I may not always remember all of the details of today. Most days, I hope that I don’t.
At 2:14pm ET on February 6, 2013, my mother died.
I’ve been sitting, staring at that last sentence for over an hour. What else is there to say? A year ago my mother died. The rational part of my brain knows that this is just part of the cycle, but that doesn’t make anything better. We were there to say goodbye, which I know too many people don’t get the chance to do. Some folks would say that should make me feel better… but it doesn’t. Not really at all. She’s still gone, and I’m still fumbling to work out my “new normal”. My life, my family, my work – all of these things keep pushing me to find the “normal” part of the “new normal”.
The last year has been filled with “gotcha” moments, thoughts that slam me into a wall that she’s gone, over and over. Most of the raw emotions have scabbed over, but the old saw of ‘time healing all wounds’ is complete bullshit. These aren’t scars I’m carrying, they’re scabs that are easily picked at and start bleeding when you least expect them to. I juggle the day-to-day things that come from this “new normal” and keep myself upright on the days that all I want to do is curl up in a ball and bawl my eyes out, because I have to. I have my own daughter, who I know one day will have to make the same decision one day to get the hell out of bed and deal with the same intensely itchy scabs that this has left me with. That she will have to go through this one day terrifies me, but it’s just the way that it is, and there’s nothing that I can do about that. All I can do is try and do the best that I can for her as her parent to prepare her for that day. To try and make sure that some of the roadblocks that I put up between myself and my mother over the years don’t show up in our lives.
One day she’ll be staring at a date that she can’t escape.
At 2:14pm ET on February 6, 2013, my mother died. Every day since then I try to find something to get me through, to help me stop picking at the scabs.
