One Year Later - Reflecting The Loss Of a Mother

I can’t believe it has already been a year since my mom passed away. In some ways, it feels like it just happened, and in other ways, there is already a strange sense of separation from it. That is probably one of the things I have noticed most about grief over the last year: time does not move through it in a normal way. There are moments that still feel incredibly close, like I could reach back and touch them, and there are other moments when I look at what happened and realize it has already begun moving into the background of my life. It is still part of me, but it is no longer sitting in front of everything else.

When I think back on this past year, a large part of it was spent grieving. It took probably eight or nine months before I felt like I had any real control over the grief and could recognize myself again underneath it. One of the best things I did was give myself some structure around what I was experiencing. I read a few books on grief, I talked about it, and I worked through a lot of it with my coach. That support made a dramatic difference because I did not have to figure out how to process everything on my own. I also learned that the answer was not to avoid the pain, but it was equally important not to become consumed by it.

What worked for me was allowing myself to lean into the grief just enough to feel whatever was there. If I felt the heartbreak, I let myself feel it. If I needed to cry, I cried. If something came up that hurt, I did not immediately push it away or distract myself from it. I let the emotion have its moment and then, when I felt like it had moved through me, I intentionally pulled myself back out of that energy and returned to my life. The best analogy I can think of is probably not the most elegant one, but it makes sense to me. It was almost like putting pressure on a pimple so it could finally release what was trapped underneath the surface. The emotion had to come out. Once it did, I did not see a reason to keep pressing on the same painful spot all day long. I felt it, I released it and I moved forward.

The supporting structures around me served me more than I can explain. Grief can become very isolating if you let it, and I think there is a temptation to believe that because the loss is yours, you are supposed to somehow manage all of it by yourself. I did not do that. I allowed other people, books, conversations and coaching to help me understand what I was moving through. Looking back, that probably kept me from getting stuck in some places where I could have stayed much longer.

As I sit with what the last year means now, I find myself becoming more curious about my mother than devastated by her absence. I wonder what she might be doing, wherever she is. I wonder what consciousness looks like after death, or whether she has an awareness of what is happening here. I wonder what she understands now that she may not have understood while she was alive. None of us really knows the answers to those questions, but I find that curiosity serves me better than continually replaying the pain of losing her. When I think about being in the nursing home and knowing she had passed away, I can still go into a very dark place if I stay there mentally for too long. I have learned to recognize that and redirect my attention. Not because I am trying to deny what happened, but because I know the difference between remembering something and turning myself into a victim or martyr inside of the memory.

Over the last three months especially, I have noticed my energy coming back to me. My spirit feels stronger and there is a version of myself starting to reappear that I have not felt in a very long time. My motivation to work, create and build things is coming back. I feel more interested in my life again, and there is a part of me that knows very clearly that it is time to get up and move forward in a much bigger way. I mean really move forward. That does not mean I am leaving my mother behind, and it certainly does not mean that I no longer care that she is gone. It simply means her death is no longer the primary event taking up space in my mind every day.

There is a part of that realization that almost feels uncomfortable to admit. My mother’s death is beginning to feel like old news in the back of my mind. I do not mean that in a shallow, selfish or insensitive way. I mean that it has become part of my history. When I look back at it now, there are moments when it feels no different from looking back at other things that happened last year. It happened. It affected me deeply. It changed the direction of my life in certain ways. But it is no longer happening right now, and I think recognizing that distinction is part of healing.

Everyone who is processing the death of someone is going to have a different experience because the grief is connected to the relationship that existed before the person died. You are not only processing the death itself. You may also be processing years of love, disappointment, anger, resentment, guilt, gratitude, memories and things that were never resolved. In my case, I had a lot I could have been angry with my mother about. Her drug addiction affected her life and the lives of the people around her. There were choices she made that hurt people, and there were ways she let herself and all of us down. Those feelings were real, and I had every reason to carry them.

I am incredibly grateful that my coach told me a long time ago that I needed to process those things while my mother was still alive so that, when the day eventually came, I would not be left with a mountain of unfinished business. I listened to that advice. I confronted things. I had difficult conversations. I allowed myself to be angry when anger was appropriate, and I worked through as much of it as I could before she died. By the time she passed away, most of that anger was no longer sitting on top of everything else.

I cannot imagine what this year would have looked like if I had been trying to grieve my mother while also carrying unresolved rage toward her. Grief is difficult enough on its own. Adding resentment, regret and all of the things you wish you had said can make it even heavier. That is part of why the idea of having no unfinished business has become so important to me. We do not get to control when people leave, but while they are here, we do have some responsibility for the things we continue to avoid. We have an opportunity to say what needs to be said, forgive what we are willing to forgive, set boundaries where they are necessary and tell the truth about what hurt us. None of that guarantees a perfect ending, but it can create a different kind of peace when the ending finally comes.

A year later, I think that is one of the things I am most grateful for. I miss my mom, and there will probably always be certain moments that catch me off guard, but I am not carrying an enormous pile of things I wish I had said to her. I loved her, I confronted her, I forgave what I could, and I did my best to take care of what needed to be taken care of while there was still time.

Now there is a different kind of work in front of me. It is the work of returning fully to my own life. My energy is coming back, my motivation is coming back, and I can feel myself beginning to look forward more than I look backward. There are things I want to create, people I want to serve and parts of myself that have been waiting a long time to come back online. I think there comes a point in grief where continuing to live is not a betrayal of the person you lost. It is actually part of honoring the life you still have.

If you are somewhere in the middle of losing someone or trying to find your way through the aftermath, I hope something in my experience serves you. Your timeline may be completely different from mine, and your relationship with the person you lost may have been far more complicated or far more peaceful. I do not think there is one correct way to grieve. I only know that, for me, allowing myself to feel the pain without allowing the pain to become my identity was one of the most important things I could have done.

Hang in there. Get support when you need it. Feel what you need to feel, and when life begins asking you to come back, let yourself come back.

-Stanley