The overlap of love

“Mom? I miss Baci. I wish she didn’t die.”
Kids say the darnedest things. 
In the dark, kneeling against my son’s bed, I feel the prick of hot tears and a jolt of breathlessness. My brain, a spinning rolodex of things to say, is at a loss for words. 
“Me too, sweets. Me, too,” I manage to choke out.
“Can we make a Baci doll? She was the nicest person I ever saw.”
Floodgates. 
For me, becoming a parent truly helped heal the gash in my heart made when my mum left this earth. Curiously, it reconnected me to her; experiencing what she experienced felt like walking in her footsteps. I understood, finally, the saying, “You’ll understand when you have kids.” The immediate love I felt for my son, the protectiveness, the absolute mama bear I-would-do-anything-for-you feeling - I know she felt that for me. I lived it as a recipient, and to be on the other side of that as the giver deepened my relationship with her despite being universes away. For someone who constantly put her children first, I know now, on a parental level, that her decision to “be done” was probably one of the first things she had done solely for self in decades. Her children were grown up enough. She could let go. 
“Mom, do you miss your mom?” My son asked, voice quivering. 
This bedtime conversation is really throwing some unexpected punches. 
“Always, sweets.”
I talk about my mum to my son often. She’s a regular part of conversation, whether it’s me saying, “Your Baci would think you’re SO cool,” or “That was your Baci’s favorite color.” There’s a picture of her nestled inside the bottom corner of a framed family photo hanging in his room. We’ve watched home movies of her so he can hear her voice. Her absence is tangible, but so is her spirit. Her love.
To hear him say, “She was the nicest person I ever saw,” is so innocent, so sweet, so devastating. Hell yeah, sweets, she WAS the nicest person ever. She was SO FUCKING COOL. I know, without a doubt, that she would be enamored with him. With his cheeks that are an exact match for mine when I was a young child. With his silly, excitable, finding-wonder-in-everything self. His love for 70s rock music. She’d be hysterically laughing at his disdain for potatoes. It’s these - the ultra-specific scenarios - that I miss her most. The inside jokes of a family, the experiences that continue family lore. 
Continuing the conversation about her will float her, and her magnanimous love, from one generation to the next. In the way I know my Dziadziu from a story mum would repeat to me - how he saved his cartons of milk given to him during his hospital admission for mum who was pregnant with me so I’d grow - illustrate his character. He died before I was born, a fact I somehow never made the connection with until I was pregnant realizing she and I both experienced a parent never meeting our children. My son will know stories of how she would drive an hour-and-a-half for a year to pick me up from college each weekend because I missed home; how the nickname she gave me as a baby is similar to his own; how the lullaby I hum for him is something she sang because her mom sang; how she was a tomboy who could fix anything and hated the feeling of nail polish on her fingers but she loved getting dressed up; how all of my friends - gal pals and guy friends - adored her, truly; how she was always thinking of her children -continually reaching out and sending mail and leaving notes for us to find; a woman whose mantra was “never quit.” This amalgamation of anecdotes will paint the beautiful, loving, strong picture of her for my son. Make her tangible, a person he feels like he knew. 
To recognize things today I know she would love or find funny, to still have that childish instinct when something goes awry to figuratively reach for her, to see my digital heart rate on my watch steady when I smell her perfume I’ve saved, to be independent and secure and know I can do anything is a testament to how deep, how profound her love was and the secure attachment she fostered since birth. To be loved by a mother in the way I was, I know now more than ever, is SO rare, so special. No one will ever love me in that same way. A mother’s love, particularly from mine, is a different plane. I will love my son the same. And together in that overlap is where I find comfort. There, in love, he does’t have to miss his Baci. And neither do I. 

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.

A mother's love

My son fell asleep in my arms today, both of us locked in an embrace. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I held him close while waiting for him to fall into deep sleep so I could then lay him in his crib without him waking upon landing. We rocked back and forth and I brushed my mouth and nose against his warm head and soft hair, drinking him in and imprinting the memory into my brain.

