thursday and things are looking up

Memo to myself for next year... no major decisions the week before Mother's Day.

When you have major surgery there is a clause on the release forms you sign that I probably should have read before deciding to purchase a house while I was on percocet.  I am paraphrasing, but it goes something like "wait two weeks after surgery before making major decisions."

I heeded that advice after surgery in 2012 to repair my clavicle, but missed it after the surgery in 2004 to remove a tumor in my finger and nearly bankrupted myself.  That story has a happy ending and is a tale for another time.

On May 12, 2007 we took my mother to the hospital to be hydrated.  She had been battling cancer since October, 2006 and the chemotherapy was running roughshod through her weakened immune system.  May 12 also happened to be her birthday.  I arrived at my parents house that morning with some presents, a baby blue hand knit purse with wood handles is the only thing I can remember because it was never used and sat on a shelf in my parents' office until my father passed away in 2014, the rest of that day and year is covered in a gauzy haze of grief.

I do remember that the next day was Mother's Day, and I will never forget that my mother never came home again.  She spent the next two weeks in the oncology ward at Hoag Hospital and passed away the Friday of Memorial Day weekend.

In an odd twist of fate and coincidence my stepdaughter's birthday is also May 12th, and I will guiltily admit here that because it is a day of deep mourning for me every year I have a difficult time even wishing her a happy birthday, although I love her dearly.  The same goes for my mother-in-law, who I also love very much.   Her birthday is May 13th.  The psychic pain and longing I have for my mother in the weeks leading up to her birthday and Mother's Day are something I never could have imagined all those years that I took both events for granted, something we would all celebrate together until the end of time.  

But, I have not learned, although it will be a decade this weekend, to heed the warning signs that an emotional tsunami is heading my way.   Yesterday I resigned from a project that I had actually been enjoying, telling myself all kinds of stories that seemed very real in that moment, and then this morning I found myself sobbing in the back yard trying to explain to my husband why gifts of heavy books bring back all the memories of cleaning out my parents' house, and the agony I feel thinking about all the photos I have of my parents and my parents' parents in the closet -- faces I never met, passed down through generations, destined to be swept away along with my unused art supplies when it is time for my soul to leave here and join my mom and dad and all who have gone before me.  In other words, he was faced with an avalanche of emotion that he did not see coming, although all the warning signs have been there this week had either of us paid better attention.

This is not new territory.  If you google "motherless daughter on mother's day" a cavalcade of articles will greet you. But, and maybe this is just me feeling sorry for myself, it seems particularly unfair to have a mother who was born on Mother's Day and who left us weeks later.

I also never noticed the relentless ad blitz that accompanies the second weekend of May until my mom died, and in the past decade, thanks to social media and the ever increasing efficiency of branded content and online marketing, it is messaging I cannot escape.  You know how children stick their fingers in their ears and say "nah nah nah" when they don't want to hear something?  I perform a visual version of that tactic as the emails flood my inbox with Mother's Day tips, but my soul is not buying it.  Deep inside of me where her DNA dictated my large feet, strong fingernails, toothy smile, long legs, there is howling, a primal scream, "I want my mommy."

I am quite aware that I do not really have anything that new to add to the google search for "motherless daughters," but I had a strong sense that I wanted to write about her today.  I wanted to remind myself and all those who knew her that she was hilarious, that she had two best friends Marilyn and Dee, that they went to Europe together before they were all married, that she loved her husband and her daughters with a ferocity that in her absence left a hole in all of us that nothing will ever fill.

So, to all the motherless daughters I am sending out a giant hug of understanding and compassion, and a reminder that I will heed next year, in fact I may tattoo it on the part of my forearm that still has some space left, "do not make major life decisions in the week leading up to Mother's Day."

Me

my mom

on vacation in Europe.. gorgeous..a motherless daughter herself, future mom to three of her own

The ones she loved most, me and my beautiful sisters