One year later and happy birthday

Dear Mom,

It has been now over a year since I last saw you. I have written this one-year death anniversary letter so many times in my mind.

I have been dreading this day almost since the day you died. I just didn’t like the thought of being a whole year away from you, and dreaded each new demarcation of time over the last year.

I found myself in the days leading up to the anniversary sort of speechless, unsure what to actually say now that the time was here.

Over the last few weeks, I have done a lot of reflecting over the last year. And remarked just how is it that it has been an entire year since you were here.

They only good thing that I can say about a year elapsing is that I am over most of the dreaded “firsts” without you:

First wake-up.

First day.

First week.

First month.

First Thanksgiving.

First Christmas.

First Birthday.

First Easter.

First Mother’s Day.

First change of the leaves.

First snow.

First vacation.

First laugh.

First major life change.

First new family member born.

First spring.

First summer.

All without you.

Of course, there will be more firsts without you. My life will be full of firsts without you.

I think I have come to terms with the fact that there will always be things you should have been here for, and you’re not. New experiences and lives and events, without you.

Times where I turn around and wonder, “where are you…?”

But, without a doubt, the first year full of firsts is the hardest. This first year required a near daily recalibration of what my life meant without you in it.

So, to mark the first anniversary of your death, I knew I needed to honor it in a way that meant something to me, to you.

I needed to honor the passage of time and the absence of you from my life in a way that felt ceremonial and important.

I had wanted the family to go to Hawaii over your death anniversary and birthday, which is of course, today. I knew last year the day you died that your birthday being just five days later would be nearly impossible to experience at home, so I was able to get the family together and go to Cannon Beach to mourn, to grieve, to honor, and to celebrate. I wanted to do that this year too, but it just didn’t happen.

Because it didn’t happen, I felt a little stuck. Disappointed if I was being honest. At times, however, I also felt relieved, because the plan is to let your ashes go in Hawaii, and I just am not ready to let all of you go yet; those ashes feel like one of the last vestiges of you I have left.

So I pondered and reflected.

I thought about who I was in the weeks leading up to your death. The regret and guilt I still carry from traveling right before you died. The denial I was clearly experiencing. I allowed myself to wade into these memories and feelings of last year and let myself sit and think and feel and cry and get angry.

I thought a lot about the first few days, weeks, and months after your death. How everything now looking back seems…foggy.

We were all in this “grief haze” as I have come to call it. You were finally gone after all that time of slowly watching you slip through our fingers, and if being totally honest, we were all exhausted from caregiver fatigue.

Our first family photo without you

And the administration that comes with death is daunting. There is so much to do, so many I’s to dot and t’s to cross, that the business of mourning didn’t seem to really hit me for many months.

I look back at our time in Cannon Beach and sometimes wonder how it all came to be. How did we get there? I guess we went through the motions.

Watching my first sunset without you

I think back to the things in that first week without you that were my literal and figurative security blankets, the things that got me through.

One of which was your white blanket that I took off of you after you died. I carried it with me to Cannon Beach and regularly breathed you in deeply. I wanted to suck all of the smell out of that blanket that was you until it was gone. I remember I would wrap myself in it and cry. Cry at the thought that you were gone, and then cry at the thought that someday your smell would be gone from the blanket.

I made a silly vow to myself one time nuzzled under your white blanket – I wouldn't wash it for at least a year. I needed to get through this first year without you, with something still intact from you. I remember thinking it and immediately thinking that you would think that was gross and weird.

I vowed anyways and laughed.

I still sleep with your blanket. It still hasn’t been washed. A few weeks ago, I retrieved it from the laundry pile. Cris must have thought it needed washing.

It didn’t.

On June 24, 2018, I brought your blanket onto the boat to celebrate you. I decided I am just not ready to wash it yet.

It still doesn’t need washing.

