Last week, I shared a little bit of the story of the loss of my mother with a perfect stranger. The conversation, up to that point, was kinda formal, but gradually, it became more casual. Really, we were meeting, well, to meet, and to get to know one another. We chatted about how we each did physically grueling challenges and discovered that we each did them for the same reasons -- for therapy in the mourning process of losing our mothers to leukemia, me, 23 years ago, she, just a few years ago.
After that meeting, I got to thinking about the mourning process and where I am in there. There's denial, anger, bargaining, depression, then acceptance. To be honest, I don't think I ever really went through "the process". There are times I feel parts of it though. I can't say I've done much bargaining. I'm not very good at it anyway. (You should have seen me in the markets of Bangkok. Thumbs down.) And denial hasn't done much good in my life either. Sadly, the loss of my mother has been a reality more than her existence has. In some senses, she's felt like a fictional being I've created in my mind. I've filled in the blanks of my memory of her with stories I've heard from my siblings and father. I find these days, I feel more of the depression and anger. Or well, I don't think I can call it depression. It's more sadness. But that's been woven through every day for the past 23 years. The anger set in mostly over the past year. I think it's mostly because I fail to understand the big picture sometimes. But for the most part, I've accepted it. I guess it's one of those cases where "time heals all wounds", even though this wound seems like it'll never be completely healed. I feel like I wasn't old enough to have closure, not that many people get closure before losing a loved one.
When I think back 23 years ago to what I was doing, I realize I was almost completely oblivious to what was happening. To me, it was just another day at Sunnybrook Hospital to visit Mom. I was actually playing in a room with my cousins and brother, but it wasn't one of the usual rooms we were in -- not my Mom's room, not the lounge, not the cafeteria. Now that I think about it, it was probably a meeting room. It had a lot of chairs and a chalkboard, which my cousins and I covered with coloured pieces of chalk, and we were hopping from chair to chair. A stranger walking into that room would have thought it was full of kids who were happy. And we were. We didn't know what was going on just down the hallway, nor did we know where the rest of our family was. When they came in crying, the feeling of the room immediately changed. Strangely, in my memory, the colours fade to black and white.
That was 23 years ago. Today, I'm sitting at my computer at our dining table while our son alternates between playing with his toy truck and pulling at my legs. It's so bizarre. While he seems oblivious to what's happening while he's playing, he also realizes intermittently that he wants his Momma too. And that's what I feel like. I may not have gone through the grieving process traditionally, but in between work and play, I still want my Mommy.
