Year Two - Musings on Life after death
After my mom’s untimely death, I have spent the last couple of years wanting to be exactly like her. I wanted to replicate everything that put a smile on people’s faces. I wanted to be the woman I heard in people's stories about her as they fondly remembered their time together.
I wanted to recreate events and create traditions that she filled her life with to help me understand who she was and why she lived her life the way she did. I wanted to find a way to finish all my unfinished conversations. If I replicated the same process, I would begin to understand her better and, by that same token, understand myself better.
I wanted to know her truth. I wanted to be guided by her life, to learn from where she had gone, and to continue to be an extension of her.
Over the last two years, I have met countless people who recalled moments of how she touched their lives with the smallest, kindest gestures. I knew some of them from our daily conversations, but so many were new to me.
I always left these conversations thinking of the new facet of my mom's life I had uncovered, like it was a new clue in a treasure hunt of life. What was the truth that she was seeking? I know she had told Dad before her death that she was so fulfilled and that if her time had come, she was ready to be taken.
I was so desperate to feel connected and missed her so immensely that I had practically arranged my life to mirror hers. I started to do all of the things she would do and did them with the same vigor and enthusiasm she brought to them.
In my quest for perfection (and WWMD), I was pinteresting all of my events, no matter how small they were.
Every last detail was agonized over as if I were a blend of Martha Stewart and my mother herself. I took on elaborate baby showers, dinners, teas…I filled every waking hour with wanting to care for everyone around me. I was going to be just like, my mother.
Many people remark how much I reminded them of my mom. I beamed each time, proud of myself. I didn’t even know I could be so gracious. I won’t lie; it was exhilarating at the start.
My bravado in wanting to be okay after my mother's death and finding some semblance of sanity while discovering motherhood myself was daunting. I wasn’t taking care of myself, which wasn’t new, but Mom wasn’t here to take care of me and asked me to pause.
I was secretly falling apart and spiraling out of control in every sphere of my life. I took everything to crazy levels outside because I felt so out of control. I have never known any other way of being. I’ve always been the go big or go home kind of gal, so I did anything that required me to go all out.
At some point, I decided to spend time reflecting, and I did not hate what had become from mimicking her life.
I had become more patient.
I had become kinder.
I had somehow managed to be more empathetic - even to daily doses of mediocrity.
Even though, on the surface, all seemed to be going well, a tiny voice inside me kept telling me that I was not ok.
How did she have it together all the time, or did she?
I hushed my little voice and kept on adding more things. I taught two classes, worked full-time, raised a toddler in the full throws of the terrible twos, and planned a conference. I kept moving forward at this new and fantastic speed, and a year and a half passed.
I keep telling myself that I am/was invincible.
I am just that good. If they made a movie of my life, Meg Ryan would be fascinated by the character she was stepping into.
I kept deluding myself into thinking that I was doing just fine.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago.
I had returned from teaching my second class of the week, and I found myself hearing Thomas say something to the effect that, at an increasingly rapid rate, I seemed to be getting irate and flying off the handle if he wanted to do something that wasn’t just binge-watching Netflix. He asked if it was the most impossible task on the planet.
I stared at him for a long time.
At this point, I have started nightly plotting how I might rearrange my life to pull an Eat, Pray, Love, or Walk the Pacific trail. I wanted an escape so badly that I would come home and wedge out and had, with time, started to ignore Thomas and not even see it become a habit.
So when he asked why I was always so agitated, I didn’t know what to say on the night in question.
I couldn’t blame it on Lila, who now promptly goes to bed and 7:30 (although she is super high-energy, so maybe she can still have a little of the blame). I could blame it on work or needing to talk to Dad or school, but the truth is, at that moment, I knew that the voice was right and it was happening because I wasn’t taking care of myself.
I love Thomas, I love that he is always so undemanding and that we could put our marriage on auto-pilot repeatedly, and it wasn’t a big deal. We had done so for our grad school degrees and when Lila was a wee little thing, but I didn’t want to wake up five years from now and find myself in a marriage I didn’t recognize.
Something had to change.
I woke up the next day and took myself out to breakfast. I started thinking of a tradition I could build, claiming some time for self-reflection. I made a list, did some pros and cons, and finally devised a tradition to give me what I needed.
I started every weekend by creating compositions for my mom. She loved flowers, they made my otherwise chaotic apartment feel a bit more Taj-esque, and I got 45 minutes to be with my thoughts and rejuvenate myself.
Attached here is a book that has ten arrangements. Each is coupled with a haiku that summarizes my thoughts for the week. I plan to turn these into a blog and share more detailed essays on being a mom without a mom and other such musings.
This has been the best gift I gave myself, but most of all, it has allowed me to celebrate my mom and the thing she cherished most - giving me my independence. It wasn’t always easy, but her love, support, and implicit trust helped me become who I was.
In slowing down and reclaiming some well-needed time, I discovered my current life was not where she was when she died. My life is at the beginning she had 35 or so years ago. If she were here, she would have reminded me of that herself.
She would have told me that she had their whole family around helping raise me, and I wasn’t even 1/2 as energetic as Lila was. She would have reminded me that I didn’t have to be like her, but I could take the parts that fit and the other parts I have received from my dad and mix them up to find a perfect blend of me.
I hope that in meditating upon her life, my childhood, and the days of my own current entire life while creating my compositions, I get to continue to become someone who she would have been proud to know - a good wife, daughter, mother, friend, and colleague but most important of all a thoughtful human being.
I hope that some of you will come along for the journey and continue to be involved in all the ways you are. If I don't say this enough, I am thankful for every one of you. My most significant gift has always been when I hear all of your stories.
Until next time, keep on keeping on.