It’s been a few months since my earliest (and everlasting) love -- my mother -- passed away after suffering unimaginable pain. Looks like nine months, although minuscule in the face of a life-long heartache, was time enough for me to be able to write about her again, without breaking down, and pushing her farther away, unlike, until recently, when the pain was simply too much.
Ma and I were tight; I have always said that she completed me and although life goes on (because it must and society expects us to meticulously mask the pain), I miss her terribly. Early mornings when I would pick up the telephone without ever a thought or a care, to check in/confer/consult/complain or just chat, are especially difficult; holidays and special days, regular and ordinary days are just as hard, but the hardest is the realization that the countless interactions of a lifetime have suddenly been replaced by memories. I experience a pang of penetrating pain when I realize that there is nothing tangible left anymore, nothing of what I took for granted for a lifetime. We human beings — the relentless optimists and the ultimate pragmatists, have made ourselves believe that memories are beautiful, but the truth is that the very fact that memories exist means that reality has been lost forever.
I have tried to be practical but the honest truth is that I don’t want memories. I want Ma. No matter how much I try I can never be whole again because a part of me that was able to give and take the purest unconditional love, is gone forever. And even though I had a full life with Ma, my memories leave me empty.
On this Mother’s Day, hold your mom close, say you love her, make amends if you need to because this world without mom is never the same again. Have a precious Mothers Day.