Birthday Princess, June 4, 2009

Today is my first birthday without my mother. To say my birthday without my mother doesn’t feel the same seems redundant. Without our mothers, we would have no birthday. There isn’t a mother in the world that doesn’t remember something about her child’s actual “birth” day. The details of our children’s first Christmas, first Easter, even first birthday celebration get fuzzy and blend together. Pain makes memory more vivid, emotional or physical. It makes sense that this day remains crisp in a mother’s mind, the memory of a small human making its way out of your body in one form or another.

But this morning when I woke up, I was surprised to find that umbilical cord was still there, the end now dangling in the netherworld. I could pull it in hand over fist, and find its end raw and unattached. I waited for the reassuring calm and comfort that my brother and father have spoken of feeling enveloped in, as they feel my mother’s presence. But like my sister, I felt nothing. My mind then moved on to guilt. Wasn’t it too bad that I never said to my mother, “I can’t imagine a birthday without you.”, or “thanks for the life”, or even a simple, “thanks for all the birthday spoils”, of which there were many.

What my mother lacked in patience for traditional mothering throughout the rest of the year, she attempted to make up in holidays and birthdays. I often feel the strain as a mother to try and live up to the exuberance of my holidays past, and the generosity of my mother in my children’s holidays and birthdays.

When we were little, whether our birthdays will filled with just our family of 5 or with a few friends thrown in, there were always streamers and balloons and cake and numerous, numerous presents. The last present was always hidden in a treasure hunt led by creative, witty clues all written in my mother’s neat slanted script. Later in life, when she lacked the energy or ability to do the actual “leg work” of a party she was still always ready with the cash fund and usually some general orders. No one’s birthday went by without a dinner, a cake, ice cream and some presents, even when cash was tight.

My mother’s indulgence has damaged my real world expectations. When C and I were first dating, I remember being stunned when he forgot to buy me a present. How could that be possible? I was the birthday princess! This year, lacking the drive of my mother’s birthday spirit, C asked me “Do you want a cake?” I looked at him as if he was crazy, as if he had just asked me would I need my feet for the rest of the day or would I like them chopped off. You see, my mother has spoiled me. What a shame, now that I am acutely aware of just how much, that I can’t spoil her back.

Trials and Trails (March 2, 2009)

I don’t know if I can go about actually describing the moments, the reminders, the trails that lead to my sorrow these days of mourning my mother. Mourning, grieving, grieving is better-- mourning gives an illusion that there is an end, “a period of mourning.” I don’t believe there is an end. I believe I am in, or am entering into, my first real period of understanding of what my life is to be like without her. How many instincts, moments, there are that I didn’t recognize before--of thinking of her, bonding with her. How much of my life was lived for her approval--not approval, but in order to join her more. Joining her in her past was the only way I knew to get to her, it was there that she seemed the most content, the most “in life.” I suppose that’s why I am writing the story that I am.

Her living brought me great comfort, there were only a handful of months put together that brought me great stress. But I’ll admit the best of her evaporated when she left her home. That’s the real reason of the story isn’t it? My dream fulfillment of bringing her home again somehow.

Sorrow, real sorrow, it is a verb, it is a place, a plane of being. It can’t be explained, there are triggers that pull you there in a moment, but to try and capture them and hold them out for Chris to understand how I came there; it’s futile, pointless, because it’s not the moments that ferry me there that matter--to speak of them feels a distraction. How can you explain to someone who hasn’t been there? It is a place that will always exist on some level within me--because my mother will never be a voice I can speak to, a conversation, a story told, a question answered, an existence to be comforted by, eyes to see the pictures of my life. Part of me is now gone, half of my history swallowed up, dissipated, scattered. My favorite half by far.

How ironic the things you can’t understand about your mother until she is gone, I could never understand, truly, how she felt about losing her mother, such a huge loss for her, until I lost her. So many stories have come forward to me that I can’t query her about because she is gone, gone from me in the way I needed her.

I could curl up in this sorrow for a year and not be done with it. With work and babies and love and life, it sits below the surface waiting for the moments in a day to pulse out. It strikes now, blows to my heart and stomach, surprising me. It’s becoming familiar and I’m sure that the sharpness, the acute blunt force will dull with time, but the striking will not. Writing is my only hope of resurrection.