My first year without Mom

“It goes so fast.” My dad and I are in the waiting room of the ICU. It is December 5, 2016, and my mother was admitted that morning, after she wasn’t responding for my dad and coded in the ambulance on the way to the ER. She was resuscitated with the paddles, but intubated and was being kept alive by machines.

I knew my dad wasn’t talking about the day. It wasn’t the day that was going by fast. That was slow motion. My ride from CT to MA felt like a lifetime. He was talking about this life. “The days are long but the years are short.” He was talking about his lifetime with my mom, this life they made together, raising three children. How quickly it feels time passes.

Only now do I truly appreciate the sentiment, being married almost 11 years with my partner of 17 years, remembering our first date like yesterday; Having two of my own children, and feeling like they were both born yesterday, yet blown away by how much bigger they look each day at 5 & 3.

My parents celebrated their 42nd anniversary on April 12, after mom miraculously “recovered” and was released from the hospital/rehab and sent home, a couple months after that nightmare following December 5.  She later died at home May 2. Less than two weeks after her death was my first Mother’s Day without my mom, and so began the countdown - the year of firsts without my mom.

This whole year has been a year of firsts without her, but what my dad and I have come to discover, is the anticipation of those firsts is always far worse than the day itself.  We all expected Christmas to be horrible because Christmas was my mom’s favorite, but truly it was not so bad, I expect because we have little kids to keep things light - it is hard to feel sad when you have little ones excited about Santa Claus. Whereas abstract days, like the date I knew was last day I saw her, was particularly difficult.

Having small kids makes it difficult to grieve the loss of one’s parent. I’m too busy to be sad in the every day. I don’t have time to grieve the loss of my mother, except in the quiet moments.

With two active boys those quiet moments are few and far between, but when they come the grief comes hard. The grief comes in huge, engulfing and suffocating waves.  And sometimes it’s hard to stop when the quiet stops,so when Nick sees me crying he will ask, “Mom, why are you crying?” but before I can answer him he will say “I know it’s because you miss Nini. It’s always because of Nini.” I know I am lucky that this is the only reason why I cry. And I’m lucky to feel this uncomplicated grief for the loss of my mom. I miss her because she was a wonderful mother and friend. The sadness I feel is so hard to hold on to, but it is a gift, because it means I loved, and felt loved, and being a mom now I can better appreciate just how much this woman loved me. And so begins year two.