I miss the missing
An excerpt from my "Mom" book.
This piece was written 7 years after my mother died. It’s been 17 now. How can that be? But this piece written at 7 years out is a day that I will never forget.
I miss the grief.
Part of me - a lot of me - doesn’t like that when I think of my mother now that I can do so with joy. I hate that it has become normal to not have her. It’s been 7 years. 7! I can’t believe it. But the things that I couldn’t do before, I can now do.
Just yesterday, I took the boys to see my dad on his 68th birthday, his beard entirely gray now. I told them, “I’ll go to the grocery store, and then I’ll be home to get you, ok?”
“Home?” Nelson asked, confused.
There was a slice of silence.
“I mean I’ll come back here,” I said, “to Grandpa’s.” I didn’t look at my dad. (I thought of everything as Dad’s now, having trained myself to no longer say mom and dad’s.)
“But you said home!” Nelson insisted. He was hoping that I meant our home, letting them play at Grandpa’s longer than a run to the grocery store.
“No, honey, this used to be my home,” I said. “When I was your age, this is the house I used to live in. My bedroom was the one at the end of the hall, and I ate dinner at that table every night.” I pointed out to the dining room. I saw that she’d had my father change the light since I’d been there last. Mom’s stained glass chandelier no longer ran on a dimmer.
The sentence came out smooth, without hesitation. Nelson looked surprised. I realized he was 9 - but we’d spent 7 of those without my mother.
7!
He was only 2 the last time he’d played on the back deck with her or we’d sat in the kitchen with her, or I’d propped him in a baby swing while I peeled potatoes with her for dinner. He would remember none of that. The most benign memories of his life with his grandmother were some of my - now - most precious.
I waited for the sorrow to come, to slam into me, to hold the room still.
But, the grief came and nodded at me and kept going. In that moment, I thought, look at that, I’m handling my new life so well. I’m all grown up now, aren’t I? Able to talk to my son about his grandmother, a woman he would never remember. And stand in a home that used to be my mother’s and was, decidedly - with the arrival of a new woman - no longer.
I felt the smallest stirring of resignation. Things that I wanted to hold on to were things I had already lost. This home had become just a room with four walls, with new lighting, someone else’s now. My bedroom was now an office. My mother’s garden overgrown.
Things were moving forward, regardless of how much I’d tried to keep or tried to remember. Life had already brought seven - 7! - of everything. Seven Christmases, seven Mother’s Days, seven birthdays, hers and mine.
And seven years of rebuilding.
I saw then that I had managed to carve out a life under the grief, each year the new life a little bigger, the roof a little higher, the rooms wider, one added off the back, a new hallway there. I’d spread out in my new life, the one without my mother, and pushed the grief up and away, a bit. I was making it.
And I stood that day in my old home, barely breathing, and missed the missing.