It’s been two weeks since my mom died and one week since her memorial. Last Sunday, I was almost inconsolable when my brother and his family left town. After all the memorial planning, obituary writing, and photo sorting, everything came to a screeching halt. And I suddenly missed my mom. This explains why I’ve been exclusively wearing waterproof mascara for the past month — sudden onset weepiness (SOW?). The good news is, after a week of slowly decreasing insomnia and anxiety, I seem to be feeling a bit more like myself. I’ve had long talks with my zen-like husband and father about what a gift my mother gave us by letting us ease into the idea of her being gone. How she died at such a perfect time, with the whole family around her. Why it’s so beneficial to accept the concept of impermanence. Anyway, I’m feeling much more at ease about the way she died, and I’m not having nearly as many thoughts about hoping I don’t get cancer and just get hit by a bus. Because, really, if you have a month like I’ve had, that sort of thing goes through your head.
But when it all shakes out, I’m grateful that we had 20 months to get used to the idea of her being gone. I suppose it was the equivalent of learning to swim in the shallow end with an instructor versus being thrown into the deep end of the pool with a rock around your neck. She really was a mom to the end, preparing us as best she could for the big, bad world and putting as many pads on us as possible to try to keep us from getting hurt.
Still, just when I think I’m over the hump (what hump that is, I can’t really be specific about), something unfortunate happens. Like I wonder if the dresser in Elfie’s room would look odd if I pulled it away from the wall so I could hang curtains on the window. Or I read in “Entertainment” that George isn’t coming back to Grey’s Anatomy. And then I think, “Oh, I should call my. . . wait. Oh yeah.” And that just sucks. Because there is absolutely — I’ve determined — no other word to describe any and all of this. Not stinks or bites. Not unfair or crappy or fucked up. Not unfortunate or terrible and certainly not horrible (because horrible should really be saved for war and other things that I can’t even bear to write about). No, it basically falls to “sucks.” Because it was awful that this occurred, but it wasn’t unfair. It was unavoidably painful, but it was still excruciatingly beautiful. And even though she’ll never know about the fate of George, we did at least get the chance to talk about the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy.
Tammy Soong is a writer, wife, and mom from Reno, Nevada. She takes an absurd amount of pain medication, but not enough to have actually named her children "Newt" and "Elfie." She spends most days stressing out over clutter, writing stuff for this place, and working on podcasts with her gal pals, the Blogging Betties.