---

As I have been reflecting about the last year, something that has struck me as so interesting is the fact that you never went through this. This incredibly intense, soul-shattering grief. Your Grandma died over 20 years ago, and that was probably the most profound grief you ever experienced, but you never lost your Mom. And you definitely never lost her at 31.

I reflected on the life lessons you taught me and things you prepared me for. None of them was how to do this. How to do life for so long without you. How to grieve and live and cry and laugh. Sometimes all at the same time.

I am constantly struck with the irony and sadness that you never experienced this. I am also glad, because I am going to be real, it fucking blows.

Rocking my "Still with Her" Hillary Clinton shirt in your honor on your birthday last year -
still with you, always with you

However, one thing you did experience, that I have yet to experience, is what it is like to have to leave a child or your children.

This of course, you now know all too well.

While you were alive, I didn’t fully appreciate just how hard this whole business of leaving your children behind might be for you. The struggles and successes, happiness and heartache of our lives, and the lives of your grandchildren, that you wouldn't be there to see.

It must have been a lonely place to be.

It, however, is one of the only things that brings me any comfort or relief. Not in your suffering and loss over having to leave us, but in that this was hard for you, too.

There was heartache and grief and loss and sadness and regret and guilt and pain. And you miss us, too. You miss me.

You felt and feel, I believe, all of the same things that I did and do and will continue to do.

I was watching an episode of a show last week, which I won’t name here as not to spoil it. There is a scene when the main character is briefly reunited with her young daughter and then has to say goodbye again, abruptly, after a multi-year absence. As the scene began to play out, for one of the very first times, I really saw this scenario from your perspective.

What do you say? How do you convey to your child what they mean to you? What they will always mean to you? How do you assure them that everything will be ok – even if you aren’t around. How do you make them understand that everyday without them is agony – and that you love them, dearly, forever and for always.

The little girl asks if her Mom tried to find her, she responds that she did, so hard. She says tells her daughter that its ok to be mad at her, and that she is so sorry she couldn’t be there for her, but that she wanted to.

Watching this exchange nearly killed me. I almost had to turn it off, but I kept watching. I felt a deep sense of compassion for the loss you must have felt in leaving your own children. In leaving us, in leaving me.

I wailed from a deep place of agony when she says to her daughter that she wants her to know that, “she will always be her mommy.” She goes on to tell her that even though she won’t necessarily be there, she wants her daughter to, “live her life.” The little daughter eventually asks, “Mommy, am I ever going to see you again?” at which point I nearly lose it, and her Mom replies, “You know what, I am going to try.” She reassures her daughter, what seems like a hundred times, that everything is going to be ok. She asks her to be brave and hugs her and lets out a silent wail. I see the pain on her face and I think of you. The last thing she wants to do is leave her daughter.

But she has no choice. She has to go.

The episode ends and I think of you. I think of your loss and love and heartache in all of this tangled mess of loss and love and heartache. I think about your one-year death anniversary approaching in a few days. And I am comforted, ever so slightly.

You would want me to be happy, to live my life.

And then I decide. I want to go out on Michael’s boat on Puget Sound and spread some of your ashes. Not all of them – because I am just not ready – but some.

So we make a plan. Michael and I will set out from Edmonds early Sunday morning and head to Deception Pass, a place you loved, and Jennifer, with the boys and Dad will meet us there. They will get on the boat and we will cruise around the bay and let a little bit of you go.

Dad asks the day before what flowers I am bringing, and I say I haven’t thought of it. He says we need peach roses – your favorite. I didn't know this. I am struck by the fact that I am still learning about you, a year after you are gone. “Your wedding flowers,” he explains further.

Sunday comes, and if I have learned nothing else this year, it is this:

We make plans, and then the universe laughs.

Life and love and loss and laughter and logistics get all twisted up and they don’t go to plan – but you have to keep going anyways.

Michael and I left two hours late, but made the journey anyway. We cruised up the east side of Whidbey Island, and it was Michael’s idea, to stop at places we went to as a family along the way.

I cried as the boat bumped along and “Sherry Baby” played in the background.

