Grief

I’ve been meaning to write a follow up to Just Stopping By. I was going to write about the magic of motherhood and finding oneself in the midst of losing yourself and the sacred experience of it all. I still will at some point. But tonight, I want to write about grief.

I’ve been quiet lately. Haven’t been going out or making many plans. Taking more time to sit, rest, meditate. Seeking some kind of peace I guess. Or clarity in how to navigate forward.

What I didn’t expect was the tension in doing this. Just how uncomfortable being still really is. For the last couple of weeks it has felt like the opposite of peace though I am reaching clarity on some things.

At first it felt like anger. impatience. tension tension tension. I still wanted to escape. I said no to plans yet spent that time scrolling, distracting, anything but the stillness.

Meditations felt like a chore, like a performance of what a “spiritual person does.” My prayers sounded more like “wtf God.” I have yet to enter the blissful state of slowness.

Today was my son’s 2nd birthday party. It was special and chaotic and everybody was late of course. Towards the end of the party I got a nose bleed, change in the weather does that to me. As I stood in the kitchen, eyes to ceiling and paper towel against my nose, I began to cry. Like really cry, tears down the face, mourning type of cry.

We were cleaning up and people were starting to leave and I felt this wave of grief as I stood alone in the kitchen waiting for the bleeding to stop. Everyone was going to leave and it was going to be just Roman and me again. The way it has been for countless days. The party would end and the guests would leave and I would start the bath and wrangle him through some complex psychology into the tub and then we would change into pajamas before our nightly argument of crib vs cuddles and he would win and I would read our favorite book and we would pet the wolf and jump at the sting of the jellyfish and he would drift off before I laid him in his crib and here I would be. Cleaning, massaging sore shoulders, picking up the trucks and socks and eyeing the dishes with contempt. Here I would be. Alone.

I was talking with a friend the other day. He’s dating a new girl and feels conflicted because he doesn’t see a future and though she is comfortable with casual dating, he’s not sure he is as well. We were debating God’s word and sin and whether casual dating is a sin against God (you can only sin against yourself but that’s for another conversation.) I said something to the extent of “well, maybe God sent this girl to witness this part of your life.”

A witness. Somebody who sees the full picture of who you are as you navigate your days. They say how you live your day is how you live your life after all.

Someone who knows I’m having a hot flash and takes over cutting the cake. Someone who notices I haven’t eaten and strong arms me into some fruit and veggies. Someone who understands, through the daily building blocks of intimacy and mundane routine tasks, who I am. It’s something built on leisure and chaos and grocery shopping and standing in line for one another. It’s built through work and annoyance and admiration. It is profound and it calls our soul as deeply as worship. To be witnessed.

I feel a grief over not having a partner. Over not sharing parenthood with someone as exhausted and as in love with it as I am. I’m mourning the empty coffee cups that never made it into my hands as we woke up and the ache my back feels over being the only one to scrub the floors and the tub and every damn thing in this place. I miss something that has only ever lived in potential and never in practice. I miss love.

And yet, as always, there is grief beneath the grief. Because as much as I miss partnership, I miss my mother. Or at least, the mother who lived in potential but never in practice.

It’s wild how everything, no matter how long you pull at that string, unravels into the same core of my own grief. The lack of a mother. The seeking of her in everything and everyone around me. It’s why I can’t buy Roman that book with the little bird that everyone reads to their kids. I just don’t have the bones for it.

How deeply I wish I could call my mother and tell her everything. How deeply I wish there was this person who’s known me from birth and who shows up at my doorstep because it’s been a rough week. How deeply I wish a mother noticed my hot flashes and empty stomach and aching back. How deeply I wish for something I’ve never known.

Nothing makes you want your mother like becoming one.

I usually try to end these with a lesson or purpose or thought to gift wrap it up. But I don’t have anything for you tonight. All I have is

I grieve something I’ve never known. I miss my mom.