My Body, My Heart, an Entire Year Apart
Yahrzeit: The one year anniversary of my mother's death
A professor at UCLA with whom I do lecture collabs shared the Jewish way of honoring the dead one year after passing: Yahrzeit. (Deliciously Yiddish, as in, one letter away from what would be a German smash word for year-time.) Yahrzeit involves lighting a candle at sundown and reciting the Kaddish. As a Catholic, I’m a big fan of ritual and movements to mark time.
And mark it, we must. The one year anniversary of my mom’s death is tomorrow, June 18th.
Once I returned from Vienna, I got right back on a plane and flew to southern California to bask in the glow of my mom’s two best friends, to check in on my mom’s sister, who has Alzheimer’s, and to go be with a few soul sisters in the desert. The trip was built around visiting my aunt and bearing a bit of the burden my SoCal cousins have championed for half a year, but it offered a great excuse to re-socialize myself after months of social and emotional solitude.
I did not realize how much I missed humans until I was with them. I did not realize how deeply I yearned for community until I remembered what it felt like. I did not realize how much of my grief I have been slathered on my body until I tried to put on my summer jeans.
I was deceived by the fun. I told the tales of my life and the movements of my soul and discernment for next year. We picked it apart. I shared stories and gathered them. I looked people in the eye and hugged them tight. It was a chimera of wholeness, one that I felt moving manically from place to place, guest bed to guest bed, joke to joke, trying to keep the pace swift and the words light because slow down too much and BOOM! She’s still gone. Suddenly I’m not an emissary, I’m the whole damn campaign. My mom’s in the ground, and I’m what’s left, drinking coffee next to my godmother, as we both sip down the truth that we’re a Two on this girls date, not a Three. But she’s there with you. YES, I KNOW. DOESN’T HELP.
It’s interesting to see pieces of my mom scattered throughout California, a year after she left. A framed photo. A photo she framed. A prayer card, leaning against a home altar. My aunt’s smile, so familiar. My aunt’s hugs, just as insistent. But it’s a beautiful fire. Too close, and the world burns down. It stops being lovely and turns to ash. Keep it moving. Keep it light. Keep it fun.
I bask in the simple wholeness of sitting at brunch on the main drag in Palm Springs, next to a forever friend, seeing the clothing and colors that surrounded me when I was twenty three. Then I drive past the Panera on Gene Autry. My mom and I ate there once.
It feels like, just when I get into a normal skin, something flashes and I’m back to the werewolf. The world is undone and broken. I’m a monster, aching out loud. Something is terribly, terribly wrong.
It’s been a year. I’m simultaneously shocked by our resilience and pissed that things don’t feel a damn bit different. Other than I have become a manatee, packed with a grief that I wear, a layer of fat upon my body to mirror the sack of grief around my heart.
(On that note, I refuse to take a then photo to compare with the inevitable now photo of a few months in the future, when I’ve shimmied off some of this. I refuse to shame this body, as it is, right now. It’s doing the work of a lifetime — literally, grieving the loss of an entire lifetime. I am allowed to hate myself in dressing rooms and still bless it. This is the conundrum of the human body. I just wish I liked myself more when I wake up in the morning and remember what I look like. I’m still working on that courage.)
I haven’t yet managed to balance the joy of a whole moment with the pain of an empty one. I flit between them with anger and God-blame. My mother has rained down love and success from her position as an intercessor, closer to Christ that we are, in these past few months. Blessings of adventurous, travel-based work for my dad, positive career discernment for my brother, and my ability to financially and residentially facilitate my next move. It’s ridiculous how many blessings the three of us have racked up in the past few months. The doors have been flying open. Susie is working hard.
And yet, I’m walking Zigs around the block and returning to an empty house with flowers from the funeral still in the garage and tucking myself into bed and wishing I could jump out of my own skin because she isn’t here and I can’t crawl into bed with her and there’s a massive fly in my soup, Jesus, please send another.
The moments that feel easy make the hard ones harder. The zombie-like movement of my months in quarantine is certainly not sustainable, but damn, being a human in a body with a heart is really hard. And I don’t think it gets easier. I can beat the roar back to a hum, but sometimes it still roars.
This is the price of continuing to Be in the World. I have dreams. I have goals. I have plans to marry and make some babies of my own. I got things to do. But the price of engagement with emotion is that you get all of them. I can’t take my aunt to the beach for the first time in years without seeing my mom in her smile. I can’t hear Jane and Cece tell me how proud they are of me without hearing my mom in their words. They know they’re holding up the banner she made. I know it. We all know it.
I have a tender heart, I feel most things in neon, and Yahrzeit is going to be an absolute mess of tears, but damn it, we’re gonna light that candle and say some prayers.
This is the work of being a human: to bear joy and loss through time.
You will be in my thoughts. I know this is terribly hard because I have those same feelings at times. Don't know how I will handle going back to Florida to my Mom's home without her there. I have no easy answers for you. I'm sorry for all you are going through. Gayle