We got to Deception Pass and the weather was bad. Jennifer, the boys, and Dad came aboard for a brief time, but there were babies and toddlers in life jackets unhappy and people were seasick.

The best laid plans.

We didn’t get to scatter you as a family in Deception Pass – but that was ok. I knew you would have laughed – and likely were laughing – at the scene.

I suggested we spread some from the dock, but Michael thought it was too dirty and didn’t want you washing ashore.

The best laid plans.

After eating lunch, Jennifer, the boys, and Dad went on their way, via car, home. Michael and I turned the boat south. He suggested we go to Port Ludlow – the last place we went as a family, and park the boat in the bay, out in front of the condo we stayed in.

It was the best idea he has perhaps ever had.

For the few hours it took us to cruise all the way down to Port Ludlow, we didn’t see a single other boat other than a ferry. It was beautiful, and the sun was shining.

You would have loved it.

I scattered flower petals along the way –

None of them peach roses, however. Dad couldn't find any.

The best laid plans.

But I scattered anyways. And I cried and I laughed and we popped champagne and toasted you.

And then there was a rainbow. It chased us like a dolphin, for hours.

 

“There she is.” Michael said.

He poured you a drink of champagne directly onto his boat floor. We laughed.

And then we cried.

Then I said you probably would have chided us for wasting good alcohol – and we laughed and cried again.

 This business of grieving while living is a messy one. A complicated one.

We eventually made it to Port Ludlow and hung out for about an hour. We played music from your memorial – some of your favorites and some because I am a masochist – a new word I taught Michael that day.

Like, Bette Middler’s, “Baby Mine”

I let your ashes sift through my fingers and watched as they hit the water. They spread out like glitter under the water’s surface and sun’s rays.

 

I covered the glittering pieces of you with petals.

Michael spread the rest of you and it was beautiful. And perfect. And hard. And agonizing. And cathartic. And messy. And healing. And excruciatingly painful.

And exactly what we both needed.

We talked to you and bellowed to the waves and sky and to you how much we missed you. How much we loved and continue to love you.

I put on my Blue Minnie ears in your honor - blue and Disney - and drank more champagne than I should have, rocked out to some of your favorite tunes, and enjoyed feeling the sun on my face. Just like you would have done. 

We toasted and cried and laughed and embraced. We wished you were there.

But you were.

We know you were.

I thanked him again for taking such good care of you. I said, “you loved her so good.”

And he did. Sweet, sweet Michael.

After all was sad and done, we found one petal left on the boat. One petal which had the distinct look of a jack-o-lantern. Michael said, look, here she is again. It reminded us of, ‘rollin’ pumpkins” of course, and then Michael rolled that flower petal pumpkin off the boat, too, and we laughed as the tears streamed down.

 

On our way back to Edmonds, I reflected more about the day we had – the 10 hours and over 100 miles we spent on the boat - and the last 365 days without you. All of the pain and love and excitement and loss and amazing and excruciating things that have already happened without you. And how I have changed. How I am learning to go on without you.

I thought about a remark I have heard from so many people –

That it gets easie as time goes on.

I have decided I am just not sure if that's true. I think it will change – this grief and loss and ache and hole I have where you were supposed to be.

But I am just not sure it will ever get easier, it will just change shape.

The time between Mother’s Day and your birthday, approximately one month in time, with your death anniversary sandwiched in five days before your birthday, and just a few days after the summer solstice – will always be a difficult time for me. Too much loss and reminder of the love and the life all at once. But perhaps that is what will get me through – all of the love and the life all at once.

Celebrating your birthday last year in Cannon Beach

I decided you dying right as summer started was a gift. Had you died in the middle of January, it might have been too hard and too easy to just not get out of bed – let alone on with our lives without you. I think it is your eternal reminder that there is beauty and wonder and amazing things happening in your favorite season, while there is loss and heartache and emptiness.

And that is this life.

