when i tell people that i have lost my mother they always say they’re sorry. how am i expected to respond? “it’s okay”, “thank you”? neither are the truth. i haven’t been able to master the understanding of it, is it fear driven? is our society so apprehensive of how the conversation would go if we acknowledged loss? i witness discussions shy away from it, diverted. this irritates me. if someone tells me they are sorry that i lost my mother the only reaction i muster is a slow, lone and unemotional nod; not to give notion to their trivial response but rather as a courtesy to them even responding at all. then i watch as the conversation moves toward something less heavy as if the avoidance of it is more significant than the person that’s actually gone. why is it that you don’t ask me what she was like? my curiosity causes me to wonder if people assume elaborating on loss means that they will automatically sit through a weighted monologue of unbearable truths such as “she deserved to have seen her grandson start his first day of eighth grade this fall, she should have watched the final season of ‘a million little things’ and we should have called each other after every new episode just like we did all four seasons before it, that now she won’t ever have the chance to dance in the kitchen as she hears new music from her favorite artists”. on the other hand, however, maybe you would get to hear how she absolutely loved a kahlua sombrero, always ate the first half of a hot pizza slice with a fork and a knife, made the best lasagna and meatballs you could ever eat, adored reindeer, was always prepared for any situational crisis, and played solitaire in all of her free time. you would know that she added salt and pepper to her cold cut subs, was never without a pepsi nearby, gifted the most thoughtful individualized presents, gave holidays a feeling beyond the description of joy, made you feel more seen than anyone ever could in your lifetime, and you would learn that in all her glory my mother could sit on the beach for hours watching the ocean waves during a nor’easter. 

it is true that my psyche has shifted, my persona is altered in a way that is irreversible. i am slower, less animated. i am a boat drifting with no motor, no oar, and no lighthouse in sight. but when i bring her back, when i talk about her, i return to the harbor. i am docked again. 

speaking about the hard stuff, as a matter of fact, is actually cathartic.

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i had been living in roanoke, virginia for nineteen days before i received the call from my father that my mother was gone from my reach forever. i often try to fit a definition upon those nineteen days and all i ever seemingly come up with is: home. that sounds barbaric to say about a place i barely knew but it was a rebirth in a way that i had never experienced. i had packed up my life and moved to unfamiliar places on multiple occasions prior to this but something was disparate about roanoke. i had never felt permanency about a location, i intentionally encompassed each venture as enthusiastically temporary. my mother always made the joke that she was never going to visit me until i stayed somewhere longer than three years and it was on my second day that i called to tell her this was the place she was going to visit. for the first time i sensed longevity. 

virginia was notable because it is where my mother chose to go to college. she had been enthralled to go, to leave home and create a space in the world that belonged solely to her. unfortunately though that euphoria was short lived as she made one of many sacrifices to return to boston to aid in the care of my nana who was battling a struggle she was unable to overcome on her own. 

i think about that apartment on jefferson avenue more often than not, what it felt like when i moved in and how destroyed i was when i moved out. everything i wanted lived inside of those walls, inside of that city; it was dreamlike, ethereal, as if i had made it all up in my mind. it was purified elation and then it was gone. 

full transparency, i can attest that i could have went back. my employer was willing to hold my position and my lease was in effect until the next year though there i stood in my childhood home that was newly hollowed out with stale and unbreathable air. everything surrounding me in a once familiar place was now unrecognizable apart from one thing – under the curly red headed innocent demeanor which carried a decade long battle with alzheimer’s disease was my nana. the only consistency she had in her orbit was now gone and she was in need of a caretaker.

my decision did not come with contemplation, i packed up my apartment. admittedly though, the irony of it weighs heavily on me still. my mother and i had now both left virginia to take care of my nana.

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it is cliché to say that you do not realize someone’s impact until they aren’t there to make it anymore, but this applies significantly here. my mother made it look easy, her uninterrupted detail-oriented care that went into providing my nana with a routine appeared effortless. i cried a lot during those days. i cried because it was difficult to help my nana accomplish daily tasks, i cried because i couldn’t fathom how lonely my mother felt every day doing it on her own, and i cried when i finally realized her reason for doing it at all. i now understood that if my whole identity had to change in order to have my own mother in my life every day then i would have sacrificed everything i had to make it happen too.