While waiting him out, I allowed my mind to open the door I mostly keep closed, locking away the memories of eight years ago that still sting. My mum died eight years ago today, a painful culmination of a savage week of hope, despair and crushing loss. Truly, I try not to fully think about those days often because they’re so painful. How naive I was at the time, so buoyed by Mum’s positivity and remarkable success rate at overcoming any illness. 

It’s hard to describe how antagonizing it is to be a young adult living a week of watching your parent’s health rapidly, yet excruciatingly slowly, decline to death. Unbearable is an appropriate term, but I bore it, so I can’t use it as a descriptor. But I barely did. That experience doused my own positivity and created an anxiety that affects me daily.  It is why I take COVID precautions so seriously. Watching your parent die is horrendous. And she didn’t even die “tragically.” She laid in a hospital bed, pumped with morphine, and died “in her sleep.” She had a “death rattle.” I sat in my dad’s lap and watched my mom take her last breath. I heard it. I saw it. It is forever seared into my memory. There is no forgetting that.

Experiences like this make you a more empathic person, Sean says. Of watching someone who is too young to die, die. Watching someone you didn’t think you could live without, die. Watching not just your parent, but a knowledge base, your childhood memory bank, die. Of watching parts of your future memories extinguish before they can ever be made. Of watching someone who loves you unconditionally, who loves you so fiercely in only a way a mother can love their child, die. 

Sean, too, experienced part of this “last week” of Mum’s life. He came to the hospital when she called a family meeting to say she “was done.” He watched us gather around her bed, with other family members on FaceTime and the phone, while she talked to us. Nurses stopped her morphine drip before bringing her to the Hospice ward and he too saw her grimace in pain as the drugs stopped blocking the feeling of someone’s body shutting down. He stood in the room and watched us all at our breaking points trying to keep our shit together for her, for the first rightfully selfish decision she made in a long time. Later, he would say his last words to her while she was in a sleepy morphine stupor, with me by her side, of, “I’ll take care of your girl.” He, too, is empathetic.

On one of the days in the last few weeks of her life, I was at her house doing my “taking care of Kathy” duties. Because she had a hard time walking then, various family members split up days to spend with her and care for her. I remember sitting halfway in her lap on a recliner.  Her lap was a frequent place for me. She hugged me, hard, arms wrapped around my middle. She was more sentimental than usual, and told me she loved me. We stayed embraced like that, not saying anything. I remember I was leaving to go somewhere and honestly felt rushed - pulled among work responsibilities, taking care of her and making dinner for or spending time with Sean. Here is part of that naivety I mentioned. What was she hugging me so hard for? She would get back to doing chemo soon and we’d all eventually be back to normal. She wouldn’t need a wheelchair and would walk unassisted again. She overcame everything thrown her way. She was such a force, such a strong woman with an indomitable will. I had no idea what was coming. 

Becoming a parent has changed the loss of my mum for me. It is a deeper hole in my heart where memories of watching my mum and her first grandchild together don’t get to live. And, in a 2020 plot twist, that hole is only deeper because I can’t watch my dads do this with Calvin, thanks to COVID. Sean, Calvin and I are staying in our bubble, as we should, because Sean and I have already experienced the horror of watching a slow death of someone who I wish so badly was alive today. To potentially be an asymptomatic spreader or unintentional eventual-symptomatic spreader to my Dads would wreck me, and wreck Sean if it were his parents. We empathize with our family who want to hold our son, but - we’ve been in the thick of illness and despair and don’t want to experience that again. Being both an adult child and a parent during this pandemic is cruel. 

Only now, having birthed a child of my own, do I understand what Mum was doing that day when she hugged me tightly, silently and for so long. She was, essentially, doing what I did earlier today to Calvin - breathing in his scent, hugging him as if we were one, burning the memory into my brain for keeps. I assume she knew there would be no “coming back” from the state her body was in then. And maybe Mum had an inkling she was living the last of her days. So she was loving her first child, remembering the days of feeding and rocking, of giving as mothers do all of herself to her child. Hugging me - an extension of her, her heart, breathing me in, holding us close as one, searing the memory into her brain to keep forever. A mother’s love. I’ve felt it. I give it. I fully understand it now. 

