Lifetime, Three Days Grace

Grief is a real bitch. There are days that it sits in the corner, sulking, waiting for a low day to jump into. Then there are days that it will hit me with any combo of Judo Nage-Waza moves and I lay with the grief for hours, days. Sometimes it’s a familiar scent or a favorite movie, or it’s something exciting that I want to share but apparently there are no phones in the ether, the Universe, whatever you believe contains the souls of the afterlife. And it fucking sucks.

Death, unfortunately, is inevitable and truly inescapable. If you’re lucky, it happens with less frequency so you have time to ride the waves of sadness and heartbreak and longing for one more day with them.

I lost my mom to a massive heart attack May 2018, just after my birthday and the weekend before Mother’s Day. Her death ripped a hole in my soul. I lost my anchor, my best friend, my connection to all that I am, all that I ever was. She was my compass and she was just gone from my life.

Since moving to Washington, I marvel at all of the things my mom would have loved about living up here. The weather, the coffee, the food, the weed, all of it. I know in my heart that had she lived here, she’d still be alive (her healthcare was shit at best, the docs and their failure to care for her will always be her primary cause of death in my mind).

So who did I talk to when she died? I have siblings, but as the oldest, I felt a certain responsibility to hold it all together, to maintain what we used to have when I lived up the street or a few hours drive away from most of them. And I am a mom, whose kiddo’s favorite person died, I had to keep it together for him too. Moms don’t get to grieve, they get to put on happy faces and trudge through life and cry in their pillows, in the shower, in the closet, in the car sitting in the driveway. Then my brother told me they were expecting, a final gift from mom. We were thrilled of course. He swore me to secrecy and with that, we talked so much more than we had since I moved. He was all grown up, married, good job, baby boy on the way, three beautiful girls who look more like him every day, our mom would have been so happy to see him flourish. I was sure we were both seeing the other side of grief over our mom.

So sure.

Until my middle sister called me sobbing, just after my mom’s 2nd angel birthday, my brother took his own life. And that broke me in more pieces than I’ll ever ever be able to put back together. His death snapped the only thread I was clinging onto as I dangled over a sea of grief. The piranhas grabbed me and took me under, depths of sad and broken and lost.

And all I wanted to do was talk to my mom.

I truly did not think that they had an expiration date long before they were collecting social security. I expected my mom to be in her 80s, still getting me to dye her hair light neutral blonde so it blended in her grays. Still watching the inevitable reruns of Law and Order or Iron Chef. I expected my brother to be a grumpy but hilarious old man, head of salt and pepper, attempting to do Fat Bastard for his grandkids, smoking the finest kush and still trying to convince me that IPAs are better than all other beers.

I truly thought we had a lifetime together.

We had less than 40 years and dammit, that was not enough time. They had so much more life to live, more love to give, more laughs to share.

I guess a lifetime of missing them is all I get instead.