love & loss

Six weeks ago my mom passed away. I’ve been trying to think of a more eloquent way to start this, but that’s all I’ve got. It’s the overwhelming truth that has defined each and every day since. My mama is gone and I’m not sure how to start. It’s the first thing on my mind when I wake up and the last thing I think of before I fall asleep. My mom, my anchor, my best friend isn’t here with me anymore. One day I was eating pizza with her and the next she was gone.

There’s so much I want to say about her. I don’t know how. I don’t know how to convey her spirit to you. Anything less seems not enough. I wish I could share with you her laugh, a laugh so loud it’s how I found her in the grocery store as a kid. I can’t seem to talk about her to anyone yet, other than my family. And most of the time, it’s just whispers of memories and tears and nodding our heads in understanding. One day I’ll be able to share more, but for know, let me say this: There was nothing better than being loved by her. 

Her favorite place to be in the summertime.

The one thing I can talk about - need to talk about, is grief. It’s something I knew nothing of. I don’t have a big extended family and I lost both my grandmothers and my mom’s father before I was born or before I could understand. I had no idea what was coming.

I didn’t know, as CS Lewis said, that grief would feel so much like fear. Or even more so, that it's not a singular feeling at all. It's not just sadness because someone's gone. It's multifaceted in the worst way. You feel it in everything you do. It's anxiousness and loneliness and fear and longing for someone so much your body actually aches and so much more.

It feels like a curtain that separates you from the normal world. Last week I was checking out at the grocery store and the nice older man at the register smiled at me, commented on how beautiful the day was and asked me how I was doing. I felt so irrationally angry and confused. How can people be happy? I thought. How is it possible that the world is still spinning? Each new day spins me farther and farther away from her and that feels impossibly cruel.

There are moments it still makes no sense to me. How is it that the woman I love so much, who was so full of love and strength and opinions and humor and intelligence is no longer here? How is she not around to bug me about updating this blog and make really bad pie and plant pansies in her garden? How can it be that my dad is without his wife and my brother and sister their mother? Sometimes the weight of it is so overwhelming I feel my body physically can't take it. 

 

A last Christmas gift from her.

The other day, someone said to me that mourning was beautiful because it's about love. I spent the afternoon thinking that over and getting more and more angry. How can you say this is beautiful? It’s crying so hard you can't breathe. It's spending hours and days in bed and feeling like you'll never be okay again. It's begging God to make it better. To change it. But then there are these moments when I see her in myself. Her strength. All that she poured into me for 24 years. I remember the hours and hours we spent talking. The hours she spent praying for me. I see her in my dad and my brother and sister. Those moments are beautiful. And that makes me so incredibly grateful that God gave me her.

  There's a passage in one of my favorite books, Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver that says "I thought I wouldn't live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you.”. I don't know if that's true yet, but I see glimmers of it. She left me a very good place.

 

"Grace taught my soul to pray,
And made my eyes o'erflow;
"'Tis grace has kept me to this day,
And will not let me go."

I have plans to be around a lot more in 2015. My mom was honey & jam's biggest fan and would be so mad if I didn't continue writing here. I have lots of things I want to tell you about - the biggest being that cookbook I have coming out in May. I'll be back soon.