The First of Many

Dear Mom,

It has been two months without you. 8 weeks. 60 days.

It feels like a lifetime since I’ve last seen you or hugged you.

I don't honestly know what I expected in the aftermath of your death. It is sort of hard to remember whatever naïve idea I had while you were still alive, as to how I would handle this life without you. I remember thinking it would not be easy per se, but easier.

I was wrong.

This is not easy.

I thought because I did SO much anticipatory grieving in the years leading up to your death, I somehow was reaching my lifetime quota for crying and grieving.

I was wrong.

People, books, professionals, they all warn you about the inevitable “firsts” without someone; how hard they will hurt. The sting you will feel.

There are the predictable firsts, holidays, birthdays, anniversaries – the big things.

But what they don't talk about? The things that have really killed me in the last 2 months? The normal, everyday firsts.

Nobody told me that I would feel like I wanted to die that first morning waking up without you in the world.

Or that the first night in weeks that I finally sleep all the way through the night I will wake up and feel awful at the realization that for the first time since you died I slept all the way through.

Or how hard taking a first shower would be. For some reason, the thought of showering the remnants of you off of me seemed like an impossible task. I told Cris I just wasn’t ready. It took me probably 3 days? Maybe more, I can’t remember anymore, to finally step into the shower. I knew it was stupid, and that you would give me shit for it. I could hear you in my head, “It is just a shower, Kimberly.” I stepped reluctantly into that first shower without you and sobbed. I held myself up against the wall and let the water wash over me and drown out my cries. The last hugs and kisses from you felt like they were swirling at my feet.

Nobody told me how hard it would be to watch a first sunset without you. 72 hours after they took you away, we set off for the Oregon coast as a family.

I couldn't bear the thought of celebrating your first birthday without you, just two days after you died. Going away for your birthday had become a ritual, it felt wrong to not do it this year.

So, we all, in a sense, ran away to Oregon.

I felt almost excited to go. There isn’t really a word to accurately describe what I felt, perhaps relief?

Then I felt awful at the realization that it was the first time that I felt almost excited since you died.

Nothing should be joyful, I thought.

Nobody warned me about how fucking awful I would feel after being excited for the first time without you.

Upon our evening arrival in Seaside, we immediately headed to the beach. As I crested a sand dune, I got my first glimpse of the ocean.

It was like another bullet in the back.

The view of the ocean took my breathe away.

The sight of the ocean killed me, which caught me off guard.

“She would have loved this” I thought to myself.

I let the wind blow my hair out of my face, closed my eyes, and breathed deeply.

“The first beach without you,” I whispered into the sea.

Every first without you feels like a little piece of me dies.

--

Hudson and I made a cake for you. It felt right, I bake everyone a cake. It was a necessary exercise for me. It ended up bringing us all great joy watching him.

I woke up on your birthday and my first thought was, “It is her birthday today.”

And I didn't feel overwhelmingly sad for the first time since you had died. And then I broke down because I hadn’t felt immediately broken.

I put on my “Still with Her” Hillary Clinton shirt that I bought in the aftermath of the election. The shirt was worn as a badge of honor following the election to help soothe my wounds and say to the world, “I am still with her.”

But on your birthday?

I wore it because I am still with you. Still with my Mom.

Always with you.

There were moments throughout the day where it felt almost normal without you. And with predictable regularity, each time I had that thought, I became distraught.

Our first normal family outing without you.

I just don't ever want anything to be normal without you.

We spent the afternoon at Cannon Beach. It felt good and right to go to a place you would have loved on your birthday. We watched Hudson dig, and I drank rose on the beach, in your honor.

It felt sad, but it mostly just felt good to honor you in that way.

We decided to go out to celebrate your birthday.

While seated at the table, “A Long December” by the Counting Crows came on. For some reason, it knocked the wind out of me and the tears flowed down:

A long December and there's reason to believe

Maybe this year will be better than the last

I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leavin'

Now the days go by so fast

And it's one more day up in the canyons

And it's one more night in Hollywood

If you think that I could be forgiven I wish you would

The smell of hospitals in winter

And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls

All at once you look across a crowded room

To see the way that light attaches to a girl

And it's one more day up in the canyons

And it's one more night in Hollywood

If you think you might come to California I think you should

Drove up to Hillside Manor sometime after two a.m.

And talked a little while about the year

I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,

Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her

And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe

Maybe this year will be better than the last

I can't remember all the times I tried to tell my myself

To hold on to these moments as they pass

And it's one more day up in the canyon

And it's one more night in Hollywood

It's been so long since I've seen the ocean I guess I should

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

The waiter came to deliver our drinks and I sat there trying to cry inconspicuously, and failing miserably.

I feel like I need a tattoo across my forehead that says to the world:

WOUNDED PERSON – GRIEVING.

HANDLE WITH CARE – PRONE TO PUBLIC CRYING.

