A few weeks ago I walked straight into the edge of a door. I hit it squarely and the impact of it bounced me back and onto the floor collapsed in a heap and stunned. I could feel the swelling immediately upon staggering back to a standing position. This was the least painful thing I had done that week. My mother had just died.
Like walking into a door, the news of my mother’s passing blindsided me. I suppose it shouldn’t have in some ways. People die and die unexpectedly and my mother has had a very tough last 15 months. And yet this news hit me far worse than any mere door to the forehead. I fell down then too. Unfathomable. This could not be true. And yet it was. And while I got up and walked down the hall to find my husband I could not believe I was about to tell him something that I could not believe myself. And then I started to throw up and did not stop for hours. My body was in agony reflective of my heart.
I ached for myself, my father, my children, my sisters, my aunts and uncles and my mom’s friends. And I ached for my mom. There was a selfishness there for me. I wanted more of my mom. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to say important things and have the luxury of saying unimportant things. I just wanted more. Not uncommon I know. I wanted more for my children. I wanted their relationship with my mom to continue. How can that be broken? They are so young and even if they can’t understand it, they feel it. The first loss. A big one.
I could call my mom and tell her anything about my children, her grandchildren, and she would light up. She would console. She would advise. She would reassure. She would find the humour and importance in it all. My children and I have lost that. Without warning and no preparation. In a sense I don’t think we can recover from that.
There is more than sadness. There is rage. I’m angry for my mom. She was robbed. She struggled for over a year to be healthy again. She had hopes and dreams to be reunited with family under the strain of daring to live in a pandemic. We talked about seeing each other in the summer. No, the fall. Surely, Christmas. My eight year old daughter, sobbing many times, said she was afraid she would never see my parents again. I promised myself I would always be honest with my children but I told her, “Of course we would.” We just needed to be patient and keep calling and writing letters. We will see them on whatever next important date hadn’t yet passed. And while I said these words I shared the same fears my daughter did and yet there wasn’t anything we could do. We waited. We called. We facetimed. We cried. And despite these fears we had hope. Hope to see each other again. What a reunion it would be. And then my daughter realized her mother didn’t know everything and couldn’t promise to protect her from this pain.
Helplessly trying to help my mom we called for long chats. We called many times a day for just minutes or marathon calls. We cajoled and encouraged. We disagreed and cried for sad evenings after. We tried our best to carry on with school and groceries and work all the while knowing there was a real fear that my daughter had been right. We wouldn’t see each other again.
The rage comes and goes. I have been plenty angry in my life but until now I could not say truthfully that I had known blind rage. One night I went from beaten down crying to another feeling altogether. I felt it wash over me just as someone might have suddenly poured a bucket of water over me. Blind rage. Named appropriately. I couldn’t see but only felt out of body and out of control. The feeling lasted mere seconds and then was gone. I was left crying again, but it was there and it was real.
Prior to being hurt in a car accident my mom was an avid hiker, a forceful personality and a ferocious mother. She loved her family fiercely. While my mother’s death won’t show up on COVID statistics, she like most of us were isolated and scared and remained that way for an unbearable time. Her accident and the following pain was too much for her body to withstand. After so long fighting through surgeries and disappointment and loneliness, my mother should have had more time. Not more time battling medical issues, but more time seeing who she wanted to see, hiking those beautiful Cape Breton trails, regaling her grandchildren with stories from her childhood, sharing a laugh with her own children she gave up so much for, and making retirement plans with my devoted father. Instead she died. And it is this that I can not grasp.