I'm not mourning her today

I’m not mourning her today. 

Six years ago this evening, my mom died. Holding my hand, surrounded by most of her family. It was sad, devastating, and painfully traumatic. It was the worst day of my life; a culmination of the worst week of my life. 

By all accounts, I should be mourning her today. I should have been mourning her this past week. But I’m not. Today is insignificant, except it being her death anniversary. And I’m prepared for her absence today. Like my wedding day. Or Mothers’ Day. 

It’s the days when I’m not prepared that I mourn her most. 

Like the day I had to walk into my very first mammogram appointment without her. SO IRONIC! 

In just this past year, I mourned her when I contemplated leaving my previous job for my current one - I talked it over with everyone (thanks for listening to me!) except her. She died knowing me as a reporter. What about now? 

And when I bought a new car (I drove her old one), she wasn’t with me, or in my passenger seat on an adventure, or prodding all the buttons and bells and whistles. She died knowing me driving a different car. What about now? 

Or in October when I went to a local tire store. The last time I was there, I was with her. I took a photo of her in front of a sign that said, “Bald is beautiful ... except here.” She covered the bottom half, so it’s just her, holding her hat and exposing her bald head. The sign is still there. But she is not. 

I mourned her a few weeks ago when I heard a commercial for a Mannheim Steamroller show and laughed out loud and teared up because she would have loved to attend. 

I want to tell her that a co-worker at my new job wears a perfume very similar to hers and when I first smelled it I cried in my office. Or that when my boss smiles his eyes crinkle up like hers. He looks like her dad, too. I want her to know. 

Her absence is a hole I stumble across nearly daily. On all of these occasions, I mourn her. But not on Nov. 3. 

On that date, I mourn myself. My old self. My self BHD. Before Her Death. I was so naive, and innocent, and trusting. Carefree. Less calculating. Lighter. Without worry. It all changed on Nov. 3. 

I see myself in her hospital room on the day she decided she had had enough, and I think, “Oh, girl. You have no idea what you’re in for. You are so unprepared for what you have to do, and what you’re about to go through.” 

It’s with the clarity of six years AHD (After Her Death) that I can view that time period like a video sequence. I can see how the trauma of that week froze and hardened and numbed me. I remember nearly every moment of her in the hospital. I remember waking up on Nov. 4 in my apartment and immediately wailing when the foggy morning grog wore off and I remembered that my mom. had. died. I pulled the sheets over my head, curled in a ball and cried. And then I don’t remember. I don’t remember much of her celebration of life, except that it seemed like a party - rooms full of friends and family. I don’t remember how I got to the funeral home. I remember being in a car, but I don’t remember with who. I don’t remember leaving. Did I sleep in her house or my apartment? What was I doing then? What was I doing a month from then? I don’t know. 

I remember saying that I didn’t want to remember 2013, the immediate year after her death, and saying I didn’t want anything significant to happen in that year, in case there was a proposal or an adventure or something. And I really can’t remember many specific things about that year. On purpose in planning nothing significant, I figured it would be a helpful, mindful coping technique. I didn’t realize my body and mind would employ this technique on their own, in different ways.

In that time, I now realize I developed trauma-induced anxiety, and I probably, very likely, was depressed. I should have listened to my husband and my best friend and saw a therapist. I would probably have felt better faster. I scoffed at taking medication because, I told myself and them, I wanted to feel all the feels now, and get it all over with so I can move forward. When my anxiety got really bad, I ended up taking medication for about a year. I’m not sure it was as helpful as I hoped it would have been. Truthfully, time, it seems, is what helped heal the most. 

I recently read an article about a psychotherapist who works with trauma victims. The article was about a shark attack on the Cape, but the way the doctor described how the body reacts to a traumatic experience - it stiffens and tells the brain there is a complete threat everywhere - resonated. It explained how I had felt - frozen and fearful.  “For people, there’s a surge of sensation that frightens them and keeps them in that frozen state indefinitely.”