Or a tattoo that says, “Motherless Daughter.”

Our first dinner out, without you. There was no guide to that in any books on grief I’ve read.

We piled into the car to go back to the beach house. We decided we would have a beach bonfire with drinks to celebrate you before doing cake.

The doors closed and then I farted.

And it stunk. Badly.

Jennifer was freaking out, trying to air the car out, and for the first time since losing you, I let out a deep, roaring, belly laugh.

I laughed and laughed and laughed.

I thought: You would have thought it was so fucking funny.

On the second night without you, I climbed into bed, crying. I asked Cris if I would ever feel joy again. He said that someday, when something is truly joyful, I will feel joy again.

For a fleeting moment in that car, I felt joy.

And then it all came crashing down and I broke down. How can I laugh without you?

The first time laughing without you.

I then realized, there will be no more fart and poop jokes or humor with you; and I broke down.

It hurt so good and so bad in every way.

Then Cris got in the car and nearly choked at the smell and the uproarious laughter began again.

I laughed and laughed and laughed.

Tears streamed down my face, but good ones for the first time, in a long time.

I was laughing so hard that people walking by were actually staring at us.

One guy even remarked, “I want to be in that car!”

I laughed all the way home. Harder than I probably should have, punctuated by the occasional sob at realizing how beautiful and messy and happy and horrible everything is at once.

It did feel so good to laugh.

There were also a few more tears, but mostly the good kind.

We pulled into our driveway and the light was perfectly golden. I love sunsets and love photographing them over water.

Everyone was taking too long to get their asses into gear and I knew we were losing light. So, I decided to run to the beach, about 6 blocks or so.

I ran so hard and so fast.

It hurt.

But it felt good to have something hurt that wasn’t my heart.

As I was racing towards the sunset, I saw a piece of wood, painted white with “FREE” written on it. For some reason, I felt compelled to grab it, so I swiped it as I was running.

I lumbered towards the beach with my gypsy bag slung over my shoulder, full of a bottle of Rose, plastic cups, my camera over my other shoulder, and the FREE sign under an arm.

I am sure I looked like a crazy person running at the speed I was, all of my shit flopping side to side.

As I crested the sand dune yet again and caught sight of the sun setting over the ocean, everything hit me like a ton of bricks.

I buckled over, and put my hands on my knees.

I couldn't breathe, and it wasn't just because I had run faster than I ever had in the entirety of my life.

How can this beautiful sunset possibly be happening when you aren’t here?

The first sunset gazing without you.

Sometimes I wish there was a list that I could mark off, all the fucking horrendous first things I am going to have to do and get over.

Why do books and websites and people only talk about the obvious firsts that you can see coming a mile away; birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, vacations, weddings, births? Everyone talks about how hard those days are, especially the first ones.

But sunsets? Walking through a door? Seeing the ocean?

No one talks about how hard they will be.

More bullets in the back.

I set myself back upright and started shooting away. The sunset was beautiful.

The beach was nearly empty, it felt like it was just you and I.

I walked to the water’s edge and as the tide came rushing around my ankles, the flood gates opened.

I looked up at the beautiful ombre pink sky and cried out into the wind. I howled for you.

There wasn't anyone even close to me, so it was just the sounds of the waves listening to my cries of agony.

I called out for you, told you I missed you, said I couldn't do this without you, it is just too hard.

I decided I wanted a photo of me in this moment. It felt like such a powerful moment, a juxtaposition of utter beauty and utter devastation.

A picture of love run over with no place to go.

I started snapping selfies. You can see the tears streaking my face.

As I took some selfies I realized it was another first…my first selfie since you’ve died.

I remember thinking in the aftermath of your death that I will never take another photo, or post anything to social media that is stupid. Why? Seemed so pointless. Other than posting writing about you, everything else felt meaningless. I eventually did, of course. The first post I hit send on that didn't pertain to you was so difficult.

Another first without you.

I hit send, and then I cried.

These selfies I snapped will serve as a reminder that I survived that first sunset without you.

Some people probably wonder why I want to remember such pain. But I really see it as remembering survival. I did this excruciating thing I did not believe I had the courage to face.

It was hard, but I survived.

By the time everyone else joined me, the sun had already sunk beneath the skyline.

The sunset was just for you and I.

We made a fire and poured drinks.

The fire was difficult to light owing to the wind. Another group saw we were struggling and explained that they were leaving and that we could take over their fire.

Cris and Michael said thank you, and that they would just move the fire.

Wait…what?!?

Move the fire?

Cris and Michael used cardboard boxes and sticks to literally move the flaming logs to our little fledgling fire.

The lady who offered us the fire said, very loudly:

“What in the shit?! God damn rednecks!”

We all howled with laughter. Knee slapping, belly aching laughter.

Mom, you would have died. It was so fucking funny.

