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

Signs of Life

Dear Mom,

So much has changed and happened in my life since Christmas. Life seems to continue to speed up and occur at a breakneck pace.

Cris and I put an offer on a house on December 23rd, and ended up buying that house in Edmonds.

But of this news, I am sure you know.

There are times where I can feel you with me, so intensely. I ask you questions, request help, or just cry and say I miss you. Other times, days or weeks go by when I don’t really feel you at all.

After we put the offer in on the house, we got the call that we likely were not going to get it, and that the homeowners were going to go with another offer. We were told they hadn’t 100% definitively made up their minds, but that the other real estate agent wanted to, “let us down easy” since I had written a letter about the awful year Cris and I have had.

I hung up and said out loud to you, “Mom, I need your help. Go change their minds. That is our house.”

I know you heard me.

Not even an hour later, we got a second call:

The house was ours. No one ever knew for certain why they changed their minds.

I do.

Thank you.

----

The first call Cris and I made upon learning we got the house was to Dad. Not 30 seconds into telling him this incredible news, I broke down. It was a combination of a release of massive anxiety that we actually got the house, but mostly, as I said on the phone it was, “because she isn’t here.” Dad started to choke up and said you were watching and that you would be so happy and proud.

Cris told me that you were responsible for getting us the house and were here and a part of this.

The tears still fell down hard.

--

--

 Over the next two months, my life would be an absolute and utter nonstop blur. With three work trips, and a vacation to Fiji sandwiched between our move and renovations, I barely had time to think.

In the moments that I found myself being able to catch my breath, I spent most of my time crying.

Buying this house has been the most bittersweet thing that has ever happened to me.

Why?

Because you always wanted me to move home, to leave Seattle and move back north to be closer to you.

And I never did.

And then I finally did, but now you aren’t here.

And it makes my heart hurt so much.

So, so much.

Every time I have said this to someone, mostly Cris, he, and others say that you wouldn't be upset. That you ARE so proud. That you are watching and are here. Cris constantly reminds me that you were the reason we got this house.

How can anyone truly know?

The guilt, regret, and just plain sadness ebbs and flows.

--

In February, we spent my birthday in Fiji. I booked the trip before you died, but I knew when I booked it that you wouldn't be alive. I couldn't bear the thought of spending my first birthday without you at home. I just couldn't do it.

So instead, I planned to run away to Fiji and skip over my pain, as if the plane could transport me through time as I sailed over time zones to a time and place where I didn’t miss you and things weren’t hard.

Well, I was wrong. The plane wasn’t a magical grief skipping transportation device, as much as I like to think it is.

The trip was still hard, but the sharp pain was softened ever so slightly by being in a beautiful place I know you would have loved. I wanted to skip my birthday altogether this year, but what I have come to realize and learn over the last few years is:

You can’t skip over any of the hard stuff. People can temporarily numb it and shove it away, with food, or alcohol, or shopping, or drugs, or gambling, or whatever things people do to avoid pain and grief.

But at the end of the day?

The saying really is true:

The only way out is through.

--

As if you were trying to grab my attention and force me to recognize and celebrate my birthday, shortly before leaving on our vacation, I was moving books and unpacking book boxes. As I was unpacking, a birthday card from you from my first birthday after your diagnosis fell from the pages of one of the books.

I had no idea it was there.

I don’t even know how or why it was even there.

I dropped to my knees to pick up the card. I simultaneously, very hesitantly and with an incredible ferocity, took the card out of the envelope. The rest of my body quickly found its way to the floor as the words pierced me.

I wept and screamed and was just so sad.

The words were what I needed to hear, but were so hard nonetheless.

You said and wrote many things, but the one that hit me the hardest was:

“You are one of the greatest gifts I have ever been given.”

I weep now just thinking about it.

I got the message – I couldn’t skip over my pain and my birthday.

In an attempt to avoid skipping over my pain entirely, I had a much more low-key birthday, and didn’t celebrate with the family until March.

After spending 12 days in Fiji, I finally felt like for the first time in years, just a little bit lighter. I felt like I had really turned a corner, ever so slightly. It felt like the long, cold, and dark winter was finally starting to show signs of spring.

And then, as we celebrated as a family and everyone gathered to sing me happy birthday, your song, Sherry Baby, came on.

I think at first everyone thought, how RANDOM and what in the hell are the odds that THAT song would come on?

But then I thought, no. Not random at all.

There you are, I thought.

If ever we all wondered if you were around, in this moment we all knew you were here.

I took a deep breath and steeled myself against the tears I could feel forming.

Jennifer whispered, “How cool, it’s her song. She is here.”

Uncle Tom said, “You know that means that she is here looking out for you, always.”

They all sang me happy birthday while your song played in the background. It was perhaps the most somber and bittersweet singing of happy birthday in the history of happy birthdays.

Thank you for the birthday hug.