Cheersing to you on your birthday last year - with your favorite rose

It is everything all at once. The love with the loss. The adorable with the anguish. The laughter with the loneliness.

And there is always goodness; even in the darkest moments. This year has taught me that. Your death has taught me that.

In the Handmaids Tale, Margaret Atwood writes:

“I am sorry there is so much pain in this story. I am sorry it is in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire, or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it. I have tried to put some of the good things in as well. I keep on going with this limping and mutilated story because I want you to hear it, as I will hear yours too if I ever get the chance. If I meet you, or you escape, in the future, or in heaven. By telling you anything at all, I am believing in you. I believe you into being. Because I am telling you this story, I am willing your existence. I tell, therefore, you are.”

On this day, what would have been your 64^th birthday, happy birthday, Mom. This year has been nothing if not empty without you.

But I have tried to put some of the good things in as well.

I miss you, I love you.

Happy birthday.

Love,

Kimberly

Happy Mother's Day

Dear Mom,

It’s Mother’s Day. I have dreaded this day for so long. The countdown to Mother’s Day with the commercials, the cards, the social media posts talking about what people want to do for Mother’s Day.

It is so hard to think about brunch and flowers and handmade crafts, when the only thing I want is for you to be back here.

The only solace I have is that I know you want that too.

--

Last Mother’s Day was SO fucking hard. None of knew exactly when you were going to die; but we all knew it would be your last.

When I pulled up to the house, after crying on my entire drive up, I found Jennifer sitting in her car, also crying.

How were we supposed to face this last Mother’s Day with you? It was so hard for all of us to comprehend that all future Mother’s Days for the rest of our lives wouldn't have you in them.

I know it was hard for you, too. You knew.

Of course you knew.

We normally would go for pedicures, massages, or something fun together like that. Because you were past the point of traveling, I decided to bring the spa to you.

I knew you would enjoy getting a pedicure, but more than that, I knew I would enjoy giving you a pedicure.

Towards the end of your life, any obvious attempts at us trying to hold on or getting upset would upset you, and when you were upset, you struggled to breathe; so we always had to get creative.

That hour plus I spent massaging your legs, feet, and just making you feel relaxed, I will always treasure.

But I will admit – it was HARD.

There were moments where you closed your eyes, clearly relaxed, and I let a few tears roll down.

How could it be possible that you were going to die?

I was desperate to keep you.

And now, I am desperate for you to come back.

Jennifer took photos of us, which I will always treasure. With the exception of the photos I took of me holding your hand after your died, they would be our last photos we would ever take together.

Of course, neither of us knew that.

As we are rapidly approaching a year without you, it is impossible not to reflect on this time last year.

The end was hard. It was rough, and painful, and excruciating, and exhausting. For all of us.

I think back now, and I am so angry at myself for not spending every single day with you last spring. I wish I could go back in time and tell that person sitting on the floor massaging your legs, that she only had a little over a month left with her Mom. Do not squander the time.

I know we all did the best we could given the circumstances, and hindsight is 20/20. But I can’t help but feel just…so sad and angry I wasn’t more present.

Your very last time outside

In part, I know it was because I didn’t want to face it. I didn’t want to believe it. I mean, I knew you were going to die, I just couldn’t truly wrap my mind around it.

You were sick for almost four years. It was hard to be honest with myself with how little time you had left.

I just didn't want to accept reality.

How was I going to do this life without you?

It is a question, nearly a year gone without you, that I still ask myself.

All the time.

There are times I feel hopelessly broken without you. Like part of my insides are gone.

Maybe they are.

I decided to scroll through the photos from Mother’s Day last year, and from the last few weeks of your death. I am so glad I continued to document and photograph those moments.

 As I scrolled through them I sobbed. I wailed for what I lost, for what you lost, for the pain, for those hard last weeks, for the future without you.

There were photos were I could so clearly see you were struggling to breathe. They made me feel so bad that I couldn't – or wouldn't – allow myself to see it then.