While we were surrounding the fire, I asked Cris to take a photo of us. Shyawn wasn’t there, so it was just me, Michael, Jennifer, Dad, and Hudson.

He snapped a photo of us in front of the fire, our faces aglow from the flames.

When I reviewed the photos, I said outload to Jennifer, 

“Our first family photo without her.”

 The tears streaked down.

First family photo without you was not on the list.

Where is that god damn list?

I am sure if I saw the thousands of firsts I will have to experience without you, that will inevitably take me decades to get through, I would be utterly overwhelmed and devastated and unable to go on.

Perhaps the list is a bad idea.

I am still not even to one day at a time, I am more at the one second or minute at a time stage. An entire list would likely destroy me.

Oh, Mom, the ache.

We returned to the beach house to light the candles and sing happy birthday to you, without you, for the first time.

These mother fucking stupid firsts.

Usually firsts are to be celebrated, posted about on social media.

Look! Our first house!

He took his first steps!

You aren’t supposed to post, hey look guys! My first selfie without her! Hooray!

Hudson sat in the chair of honor to blow out the candles for you.

Singing to you was excruciating.

Why aren’t you here?

We all broke down in our own ways after that.

It was so hard.

It all just feels hopelessly broken without you.

The beach house had a million VHS movies to watch. VHS?! I didn't realize people even had those anymore.

On our last night, I felt like I really needed to watch a super sad movie. Everyone did not like this idea, but I explained that I wanted to cry about something that wasn’t my own pain.

I had really wanted to watch Beaches, in your honor. When we had arrived a few days prior, I told myself that if I found Beaches, it would be a sign from you, that you were there.

I looked for Beaches; I couldn't find it.

I was pissed.

Fast forward to our last night, and I was determined, Beaches just HAD to be there. I looked again, no luck.

I had Cris look, even though he didn't want to watch it. It wasn't there.

Again, I was pissed.

I so wanted a sign from you.

We were deciding from a few choices, and I wasn’t really happy with any of them. I went back to the shelf with the movies. And suddenly….

There it was;

Beaches.

Just sitting there, right in front, on top.

I picked it up, almost in disbelief.

I turned around to Cris, “Did you put this here?”

“No.”

“Did you see it here and just not say anything?”

“No, I swear, I didn't see it.”

“How did it get here?” I wondered out loud, more to myself than anyone else.

But I know.

Thank you.

Ultimately, I lost out on Beaches because everyone said it would just be too fucking said. They are probably right.

Michael said to me, so eloquently it has continued to stay with me,

“Kimberly, you need to stop farming your grief so much.”

“What?”

“Farming your grief. Cultivating it. Just let it happen. You are sad enough without farming it.”

Whoa.

So deep.

So true.

We decided to watch Marley and Me. A sad movie to be sure, but it is about a dog dying at least, not a Mom.

Turns out, Marley and Me prompted some grief farming.

It was also the first time I watched TV without you.

At the end of the movie, Michael again reminded me to stop farming my grief so intensely. It’ll be there and come when it comes, and that it will be good for me to get back to normal he said.

I told him, “There is no going back to normal, there is no going back. My life is forever changed.”

He shrugged, I think he understood. Michael of usually so little words.

As we were leaving the beach house the next day, I turned to look at the empty bedroom that Cris and I slept it. It felt like that room had seen some shit; the room I in part convalesced in after losing you. I was alone and took a minute to just reflect on the enormity of the last week; the tears that were cried, the feelings that were felt.

I closed my eyes. It felt hard to leave a room that felt so sacred.

And then, clear as day, I heard your voice in my head:

“I am not this room.”

I opened my eyes, and for the first time, I noticed that the large windows in the room were actually four different windows, standing side by side.

At that moment, intense sunlight shone through all four.

It was as if you, the universe, was saying:

And then there were four. You all will be ok.

Thank you.

Michael, Dad, Cris and I took the scenic way back, up the peninsula. I think we all were trying to avoid getting back to reality.

I had my eyes closed and was listening to the song, “Brave” by Sara Bareilles. As I was listening to it, I suddenly heard your voice again clear as day in my head,

“Open your eyes.”

So I did, without hesitation.

What I saw was a large swath of scabbed, recently clear-cut land, covered in thousands of bright, yellow wildflowers.

There is beauty to be found over scars.

A few weeks after you died, I noticed your white blanket that I now sleep with on the ground below my bed. I picked it up and instinctively smelled it. I inhaled deeply over and over, trying to find your scent.

But it was gone.

The blanket no longer smelled like you; it seemed like another loss.

The first time the blanket didn't smell like you. I knew it would come, but I didn't fully realize how difficult it would be for me.

I am still constantly having to remind myself that you are dead.

I regularly find myself saying, in part as a reminder to myself:

“My Mom is dead. My Mom is dead. My Mom is dead.”

