When she died, her soul ran away from me. Her last breath came and the angels started to fall downward, trapping me here on earth, unable to catch her. I never knew my mother could be so fast, but that is death. When it comes, it is fast.
I have reflected often about the night she died. The events that transpired. The tears shed, the running of my legs as she passed to wherever she was going next, and the possum coming out of nowhere to greet me as I sat weeping in the grass. The possum, a symbol of rebirth and renewal, and another mother who carries her children on her back.
I found myself in a cabin up north within a week of her death, searching for solace, for meaning, and asking the trees to help me heal as I peddled and walked on a rocky trail that snaked between them. My body was wrecked. It felt like I carried my mother’s pain for over two years, right alongside her. A faithful son, tightening up my muscles and bones, joints and ligaments, and it was as if a giant vice had been tightened around me. Witnessing her suffering, the broken back, the pain of bone cancer, and the mornings when I would find her sitting in a chair, holding back tears from the pain, arms raised in the air to greet me. A hug, a kiss on the cheek. A mother’s hug, one I will never have again.
There was never a day that went by that she did not tell me she loved me. I miss that and can hear her, “I love you’s.” They are buried in my mind, simultaneously deep and on the surface, both locked away and at the ready when I need to hear it. When she was within weeks of dying we sat on her porch talking about love and how important it was to tell people.
I said, “No one should ever let their ‘I love you’s’ get dusty.”
My mom smiled and said, “That should be a verse in a poem.”
I replied, “Each day of life is a verse in a poem.”
She smiled, “I’ll miss talking to you like this, about life and writing. If people heard us, they’d probably think we’re crazy.”
“And there’s nothing wrong with being a little crazy,” I said. “Life comes with a little madness, especially if you are a writer, like us, trying to describe and make sense of the world.”
I think I went a little mad, a bit crazy, a tad insane, whatever one may call it, the night she died. I screamed at the moon. My bellowing had to reach the heavens, at least the stars. She said a couple of days before, “Hon, this is going to hurt.” It was more than “hurt.” As my fist pounded the ground, the lack of give in the earth radiated back upwards tingling my hand, wrist, and shoulder. It was like a tidal wave of pain filtering through my body. I ripped the grass below me by the roots and felt bad immediately after I did it. At the time, I did not want to destroy anything but myself. I needed more pain. In that very moment, I longed for it, more physical pain to take away the emotion of it all, but that cannot be accomplished. It is impossible to distract yourself from loss and death. One cannot walk away from grief. If you have loved, you will grieve.
It seems as the losses gather and accumulate over the years, the winds become colder with each passing winter. The holidays make you ache as you attempt to smile. Birthdays of the dead come and go, realizing that their day of birth has now passed, as has their day of death. What you have is life. Your life is waiting for you to live it fully, to love fully, and not letting your “I love you’s” get dusty because you tell the people you care about as often as you can. My mother was right, it has hurt to lose her, more than I could have possibly imagined, but it would hurt more, hurt her more, if I didn’t live my life as I have set out to do. I have many journeys in front of me, and along the way I know there will be joy and suffering, laughter and tears, and that is what life is made of. Live and love well, enough for someone to write about you someday. Perhaps enough to make you a verse in one of their poems.
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