Although my mom was battling cancer, her death was sudden and unexpected. She, I guess, just got sick, or got an infection, and her weakened body fought as hard as it could until it couldn’t. She was an immensely strong woman who overcame everything thrown her way. This infection just tripped her up.  

For me, I subconsciously felt like something - anything - could trip ME up. Or my dads. Or husband. Or aunt. And I needed to be in control and prepared and afraid of everything. A combination of fight AND flight. Voila. Trauma-induced anxiety. 

I remained in that state for years. Frozen. I’d say 2015 was the thick of it, and 2017 was when I felt ... warmer. 2018 was The Big Thaw. 

I’m not sure what’s changed. But if I was frozen in 2012, I am nearly thawed today. I’ve been writing every year on this anniversary about how I feel, and how I feel better than the year before. But this year, I feel ... great? I feel almost like my old self again. As if 2012 Kristin is thawed enough for me to grab her hand. I’m going to hold on as hard as I can. 

Time, I’m sure, is the reason. It’s been enough years for this not to feel raw anymore. I think I’ve described this pain as a cut, and then a scab, and then a scar. But this year just feels different. Six years feels like a new chapter. There’s so many new and different things that have happened, projects that are ongoing, plans that are being made, or trying to be made. It’s ... life. It’s life happening. Without her. That hurts. 

It’s always going to hurt. It will never be fair to me that this happened. To her. To me. And I can’t do anything about it, except to remember not to freeze. If I worry about life tripping me up, or my dads, or husband, or family, I’m always going to be anxious and frozen. I can’t prepare myself for every possible scenario, especially the ones that haven’t happened yet, or hopefully won’t happen for a very, very long time. 

But there’s always going to be those unexpected moments. That’s life, right? There’s beauty in that.  Beauty in the new chapters. Even beauty in the mourning.

Car conundrums

May 2009

A deep yellow light illuminated the outskirts of where my bright white headlights should have shown on my garage door. I continuously clicked the proper lever back and forth - no change. My headlights were out, and I took it as the sign for which I had asked. 
Rewind two weeks to Oct. 20. I’m sprawled on my living room floor, hiccup-crying and sputtering the words, “I,” “don’t,” “want,” “a,” “new,” “car” to my husband. News from a local auto repair shop was relayed to me that I need a new catalytic converter to the tune of $1,300. Paired with my recent idea to purchase four new tires before winter, in addition to the fact that my figurative pockets are not deep, I started to cry. 
Reality stings. It’s not so much the higher-than-expected-but-warranted repair costs, but that my car is old, needs another repair, and it might be more of a financially sound decision in the long run to put that money not into my beloved car, but toward a newer one. Lest you think I’m a “hysterical female,” I’ll offer the knowledge that I’m sentimental, frugal and I don’t particularly enjoy major change. The car also belonged to my mum. She died five years ago to this day, Nov. 3.
The coincidence of this car conundrum occurring in these last weeks of October is not lost on me. I actually laughed out loud when I realized. Enough time has passed where moments like this don’t gut me, but instead their absurdity or irony elicit laughter. 
Around the end of October five years ago, my life forever changed. I naively thought whatever had been ailing my Mum up to that point would be something from which she could recover or adapt. She had overcome so much already in 61 years as a 24-year breast cancer survivor who vacillated in and out of remission.
Eight days after she was admitted to the hospital that last week of October, Mum died holding my hand, surrounded by my dads, her best friend, her cousin, and her sister - seconds after her sister, who helped our family in a months-long round-the-clock system of care, had driven back from New York and entered her hospital room. I heard her last breaths, watched her take that final one, and felt her hand grow cold before I let it go. It was the most traumatizing, literally traumatizing, week of my life.
I can’t help but compare it to this current week, the one in which my car is dying - but on a lesser degree. Cue laughter. This car - it took us on journeys. It made memories for us. It’s a 2001 Subaru Forester that carted me around in my senior year of high school. It carried me to college for the first time and brought me back home at times when I just needed my mum. It heard our mother-daughter radio duets (to Lady Gaga and Cher) now turned solos. I transported her to chemotherapy in it, and she later gave it to me after my Impreza was totaled when struck in 2012. I recognized the car as “her” when I’d see it in my rearview mirror or as it pulled into my apartment driveway or work parking lot. My favorite adventures include my mum, who taught me to drive, behind its wheel, and later, in the passenger seat. 