--

In the almost year since your death, and really since your diagnosis, I have reached for ways to help me process and understand my grief, and death. My absolute favorite writer on grief and loss, Claire Bidwell Smith, started an incredible podcast called, “Sunday Mourning.” On one of the episodes, she interviews a psychic medium. In researching and writing her second book, “After this: When Life is Over, Where Do We Go?”, she explored the idea of what the afterlife means for different cultures and faiths, among other topics. She also went to multiple psychic mediums; many of whom she said were clearly frauds, but one shook her to her core. In reading her experience with this medium, and later re-hearing it on the podcast, I just wept. It was insane. The medium, Fleur, explains that in her communications with the dead, she finds that they are as anxious to communicate with their loved ones on earth as those left behind are to have some kind of connection or communication with them. She said that they try to communicate, but that not everyone pays attention, or has the courage at times, to see things for what they are. These things are not just random occurrences, but their loved ones desperately trying to tell them:

I am here.

I see you.

I love you.

Her words have stayed with me in the months since I have heard it. I just couldn't let them go. And in the months since your death, SO many strange things have happened, that I just can’t chalk up to randomness.

I hear you.

I see you.

I love you.

--

Something about your song coming on while I blew out my candles, and things with work and the house finally slowing down, I felt like that corner I thought I had started to round had disappeared and things start to cave in on me.

I found myself one evening at Hobby Lobby. Literally wandering the store with an empty cart, looking for and needing nothing in particular. As I wandered the empty aisles, I realized I was doing it again:

Trying to skip over my pain. Avoiding my reality by wandering the aisles of a store I have moral issues with.

It suddenly dawned on me that I had been shopping nearly everyday after work when Cris was at work; something to fill the time so I didn't have to be alone in that house.

Not because I am afraid of being alone, but because I was afraid of being without you, by myself.

I abandoned my still empty cart mid-aisle and rushed to my car. I didn't stop to put on my coat even though it was freezing outside.

I could feel myself quickly melting down as the cold air shocked me into being more aware of my surroundings.

I didn't even make it into my car, just outside of it, when I had an epic breakdown.

I slowly slid down the side of my car and cried.

First, silent sobs as the tears fell down, and then finally, I let out a deep, guttural cry.

I quickly realized someone might call 911 or think I was attacked or something, so was able to gather myself together enough to get into my car and attempt to drive away.

I drove past grocery stores and the gym, places we frequented together.

I sobbed.

Trader Joes, tears.

Safeway, tears.

LA Fitness, tears.

A random ass gas station we went to once, tears.

But more than the flood of memories, the flood of the plans we made that were never to be overwhelmed me.

I, and you, had always imagined that someday I would be back living in this area, and we would grocery shop together, go to Costco together, shop at the mall, and go to the gym together again, just like we did when I lived at home. We would go to the park with my kids, and you would stop working and I would pay you to watch them while I worked.

I suddenly became ferociously angry.

At you, the universe? I still don't know.

I screamed while I drove, “I miss you.”

“I can’t do this without you.”

“I miss you so much.”

I suddenly heard you, so clearly as if you were sitting next to me in the car, and you said:

“I know. I know. I miss you too. It’s ok. It’s ok. I am here. I am always here.”

I was simultaneously comforted while feeling like I had taken a bullet.

My only reply to you was that I wanted to see you, in person.

--

Since then, something shifted inside of me. I still cry, a lot. I still miss you, a fucking shit ton. Hell, I am crying as I write this.

I talk to you on a regular basis, and think about you, always.

Always.

However, I feel comforted and confident that you are here, and are trying to communicate that to me.

Like when shortly after my breakdown at Hobby Lobby, your old purse fell out of my closet. It is still full of all of your old things. Every time I have opened it up to attempt to sift through your life, I just haven’t been able to do it. So, it remains, like a tomb of your former life.

It is also full of a shit ton of cards. Hair appointment cards, massage appointment cards, loyalty cards, credit cards, so many cards! I mean TONS! It actually makes me laugh when it doesn't make me cry. Echoes of a former life.

Of the what seems like hundreds of cards, three randomly fell out of your purse, onto my bedroom floor as your purse tumbled down.

And what do you know, those three random cards that fell, out of the many in your purse, were:

Trader Joes

Costco

Victoria Secret

I laughed and cried simultaneously. I don't even know why you had all of those in there. I said, “thank you, I get it.”

It was as if you were trying to tell me:

I am here, we can still shop together. Always. It just looks different than we had planned and hoped.

I decided to spend those gift cards, but with hesitation. But I decided if you flung those shits out of there, you wanted me to use them.

I hosted Easter at our new house. It was at times excruciating without you there. The planning, the thinking about the first Easter without you, preparing food without you. My very first holiday I hosted for the family…and you weren’t there.

As part of the Easter prep, I decided to buy some of the food for Easter with the gift cards. I thought you would like to have contributed to my very first holiday I ever hosted. So, I hesitantly used them, and when each checker asked, “Do you want to keep the gift card?” I replied with a resounding and emphatic, “Yes!”

They now live in my top drawer of my nightstand, so I can see them every night and remind myself that you are always, always here.

Even when I can’t see you. Even in moments when I don't think you are.

You are always here.

I also bought two daffodil plants and one hibiscus plant as some of the items from Trader Joes. I planted them last weekend in my new garden, so that every spring I can be reminded that after the long, cold winter, there are always signs of life, if we have the courage to look for them.

And as Audrey Hepburn said, “To plant a garden, is to believe in tomorrow.”

I love you.