Tangible even ten years later

Her voice is within me. I hear it more often these days. Literally it is in various vowel sounds of my lower register. Figuratively it’s in my automatic “Yahm!” reply to my son when he says, “Mom!” The first time I reflexively replied, “Yahm,” I laughed and smiled, thinking of her and how we used to do the same exchange, with roles reversed.

TEN years later, that’s kind of how my grief is.  There’s not much that makes me lose it these days. Time will do that to you - getting used to a milestone missed. The usual ones you’d find in a family and close group of family-like friends - marriages, divorce, deaths and births - aren’t the events that make me feel those heartstring tugs. I do wonder what songs we would have danced to at my wedding, or how she’d comfort a childhood friend navigating a divorce, or what nickname she’d give to my son. But it’s the small, ultra-specific moments that can immediately illicit tears. Like when I finally had to buy a new car and donate hers. It’s just a car to some, but to me it was an extension of her, my tomboy, car-loving mom. Driving it made her feel tangible. Or when I first sang to my newborn son the lullaby she made up and hummed to me when I was a baby - I couldn’t get through the first few words without sobbing, in part thanks to that postpartum hormone rush. Some days even now I can’t stop a tear or two when singing it to him. 

It’s cruel to be a parent without your mom.  But surprisingly, this is where I’ve “found” her the most - connected in motherhood in two different universes. We were almost the same age when we each gave birth and I’ve felt close to her again imagining her doing the same things I’m doing with my son but to me at his age. When I was born she wrote in lined notebooks, keeping track of the the newborn minutia. As I grew it became a log by whomever was watching my brother and me - her, dad, Baci - of who visited, what I ate (lots of pears), and what I was doing (coloring with blue crayons on the porch). I dug these notebooks spanning my first two years out of storage last year and just immersed myself into them, made even easier since I live now in my childhood home. It’s like I can step back in time and find tangible answers to my motherhood questions from the best in the business. 

Ten years is both an eternity and a blink of an eye. How is it possible she died 10 years ago? Ten! What would she be like today? What would she look like, ten years older? What would she call my son? I can imagine for the most part and when I do a deep imaginary dive, I find those heartstring tugs and waterworks. I know she would chuckle that her cat, which she didn’t ask for but reluctantly adopted from my brother, is somehow still alive and kicking, now making me the reluctant cat owner. And me - wow. What would I tell her? Ten years later I am 36. I book annual mammograms years earlier than my peers because of her history. I am a MOM. I changed jobs. I no longer have the years-long trauma-induced anxiety I developed after caring for her in the last week of her life. I’ve held firm boundaries like she modeled. We talk less but I’m still good friends with my core group of pals she knew and loved. I’ve made new friends she would adore. I really wish she could have met my former boss. 

My heart hurts when I see things I know she would like or wear or do, but there’s a beauty in that, in knowing her so well, even a decade later. That, too, makes her tangible today. She still exists if I know what she’d listen to, watch, or buy these days. She still exists because I hear her in my voice. I see her in the way I parent, both naturally and trying to emulate the magical childhood she helped create. She still exists in the traditions she started that I carry out. Ever the moon lover, I truly felt she was with me giving birth, two weeks late, because my son was born on a day with a super moon - when the moon is the closest it ever gets to earth. I know she and the universe worked together on that one. 

My son’s room is what used to be her office. In transforming it from my brother’s lair, she added translucent glitter to the ceiling to emulate stars, her favorite, as was all celestial things. Months ago, my son noticed their sparkle with the way his lamp light was reflecting through them and I said, “Those are Baci’s stars. She put them there.” Months passed. He became more talkative. One day while I was changing his clothes, he said, “Baci!” and I stared at him, so surprised. “Baci?” I asked, wondering why she would show herself to him and not me. “Baci!” he said, and pointed up, to the glittery refracted light. Baci’s stars. The floodgates opened. A tangible connection to her for my son. She’s still real. She still exists. Even in a new generation.