I’ve been furiously preparing for your memorial the past few weeks. I have cried oh so many tears sorting through photos of you, reading your eulogy aloud. It is so hard without you.

I just keep thinking, how am I never going to see you ever again?

Two months seems long enough. I could literally live for 60 more years. I could live your entire lifetime, without you. Without my Mom.

I get dizzy just thinking about it, so I try to stay in the present moment.

When on the plane, in my invisible little bubble where clearly no one else on the plane can see me, I cried and cried.

I tried to sleep, and had my sleep mask on. The sleep mask caught the tears before they slid down my face and a wet pool of tears welled up in the sleep mask.

I woke up with salty tear crustations everywhere.

Gross.

It also made me laugh.

My first flight without you.

I just miss you so.

While traveling, I was always in constant text communication with you. I just miss talking to you, seeing you.

What I wouldn't give to get in one more squeeze, one more hug. Give you another kiss and tell you,

I love you so much and this life is just miserable without you in it. I will always miss you.

In the midst of writing this, I came across a very old article by Cheryl Strayed of “Wild.” She posted it and I randomly came across it. It hit me so deeply so many times. There were so many passages that could have been written by me. But this passage in particular brought me some solace in my grief and thought processes around your death:

“It was simply a story about what it was about, which is to say, the absurd and arbitrary nature of disappearance, our hungry ache to resurrect what we’ve lost, and the bald truth that the impossible can become possible faster than anyone dreams. All the time that I’d been thinking, I cannot continue to live, I’d also had the opposite thought, which was by far the more unbearable: that I would continue to live, and that every day for the rest of my life I would have to live without my mother. Sometimes I forgot this, like a trick of the brain, a primitive survival mechanism. Somewhere, floating on the surface of my subconscious, I believed – I still believe – that if I endured without her for one year, or five years, or ten years, or twenty, she would be given back to me; that her absence was a ruse, a darkly comic literacy device, a terrible and surreal dream. What does it mean to heal? To move on? To let go? Whatever it means, it is usually said and not done, and the people who talk about it the most have almost never had to do it...”

Here I am, 60 days later, living without you. Doing the impossible. It was as if Cheryl was writing about my own life.

She goes on later to talk about losing her Mom’s wedding ring swimming in a river. It touched me deeply because I wear your ring now:

“I dove under one time, two times, three times, then dashed out and dried off and dressed. As I waked back to my truck I noticed my hand: my mother’s wedding ring was gone. At first, I couldn't believe it. I had believed that if I lost one thing, I would then be protected from losing another; that my mother’s death would inoculate me against further loss. It is an indefensible belief, but it was there, the same way I believed that if I endured long enough, my mother would be returned to me. A ring is such a small thing, such a very small thing. I went to the edge of the water and thought about going back in, diving under again and again until I found it, but it was a useless idea, and I was defeated by it before I even began. I sat down on the edge of the water and cried. Tears, tears, so many kinds of tears, so many ways of crying. I had collected them, mastered them; I was a priestess, a virtuoso of crying. I sat in the mud on the bank of the river for a long time and waited for the river to give the ring back to me. I waited and thought about everything. … I thought about how if you lose a ring in a river, you are never going to get it back, no matter how badly you want it or how long you wait. If this were fiction, what would happen next is that the woman would stand up and get into her truck and drive away. It wouldn't matter that the woman had lost her mother’s wedding ring, even though it was gone to her forever, because the loss would mean something else entirely: that what was gone now was actually her sorrow and the shackles of grief that had held her down. And in this loss she would see, and the reader would know, that the woman had been in error all along. That, indeed, the love she’d had for her mother was too much love, really; too much love and also too much sorrow. She would realize this and get on with her life…. But this isn’t fiction. Sometimes a story is not about anything except what it is about. Sometimes you wake up and find that you actually have lost your nose. Losing my mother’s wedding ring in the river was not ok. I did not feel better for it. It was not a passage or a release. What happened is that I lost my mother’s wedding ring and I understood that I was not going to get it back, that it would be yet another piece of my mother that I would not have for all the days of my life, and I understood that I could not bear this truth, but that I would have to.”

Your smell going away from that blanket was such a small thing. But just another thing that I realized I would have to live without. The first thing I’ve lost since I’ve lost you.

I started writing this in Oregon, and finished it from my hotel bedroom in Bhopal, India.

On my way to the airport, I looked at Cris and said, “This is my first trip without her; my first initial reaction was to feel guilty and that I shouldn't be leaving her. And then I was reminded, it doesn't matter anymore, because she is dead.”

My first international trip without you.

Add it to the list.

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If anyone is interested in reading the entire Cheryl Strayed article, you can find it here. While I can't relate to the cheating aspects of her story, I can empathize with being in so much pain you don't care what you do:  https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/321/the-love-of-my-life