gone.

So today, as I went about my work day with little trouble, I was a little proud of myself, for making it through without any of the tears I feared would show up unbidden. But then as I was driving home, I felt a little guilty for not being sad. And as I contemplated the aforementioned negative aspects of my relationship with my Mom, I was reminded that it wasn’t all bad and regardless of how much she did or didn’t show it sometimes, my mom truly did love me, to the best of her stunted abilities, and that’s enough. It doesn’t change the past, but it feels like the start of understanding and acceptance.

I love you, Mom. I am grateful to God that you were my Mom and for all the love you had for me. Happy birthday.

12/10