2004

My sentimental side is battling with my frugal side. I know it’s most likely a smarter, better-bang-for-your-buck plan to funnel my funds into a new, used car than repair this one. I’ve replaced both its rear wheel bearings in the last two years, and the car is plagued with weeping head gaskets. I’m disappointed that at 155,000 miles it didn’t reach 200,000 like my last two Subarus - and most Subarus in general - did. If I was wealthy, I would repair it forever. 
Torn on what to do, I asked Mum for a sign. I’d been researching newer, used Foresters, feeling guilty looking at them. I guess I just wanted her permission to let it go. 
Last Saturday evening I headed out to a friend’s house to carve pumpkins. I turned the ignition on and chalked up the lack of headlights to my husband who had driven the car earlier to unload leaves at the landfill. Flicking the light lever back and forth didn’t illuminate my garage but instead, me, realizing its lights had burned out - or so I thought. It’s likely a fuse problem because my high beams work. Regardless, I had my sign. I laughed out loud and felt relief wash over me. 
For Mother’s Day in 2012, I wrote a column about Mum and called her my North Star, “Always present no matter the weather, illuminating the way for me, never burning out.” Those words couldn’t hold more true today. My car’s lights didn’t burn out, but they’ve gone out. And she has illuminated a path for me to take, enlightening me with permission to let go of her car. My North Star, indeed. 

Train of change

How many times can you pinpoint the exact moment - the hour, the minute, the evening or day - your life changed? Where with retrospection, you can see the figurative gears chug into motion, one set of toothed wheels slowly turning until the first link is made, and then the second, and then before you know it, this train of change is speeding up and on track ready to derail life as you know it, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Change is inevitable, both good and bad. Every day it happens, but there are extraordinary moments of change that simply shake you up with such force you’re never able to put your pieces back together in their original shape. The edges of tumbling pieces dull over time, their corners rounding, and if you were to attempt returning them to their primary place, gaps would remain. Fissures have found their way in, and ultimately, your original form simply no longer exists. 

But that doesn’t mean you don’t. You still exist after this radical change. So you adapt and modify, make mistakes and work on them. Eventually you face your new fears and acclimatize to life after the severe change. It’s a metamorphosis. It’s terrifying. It’s ugly, maddening and sad. It’s profoundly lonely. And it’s a journey only you can take, only you can truly work at, only you can decide to no longer feel a certain way because it’s miserable and affecting those closest to you no matter how hard you tried to not let it. Time is the only solution that works best.

I can look back four years ago to Oct. 26 and can clearly see, “Ah yes, that evening when I was wearing a red and white striped sweater at my Mum’s house where I made us dinner, and then brownies from a box in a yellow pyrex bowl that had a photogenic drip so I took a picture,” - that is the exact moment my life changed. Because my Mum wouldn’t eat much of the dinner or brownies I made, and she wouldn’t be able to get out of bed to go to the bathroom, and she wouldn’t be able to stay awake to have a clear conversation. And she would suggest I call her doctor, who would suggest we call an ambulance and head to the hospital. This night, where I arbitrarily watched a couponing show on Netflix in a green recliner chair, so naively thinking that whatever had been ailing Mum up to this point would be something from which she could recover or adapt, this night where I was not scared following her ambulance or entering a hospital because she overcame so much already in 61 years - this is the night where the first link was made in those wheels of change. Eight days later, on Nov. 3, 2012 at 9:33 p.m., mere seconds after her sister, who helped our family in a months-long round-the-clock system of care had driven back from New York and entered her hospital room, Mum would die, surrounded by my dads, her best friend, her cousin, and her sister, holding my hand. I would hear her taking her last breaths, watch her take that final one, and feel her hand grow cold. It was the most traumatizing, literally traumatizing, week of my life. And then that train of change took me on the rockiest ride of my life yet. 

