Missing Mom

It took me nearly two months to miss my mom. I know that probably sounds awful. She died at Christmas and it was nearly Valentine's Day before it actually hit me? Look, my mom raised me to be independent, self-sufficient, and strong. She wouldn't want her death to make me needy and messy and I spent those months being the woman she raised. I went back to my life and lived. Then one day... The thought was fleeting, a mere blip on the radar of my mind, but it happened just like they said it would - One day out of the blue, I'd want to talk to my mom and think to pick up the phone before realizing the impossibility. And that's exactly how it happened.

Over the past...gosh...probably decade I hadn't called my mom with any kind of regularity. Do I regret it? No. Should I? If you say so. But I don't. I knew what I was doing. I knew one day I wouldn't be able to call her. Maybe I was getting ready for that day ahead of time? I guess it's possible. Of course it's even more possible that I'm selfish and never wanted to spend precious hours of my off time occasionally discussing, and at times arguing, the finer points of life with my mother. I enjoyed the majority of our conversations and often vowed upon hanging up that I'd call more often. I never did.

Nearly a month has passed and I still want to talk to my mom. It's a feeling that hasn't gone away. Just this past Friday, I found myself longing to plop down in the pink chair I always sat in when I visited her and let it all out. All of it. Every last drop. Every last everything. I'd lean forward in the chair  and angle it so I could see her face and she could see mine (It was always a struggle to see each other around the lamp that sat between her navy blue recliner and the pink chair). This wasn't something I wanted to hide from. This... This she needed to both hear and see. It would be in my voice, in my eyes, written all over my face.

A few short months ago all that would have been possible...and improbable at the same time. If she hadn't died, I wouldn't be in Minnesota in early March finalizing her estate. I wouldn't be here this weekend. I wouldn't have sat on the floor of her now vacant apartment this morning in the exact place her recliner always sat. I wouldn't have struggled through tears and chided myself for my weakness...for missing my mom so viscerally...for wishing I could tell her just one small - yet incredibly huge - thing.

It wasn't my choice to go back to her empty apartment this morning. We moved everything out yesterday (donated it to an organization that helps people with minimal means to create homes that feel like homes). I was good. Beyond good. There was work to be done and we did it. Easy-peasy check the box and move on. But there's a wrinkle...

My sister's shower isn't working (There's no cold water, only hot) so after my morning run I had no choice. We still have Mom's apartment and her shower until the end of the month, so I gathered a change of clothes and off I went. I didn't for a moment think it would be weird...until it was. It was just......I don't know......kind of odd being there. It still smelled like her apartment, but it was empty. Once I closed the bathroom door, I could fool myself. I could either be in my mom's bathroom or in any bathroom I'd ever showered in. I tried to err to the later...but I opened the bathroom door to do I honestly don't know what. And there was my mom's empty apartment, creases on the carpet where her furniture had been.

I closed the door behind me once again and vowed to make it work. If I stood with my eyes closed, hot water beating down on me, I could be in any shower anywhere. If I could just keep from opening my eyes and seeing my mom's bathroom.....If I could just leave this room without walking into her empty apartment, I'd be ok.

In the end, I really wasn't.  My mom would have wanted me to be strong - she valued that greatly - but I felt somehow disloyal for not being sadder and yet I worried that she wouldn't be proud of my sadness. It was a strange and confusing dichotomy.

I want to be stronger than this; I should be stronger than this.

"Moments of grief show strength..."

It was then that I sat on the floor and contemplated putting my shoes on, in the place where her chair always was. I didn't cry in the bathroom; I cried there. In the very place she probably sat while calling 911. In the very place she sat waiting, realizing that it more than likely it wasn't going to end well for her. In the last place she ever sat in her apartment. I like to imagine she was brave, fearless even, in that moment. And maybe that was part of my problem this morning - For as alike as she and I are (were), I'll never be a match for her strength and courage. In that very place, every effort I had made to be strong failed. I leaned back against the wall, put my head in my hands, and cried.

Perhaps I made the healthy choice. Too much strength can't be good for the soul, can it? And would my mom really expect me to be that strong? I mean really? Actually, I think she would have. She always expected more out of me, expected me to be the perfected version of herself - better, stronger, braver, independent, confident, self-reliant. Dauntless. Of course that might have all been my imagination. I don't know and it's too late to ask.

Regardless, it can't always about my mom. And for as much as she loved  me, I was occasionally a horrible disappointment. Today - this morning - might have been one of those times. However, in that moment, it wasn't about her. Not really. It was about me - what I felt, what I needed, what I couldn't hold back. 

"It's healthy and temporary, the tears."

Yes. They had to be. I dried it up and cleaned it up and ate leftover pizza for lunch with my sister like nothing happened. My last words to my mom didn't reassure her that Kelly would take care of me. They were the opposite. Being sad and pathetic in front of my sister would break that promise. Nonetheless, it happened. All of it. I missed my mom so much I cried. I didn't think that would ever happen. I was good. I was strong...but life has a way of changing and changing you. Perhaps that was what today was all about. And perhaps it wasn't nothing after all.

"I would say something beautiful and meaningful happened."

I couldn't agree more.