I know that some things should just be obvious. Without requiring thought, we should just understand certain things to be true. You have to breathe to live, bodies require sleep, rain makes the grass grow, no one lives forever, etc. Knowing those things and realizing them and experiencing them aren’t necessarily the same.
From the time I was born, my Mom was with me. She is truly the only one that has been my entire life. From before I was born, she knew me. I’ve never known a reality in which she didn’t exist. And yet, here I am. Suddenly, the one who has always been, is no more.
In my head, I knew there would come a time when she wasn’t here anymore- no one lives forever. But I didn’t realize it. I didn’t know what it would feel like deep in my bones. The constant, the one that has always just been, like gravity, is no more. How, then, am I to stay tethered to this life? It’s disorienting.
Like a compass that can’t find the magnetic pull, I feel myself spin. I somehow keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep taking baby steps into my new reality, but the weight of it sometimes stops me in my tracks.
“My mommy is dead,” I find myself saying it out loud from time to time, trying to process it. Maybe reminding myself that it is true. Trying out the words to see if hearing them spoken could make me better comprehend this horrible thing. Or perhaps I’m putting them out there so they can fall like an anchor, grounding me in my new reality.
Over and over again I say it, trying to convince myself it’s true, all the while having witnessed it. My eyes saw, but my mind cannot comprehend. My heart isn’t even sure how to register that kind of loss.
How does a person mark it? “This is the place in time when my world changed. This is the moment when what I knew would someday come to be and what truly is have collided.” A crater left in its wake.
No more will I touch the soft skin of her hand or face. This side of Heaven, I won’t laugh with her or share a word puzzle. She won’t give me that wide smile. We won’t sit and watch birds in her beloved backyard paradise. Never again will she call me Skunk in the exasperated tone only a mother can have.
Moms aren’t forever. Magical, mythical, strong, superheroes that they are, they still can’t escape death. I guess I somehow thought mine might somehow be exempt. Sadly, she was not.
human interruptions 