I’m sad. Just sad. Mostly about momma. I just really hate my job and my mom is dead. I sit on her bed and look at the pictures on her memorial card and think “I’ll never see her again.” It’s almost an unfathomable thought. My brain can’t wrap around it. I can’t really grasp that it’s true.
I’ll never come by this bed to find her laying across it (never the right way). He having fallen asleep, not under the covers, but under a throw while watching QVC. I’ll never give her a hug and wish her goodnight and see if there’s anything I can get her before I go to bed. I’ll never wake and look down at the dining room to find her painting at the table – or see her having coffee on the stairs by the pool. Or just wake up to find she’s run off to Old Navy or Ollie’s or Old Time Pottery to return later with gifts. Always gifts. A shirt or a pillow for my pool chairs, maybe a float or a cute kitchen towel, or lord help – a plant for the back or the flower beds or the porch or god-knows-where. Momma never showed up without some small gift. She loved to go shop and find the best clearance deals. “I got you something.” No wonder my love language is gifts. She was always like that.
There’s just an empty chasm of sadness beside me. Nothing to be said for it. Nothing to be done for it. I thought about scheduling an appointment with my therapist, but what’s the point? He can’t make me un-sad. No one can say or do anything to seal this chasm. I’m not self-harming or life-interferingly depressed. I’m just really fucking sad. I’ve honored her memory. I made a beautiful vase full of rose petals — all carefully saved and dried from the many flower arrangements that were sent as condolences. Some roses from the funeral, some petals from the corsage I wore. I sit on her bed and look at her infamous red glasses sitting there on a tray with the book she wrote, a picture she painted, the memorial card from the funeral and a small urn of ashes. I wear her star sapphire on my right hand. Mom on my right and my sweet husband on my left (via my wedding ring). My rocks. It’s like they’re holding my hand when I need a nudge.
I look at the star in the sapphire when it magically decides to appear. I’ve had my own sapphire. I know the magic well. I bought us each these sapphires years ago when I got my first real job. The biggest present I had ever given her at the time. I was determined she’d wear another star sapphire – like the one that was stolen in her childhood. A story she had mournfully told me many times. Now I wear her stone instead of mine. The stone she wore so often and that shows up in most of her pictures. When I see the star I wonder how often she looked at the same star with amazement at the beauty. Something otherworldly about the stones transformation in the light.
I called M the other day. One of my best and dearest friends. I needed to talk to someone else who lost their mother. Someone who knows this sadness. What did he do with it? How did he cope? How did he keep going? True to our natures he didn’t bullshit me. He didn’t cope. There was no healing. Only learning to live with it. Time doesn’t heal wounds it just makes you keep trudging on with your new normal until the pain is almost a numbness. Simply because there is no choice. His anger is still palpable and fresh. As if she’d passed as recently as my own mother. It was genuinely surprising to me. We were angry and sad together. We talked for over an hour. We joked about fake boobs and caught up with each other. He lives so far away now. We talked through my drive home, through the pharmacy drive thru and on into my coming home, greeting my cat, and doing my daily Animal Crossing errands. Mr C did not come down when he heard me arrive. M’s voice is extremely loud and boisterous, no doubt who I was talking to on speaker phone. Mr C was glad we were talking, he knew I needed it. As we wrapped up our conversation I asked him “what do I do?” And as cliché as it sounds, I shit you not, he told me what any beloved body-hiding-friend would say. He said “you call me, and we’ll be sad together.”