What struck me most of all the photos, were your smiles in the Mother’s Day photos in the candid photos. I had never noticed them before. But in the non-posed photos, there it was…a smile.

It pierced me.

I thought, “Look, there was joy.”

Sometimes it is hard to remember if there was any joy those last few weeks.

 

I know there is never enough time. We always want more. We always do our best that we could. I just wish I could go back and hug you more, linger longer.

It is an ache and a pain that I don’t know how to fix. I told Jennifer that I hoped you knew, and she said you did.

I told her that I just want you to come back.

I am just desperate to see you.

 It feels like it has been long enough, and it is time you come home.

There are days where I swear you are about to bound through my door, in your old healthy body, open my door wide and say, “Kimby, I am here!”

I so wish that would happen.

So you could come to my house and sit with me on the lawn and soak up the sun like you loved to do.

 --

I fractured my knee a few weeks ago. I am in a full leg brace and can do very little on my own.

I can’t drive.

I can barely get up and down our stairs.

And can do very little in the house.

It has caused me to have so much more compassion and sympathy for what you must have gone through. And of course, my situation is only temporary, and I can still talk.

I just feel so fucking sad and bad that maybe wasn’t as patient enough with you as I could have been. Or should have been.

And for that, I am sorry.

I am sorry I didn’t spend every waking minute with you towards the end.

I am sorry I couldn't reach deeper this time last year.

--

As I sit writing this, I am listening to your memorial service music. Because that was clearly a good idea.

As Bette Midler’s, “Wind Beneath my Wings” came on I lost it. Not just because the song is sad as fuck, but because Beaches was one of our very favorite movies we always used to watch growing up.

We always did everything together, and I remember feeling so afraid that you might die and leave me. I remember a few times saying something, and you telling me that you weren’t going to die for a long, long time.

I have always had a fear of living without you. It was the absolute worst thing I could think of happening to me.

I never thought I would be able to continue on without you. I couldn’t imagine a world without you in it.

 My worst nightmare, the most unthinkable situation of situations of course did happen.

 As Bette Midler crooned on, I wailed for you. I screamed that I wanted you to come back. I yelled to my empty house that it just wasn’t fair, that I miss you too much.

In the show, “The Queen” there is a scene where Winston Churchill is recounting the story of coming home to find his wife standing over their young daughter who had just died, and he said that she, “roared like a wounded animal.”

It is a quote that has stuck with me since I first heard it. I have come back to it in my mind so many times. It is such an eloquent expression of the depths of despair grief brings people to.

There are some losses that produce such an animalistic reaction to the pain.

Sometimes there are no words that can communicate the depth of pain.

A quote that has brought me great comfort over the last almost year says it perfectly:

“Grief is the last act of love we can give to those we loved. 

Where there is deep grief, there was great love.”

There have been so many times in the last 11 months since I last saw you where I have roared like a wounded animal. There just is no other way to describe it.

As I heard Bette bellow out the words in her song, I found myself yet again, roaring like a wounded animal.

This pain, this life without you, it hurts. It is so hard.

There have been so many moments, this being one of them, where I feel like I might die or explode with the pain of missing you and living without you. Feeling like I can’t take another breath without you. And each time, with astonishing predictability, I hear you so clearly:

“You have to.”

“You will be ok.”

In your eulogy, I recounted this story:

“A few days after we found out my Mom had ALS in October 2013, I screamed and cried and begged and tried to bargain with the universe from my parent’s living room floor.

I told her that I couldn't do it without her, that there was no way I could get through my life without her in it.

She sat on the floor with me, put her hands on my face, brushed my hair out of my eyes and said:

You have to. You can’t quit. You will get through this, together. And you have Jennifer and Michael. You will be ok.”

­If I am able to get through this life without you in it, it is only because of you. You and your love and your confidence in me that I can do it without you.

 And at my lowest moments, in my darkest days, it is always you that reminds me of this.

I am forever grateful that you are my inner voice.