Every year on this day, this anniversary, I reflect on the past year and write about how I feel better than last year. I’ve noted how I feel lighter, every year, and talk about how that year must be the “year of acceptance” because of how much better I feel. But this year, year four - which whoa, I haven’t talked to/danced/laughed with my Mum in four years!? - I know for certain is acceptance. Everyone’s grief is their own, and different, but mine, I can say with certainly, has finished after four years. I know because I don’t feel bad about feeling happy, about feeling grateful to have paid off student debt and to reside where I currently do, because that wouldn’t be a reality if things turned out differently. I love my life, and even though my life for the last four years hasn’t had her in it, I still love it, and that is okay, which was once difficult to reason with.

This train of change had to happen; it was inevitable. It did attempt to derail life as I knew it, and it did deeply change me, but with retrospection, I think this was more of a detour than a derailment.

A scar

Three years later, I've digested my mom's deep, devastating loss, and learned to accept it. My heart no longer has a hole, nor a scab, but a scar. Grief is an excruciatingly slow, long process. Throughout these years, I've thought, "Okay, I've gone through all of the stages," but really, it's taken three entire years for that final stage. This third anniversary feels so much better than the last, because that scab of sorrow is now a scar - a battle wound that shows flesh forever changed. You can pick at it, but it doesn't flake like a scab because it runs deep within. Nothing, not surgery nor the sun, can alter its existence. Initially it feels fresh but soon it doesn't catch your eye for being new, and eventually, it just becomes a part of you. You'll see it every once in a while, and years later, you can retell the story of how you received the scar without wincing. But you're forever changed. That is grief. Well, that is my grief. Yours is different - and that's okay. My universe will never be the same, but I'm alright with that now. If I stop and really think about Mum's absence in my life, I still cannot believe it, and I would give every part of me for just one more hug, one more, "Hey, Kris" or "Hey, Chip," one more dance, adventure, one more day. That's a constant wish, but I understand it won't happen. This third anniversary feels lighter, not as crushing, and I know that this is "acceptance." She's forever a part of me; she's the scar tracing around my fractured heart, holding it together in an eternal hug. She's in my laugh, she's in the booming thunderstorms, in the waves washing ashore, the moon and me. My North Star, illuminating my way, never burning out. 

Mammograms, my mum, and motivation

Only her faded, well-worn denim hat adorned with various enameled pink ribbons and survivor pins accompanied me to my first mammogram appointment instead of Kathy herself. The irony is not lost on me.

For years, my OBGYN recommended I begin mammogram testing at age 27. My direct family history screams, “Test early!” At age 37, my mum, Kathy, was first diagnosed with breast cancer. Her sister was diagnosed in her late 60s.

According to my OBGYN, I needed to get a baseline mammogram 10 years prior to my mum’s age of diagnosis. Because of my age, and subsequent dense tissue, I’d likely receive a false positive.

When you’re 18, 27 is eons away. Annually hearing the same advice over the course of 10 years naturally dulls its impact. It also twists time.

Although I eventually surmised enough independence to venture to appointments on my own, without mum sitting as a security blanket in the waiting room for me, I’d always assumed Kathy would take me to, at the very least, my first mammogram appointment, when I finally turned the ripe ‘ol age of 27. 

Never did I expect she would die from metastasized breast cancer when I was 26, two months shy of turning the long-awaited age of 27.

Here’s how hearing that same advice twists time: age 27 seems drastically old when you’re in your early 20s making a mental note to schedule a mammogram. But thinking about losing your mum at 26? That’s so young!

Visions of chatting with Kathy about her first mammogram while I waited to be called into the doctor’s office, of reclining casually in a waiting room listening to her compare the difference in technology from the late 80s to today, promising her I’d ask to see the resulting picture, disappeared.

Crammed out of my mind in the year after her death, while my brain weighed pressing needs like, “What does Christmas look like without her?” and “Who’s going to call me in the afternoon on my birthday to comedically retell the story of my birth?” and “So if you’re really not coming back, what do I do?,” was scheduling a mammogram.

