There are many days I wonder when or if things will ever feel better. It has been 1 month, 9 days, 12 hours and 10 minutes since Mom died. (But who’s counting?) And I still feel so discombobulated it is unreal. Sometimes it feels so unreal that I think it must be some huge mistake that has been made. Other times it is so real it feels as if a cannon has been shot through my heart and I can’t breathe. Last night I was talking to Dad and he said he “took flowers to Mom and took some for me.” Coming out of my mouth before I was even aware of the thought I heard myself ask, “So how is she?” The long pause is what caused my brain to kick in and be bitter. “Yeah. Still dead. Sorry Daddy.” And I burst into tears.
I want to just crawl in bed and wake up when everything will feel “right.” Yet, I want to rush forward and make everything like it was. I can’t do either. This having to go through the process part really sucks. I think I am doing okay and then I will realize that I can’t stand being around anyone and have to go for a walk so that I don’t become the crazy angry mom. Or I think that I am in a happy mood and see something that makes me smile, but then I start to cry because, well, my mom is dead. It is lonely. I want to grab someone and say, “Just sit with me. Let’s just sit together. We don’t have to talk, but if I need to, let me without telling me that it will get better. Or let me just sit with you and cry and you don’t have to tell me anything. Just let me.” But it is lonely here. Even with my very understanding husband. As much as he loves me and supports me in this, I know he wants me back, too. I am not ME. I don’t know who I am, but it isn’t ME.
I am raw.
I am angry.
I am alone.
I am motherless.
I am hurting.
But I still don’t know who I am.
I didn’t know, I couldn’t have known, the intensity with which I would miss her. If I had known, I would have crawled beside her and begged her to tell me how to go on without a mother. I would have insisted she give me every single bit of advice that mothers are supposed to give. Not just up until you are 36, but much, much longer. Gabrie is only 4! I have so many mother-daughter questions. Did I learn enough just being a daughter to be able to be a good mother during the teen years? The lessons we learn from out moms…did I learn them all?
I don’t want to cry anymore. I don’t want to be angry or raw or scared anymore.
And then we add the guilt. Oh, the guilt.
The boys are really struggling right now. They need their mother. They need ME. But again, who the hell is ME anymore? I am a shell right now trying to come back. One of my sons is really struggling in school. His grades are dropping and he is not focusing. He cries so easily. He gets sick and then worries that he will get more behind. He needs his mother to be there for him. And I am trying. Oh how I am trying. My other son, he wouldn’t cry over his grandmother’s death. He just wouldn’t. But now, he needs me more than ever. He needs me to help with school work. He needs me to let him know that he won’t feel like this forever. He needs me to hold him and let him know that I am there for him and will always be there for him to help him get through this.
I feel so badly that I have lost sight of them in my grief. That in my own pain and fog, I am forgetting that my boys hurt too and they, too, need their Mommy. And I am here. But I am not. I have to try to pull it together for them. They have to have the support of their mother. I know that. And yet, I am feeling so empty and distant from the world, I don’t know how to help them. And my heart is breaking for them. Because here I am in the flesh and they are begging for me to be ME, and I don’t know how to get back there. I don’t know what path to take to make it all okay for them. To let them know that their Mom WILL be okay. That I am here for them even if I seem a bit off right now.
I am tired of hurting. Of letting people down. I am tired of this nightmare.
I am tired.
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