tragically, exactly eight weeks after losing my mother i also lost my nana. the last few days of her life are imprinted in my mind irreversibly and were nothing shy of insufferable. it was the first time i had witnessed someone inhale a breath just to exhale it for the last time. i stood there with her when they took her out of our home because i was scared for her, scared that she would feel alone. i understand that doesn’t make sense, she was already gone but i was so afraid of her being with strangers. i stray away from that day as much as i can, i put forth great attempts to stop my mind from remembering it. i was left with the impression that i fell short in my duty to take care of her, that i had failed both her and my mother in the process. with this new emptiness that lingered in the air my childhood home shifted to a darker shade of black as if it didn’t belong to me anymore, the atmosphere was cold and persistently haunting. everything became heavier as i began to realize that at twenty-eight-years-old i was the eldest woman left in my lineage.

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you must reteach yourself skills when you start existing in an incredulity that causes you to intentionally avoid familiar things because resuming normalcy feels wrong. mundane tasks become challenging peaks to summit creating an inability to accept reality. during this time my mother was understandably receiving mail and as a family we navigated that as best we could though i primarily chose to avoid the difficult responsibility. shortly after her passing she received a letter from the massachusetts sex offender registry board which i took upon myself to open for her. everything became stagnant in the moment i read what was inside that envelope, so much so that i often question if my brain shut itself down in disbelief given the amount of times i needed to read it to believe that the contents of it was actually real. my mother was being notified that my grandfather had petitioned to be removed from the sex offender registry and that an upcoming hearing was scheduled. i immediately contacted the board to obtain more information in a desperate attempt to dispute this request. in doing so, i learned that he had attempted this many times in the past and each time my mother submitted a victim advocacy statement on my behalf.

she always won the hearing.

it was now up to me to carry her torch in a battle i never knew she was drafted into. i sat down and wrote what i believed to be the most important letter i have ever written in my life. for the first time since losing my mother i felt as if i had a passion and a purpose to make her proud of me. i asked my family if they wanted to write their own submission to the board as well, extending the opportunity to my cousins who were impacted by the family divide that followed the court proceedings in 2003. i was overcome with pride to have their submissions. i felt part of something bigger than myself with undefeated camaraderie to such an extent that when i received the judgement call in early january of 2023 i couldn’t properly define the chemical reaction my body experienced when i heard what was said on the other end of the phone.

i had lost the hearing.

devastated is a watered down version to describe the emotions i experienced, but more severely i felt shame. my mother repeatedly and independently defeated a monster yet everything she fought for dissolved the moment i stepped onto the battlefield. once again i let her down. 

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she would disagree with that statement, i am aware of that, but it did not mitigate the disappointment i felt in myself. notably, following this outcome i petitioned for a copy of my case record. i was appointed a victim advocate who sat beside me at essex county superior court as i opened a manila envelope that held my mothers handwritten testimony from twenty years earlier. this moment changed my life. for the very first time i was experiencing my trauma from the lens of my mother and it uncovered a woman fierce beyond the realm of her already superior invincibility. i ached in anguish to embrace her. it shatters me that i learned of her pain at a time when i was unable to ever have the chance to thank her for her bravery. 

defeated and desolate i rooted anew at chapter one as i began existing in an unfamiliar world that i had never known before. this strange universe lacked guidance, it fell short of steadiness and clarity; i kept trying but it wasn’t making any sense to me. i was forced to learn what the earth felt like without my mother walking upon it. the numbness continues to remain cemented into my existence as my survival mechanism convinces me that the recollection of my own experiences are merely scenes from a movie. the film is not clear in my mind though, i can hardly recall the plot but i know i had a role. each version of myself has confined into their own individual sphere unattached from each other. has my life developed into permanent subcategories or will my chapters become one continuous narrative again? nevertheless, the earth continues to spin as we approach chapter four.

i am not unique to hardship nor will i be ignorant to the factuality that grief is widely universal, but i almost think that is the most paradoxical thing about it – loss is immensely agonizing among the multitude who survive it though there is nothing another person can do to make it less painful. it would be a disservice of me to tell you that i exist with ease, that the chapters before this didn’t conclude with punctuation concrete enough to end the storyline all together. i struggle still to view my reflection when i pass by a mirror, i guess i fear that even if i stare long enough i still won’t be able to recognize myself all these years later. however, i am left with no alternative to choose from because if i stopped moving, if i give up, then that means everything my mother fought for would have been for nothing and i won’t let that happen.

i owe it to her to take care of her daughter.