It wasn’t until I began planning a month-long series profiling breast cancer survivors for the paper of which I am editor did I seriously consider scheduling one.

While chatting with one survivor, who had her breast cancer discovered through a routine mammogram - a tumor so small a self-exam wouldn’t have revealed it - I instinctively shared Kathy’s battle. It comes so naturally; I can’t disassociate breast cancer and survivorship with my mum. She was in and out of remission for 24 years; diagnosed when I was 2. Telling her story, proudly, is different these days, I realize, because there is now an end.

I told the survivor how I’d been recommended to have a mammogram at 27, but put it off. Now, at 28, I was a year behind. Simply, she said, “Well, schedule one!” Perhaps it was her familiar positive attitude or gentle prodding mothers often use when attempting to convince their older child, who is no longer a child, that resonated within and motivated me. Whatever it was, I made the call.

A week later, I showed up for my first mammogram. The radiologist was unsure if I needed it or an ultrasound with less radiation exposure. But after a call to her main office, it was determined I’d get a mammogram.

Speculation about mammograms has produced a reputation associated with pain. Pressed against the cold, metal mammogram machine, I was worried. But the radiologist was friendly and accommodating. She apologized for the repeated repositioning and length I’d have to hold my breath. She was creating my baseline, the image to which future exams would be compared, so she wanted to create the best, most informative picture. I could appreciate that. Plus, she let me see the picture.

Twice on each side I was squished and mammoramed. Uncomfortable? Completely. Slightly awkward? Totally. But manageable? Heck yes!

Following the exam on my way out of the room, I stopped to take a survey in which I’d been asked to participate. The door to the waiting room remained open, and I could see my fiancé, who tagged along (my dad also offered his own company), reading in a row of seats. I’d answered the last question and hit “done” when I heard, “Kathy? The radiologist will see you now,” as the next patient was called.

Hearing that name, at that time, in that place, sent a shock through me. Despite it not “belonging” to my mum, it made all the difference. I teared up and smiled.

Forty-eight hours later, I received my results in the mail and braced for the expected false positive. But it wasn’t there. My test results were normal. I cried.

What I’ve learned in these past two years is you can’t expect certain things to happen. I never expected to lose my mum when I was 26. I honestly didn’t expect to see a clean mammogram. And I didn’t expect to not have Kathy with me at my first exam. But maybe I wasn’t without her after all. And her story, her inspiration, doesn’t have to end.

Schedule your mammogram or call to start that conversation with your doctor today. Urge the other women in your life to do the same -you could be that motivation they need.

Running for a reason

Peter called my bluff with which I didn’t consciously realize I was faltering. 

“No you’re not,” he told me matter-of-factly, in the way one says the sky is blue and the grass is green.

I had just told him I was okay, was holding up fine. 

It’s a keen intuition unfortunately gifted only to those who have experienced tragic, piercing loss; the ability to calculate unnatural blinking patterns, a nod too many, a slight raise of the eyebrows used when trying to convince with conviction. 

Dumbfounded, I paused and reclined in the chair facing him, repeatedly capping and uncapping the red pen I was using to proof the newspaper. A nervous tick. My façade was faulty. Someone could see I was falling apart at the seams.

In the seven months since my Mum passed away, “How are you doing?” is the question I’m most often asked.

Everyone has taken my reply at face value. “I’m okay,” I’ve said. And so they believe just that. 

I like to think they don’t second-guess my answer because, well,  A) I’m a trustworthy woman and B) they can see I’m just as strong as she was. 

But what else am I supposed to say? That I feel lost without someone for whom to care? Entirely too angry I have to deal with this at 27? That every time I wake from dreaming of her I cry uncontrollably, inconsolably, when reality quickly comes crashing? 

I’m sure friends ask because they’re genuinely concerned. But I know they don’t want me to unload the whole of my emotions on them just as much as I don’t want to be a burden.

So I run from a real answer. I mean, I do work in public relations.

Until I had talked with Peter, I hadn’t considered it was okay to not be okay.  I assumed the racing of my mind was normal. That I would soon stop mentally running in circles from an emotional ebb and flow.