 In your eulogy, I also explained that:

“My Mom and I were not just mother and daughter, but were also companions and friends.

We would always go shopping together, up until she was no longer able to shop, and would be gone for hours on end. We would pull up each time after a long shopping adventure and predict that my Dad would say,

“Where in the hell have the two of you been? Did you get lost?”

However, for me, what will be perhaps the most difficult part of the loss of my Mom from my life is not my shopping buddy, friend, or partner in crime, but the loss of my soft-landing spot.

Through the last decade+ of my extensive international travels and time living abroad, I have been asked so many times how I do it.

It is simple really:

I always knew my Mom would be there to catch me should I ever need help.

She would be the wind beneath my wings so to speak.

Whether that came in the form of money when I ran out of it backpacking in Europe my first time in college, or sending me care packages while in Korea, a place I absolutely hated, or talking to me daily while in Korea at all hours of the day and night, just to check in and make me feel better.

You see, I have always been fiercely connected to my Mom.

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard the stories from my Dad and grandparents about how I would crawl, and later roam, around someone’s house looking for her and crying if I had been dropped off for babysitting. Everyone hated babysitting me, because I only wanted my Mama. 

In part because of my severe Mommy attachment issues, we developed an incredibly close bond.

I know that my being separated from her, whether it was for a move across the world, or for my first time to overnight Girl Scout camp, was just as hard, if not harder, on her than me.

Yet, she was always tirelessly in my corner.

I can remember in first grade, it was my first trip to girl scout camp. I didn't want to go, but she told me I could do it, that it would be fun.  She said to bring my security blanket, which wasn’t actually a blanket at all, but instead was a baby winter bunting turned security blanket, that my Mom had affectionately named “fluffy,” because as my Mom said, “it was fluffy”, and that with that, I would be alright.

I remember sitting in the back of the van, choking back tears as I waved goodbye. It was something so incredibly hard for my little 6-year old self to do.

Many years later, I found out she also choked back tears and cried on her way home.

12 years later, the situation would repeat itself again, except this time, when I was leaving for college.

Granted, I was only moving literally 11 miles down the road to the dorms, but it felt like there would be an ocean between us.

Prior to starting at UW, my high school boyfriend broke-up with me and my 18-year old self was distraught.

I decided I didn't want to live on campus anymore, I wanted to stay home with my Mom.

I was too broken, and it would be too hard, I concluded.

But she told me that I could do it, and that she would be right up the road.

She and my Dad helped me setup my room, and when it was time to go, I turned around to wave goodbye, wiped away some tears from my face, and choked the rest away. She smiled, waved and cocked her head to the side as if to say, “You've got this.”

Her outward stoic appearance gave me strength, and it belied her inner pain as I years later found out that she cried on that ride home, too.

Even though she could have selfishly said, yes, stay home, I don't want you to leave – which is what I know she wanted to do –

she didn't.

Instead, she made me believe in myself that I could be strong.

So when people ask how I have done it all, it is because I always knew I had her in my corner, rooting me on. I could make a mistake, get scared, want to come home, or whatever, and she would be there for me.

She was strong, so I didn't have to be.”

Thank you Mom, for making me strong.

I couldn’t get through this without you.

--

I told Jennifer that I was going to spend today in bed. I didn’t want to face the world today. She said that you wouldn’t want me to do that. Feeling sorry for myself in my current broke ass - in mind, body, and spirit -state, said I couldn’t do anything else anyways because of my cast. She told me to spend the day in the sun in the yard, drinking wine, and eating licorice, just like you would have wanted to do. She said you would also probably be smoking, but to not do that, because that would probably a bad idea.

The very last time you felt the sun

 So for you, because you can’t and I can, I will spend time planting flowers, laying in the sun, drinking your favorite rose, and not smoking or eating black licorice, because they both are nasty, and will spend the day remembering and feeling you in me, and around me.

 Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I love and miss you deeply.

 Love,

Kimby