Initially, I ignored it, like most things I don’t want to deal with in life. But after chest pain, continual stomachaches and breakouts worse than the whole of my teens, I had to be honest with myself. I’m not okay. I have anxiety. 

Mum and I had a running joke when she would tell me to not lift something heavy or she’d ask someone for help. “Don’t you know who my mother is?” I’d reply back. “I can do anything.”

To realize I’m not invincible – and that’s okay - was kind of an “ah-ha” moment. Something needed to change. 

On a whim, I joined friends Trudy and Janet in May and ran the route of a local 5k. Every .5 miles I had to stop and catch my breath. But for the first time in months, I fell asleep without a case of the “What-Ifs?” I slept through the night. And I felt great the next morning.

Today, we run three times a week. I participated in my first official 5k Saturday. More importantly, I don’t feel so anxious and sad. I’ve learned to focus and channel my energy, nervous or excited, into a steady cadence.  

On the third of every month, I still have a hard time leaving my bed. I still ache for my Mum. And my mind will race every once in a while. 

But I’m keeping the running for the road. 

***

Coincidently enough, I'm obsessed with this song, called, "Time to Run," by Lord Huron. 

Messages from Mum

Cheeses of all kinds blurred together into one bright orange block as I attempted to compose myself in Big Y’s dairy aisle last week.
Moments earlier, my body let out an audible, involuntarily gasp as I passed a woman whose perfume wafted my way.
It was Tova. My Mum’s signature perfume.
I nearly dropped my basket.
Memories are one thing I’ve managed to confront with little problem these days. And I readily inhale her faint smell still traceable in sections of her house. But to come in contact with this scent I’ve forever associated with my Mum in a random aisle in a grocery store six months after her passing literally stopped me in my tracks. I was not prepared for this.
I understand I cannot equip myself for every similar moment, although I do try. Each month seems to bring its own high and low.

April found me preparing for the six-month marker the first week of May, and conversely, her birthday the last. Ironically in this effort, I had forgotten about Mothers’ Day.
A purple sign displaying “Mothers’ Day Cards!” caught my attention in Target and I thought, “Ooh!” and then immediately, “Oh.”
This holiday dedicated to mothers is not something in which I will participate this year. And I feel wholly cheated. It makes me want to scream with anger, frustration and despair. 
I just want my Mom!

My friends feel her absence, too. One recently told me she had a “What would Kathy do?” moment when solving a problem. Another just this evening said it feels like a night she would drink tea with Mum and I and get some good advice.
My Mum was a mom to more than just my brother and me. So many of my friends wished she were theirs. Her nickname was “K-Mom.” I know I’m incredibly lucky to have called her mine.
She is here, though. I can feel her.

A partial lunar eclipse paired with a pink moon April 25 found me ascending the Mt. Holyoke Range to snap some shots of the giant moon. As that vantage point didn’t pan out, I drove to various spots in South Hadley to look for a better view.
Parked in front of a field near McCrays, I lamented the loss of my moon-watching Mum and adventure sidekick. She once gave me a card that said, “Every time you see the moon, it’s me watching over you. I’m with you always.”
With a giant moon in my view, I felt closer to her that night than I have since she passed.
Last weekend at the Springfield Symphony with my boyfriend, Sean, I picked up tickets a co-worker held at will-call under my name. Mum and I often would have symphony dates. She loves those strings!
“Enjoy your show, Kathryn,” the ticketmaster said.
Again I found myself gasping out loud, with tunnel vision focused on the name printed on my ticket envelope – hers. Shaking, I held it up to show Sean, tears instantly streaming.

I can’t explain how her name appeared on my tickets. But I’m taking it as a sign she’s saying hello.
Last Mothers’ Day I wrote a column about Mum, calling her my North Star. Always present, no matter the weather. Illuminating my way. Never burning out. The best in the universe.
That analogy couldn’t have held more true.
These days are painful, but progressively less so. And like the cheese I composed myself in front of last week, this pain will get better with time. But it’ll still stink.