Candace’s Story
My eyes brimmed with tears, my chest heaved, and I stilled a sob in my throat. Sitting in my hair stylist’s chair as bright red dye transformed the wiry gray strands of my hair, I was reading a book about self-help books and what I read stopped me in my tracks. Once again, grief snaked its way into my day.
One of the authors of the book had gotten a call, “Your mother is in the hospital and will be slipping into a coma at any moment. Hurry.” She booked a flight as fast as she could and began the unimaginable journey to tell her mother goodbye. Her flight was delayed and delayed again, and the author wrote that she was frantic she wouldn’t make it home in time to talk to her mother, to hug her, and tell her she loved her one last time. Finally, the plane took off and she made it to her mother’s bedside to kiss her cheek and say goodbye while her mother was still awake. I laid my tablet in my lap and took a deep breath to try and regain my composure. As I exhaled, I noticed my breath was loud and angry, like a hiss.
Stories about mother loss always gnaw at my usual steely resolve because I always see myself. My mother died the day after my thirteenth birthday as she walked down a winding country road when a drunk driver hit her, killing her instantly. Three months earlier, I had moved in with my father when my mother, her new husband, and my younger sister moved six states away. Staying behind was a foolish decision on my part because I was terribly lonely that summer and pined for the comfort that only my mother could provide.
But my response to this story was more emotional than normal, almost visceral. Maybe because I empathized with the daughter, desperate to reach her mother before it was too late. But I know, deep down, my reaction to stories like this is not always rooted in compassion. I’m jealous I didn’t get the chance to hold my mother’s hand before she died, to look down and see that our hands are indistinguishable, to whisper goodbye. A memory to call back on when I need it as I have so many times since her death.
That grief finds me forty years later speaks to how powerful early loss is. You don’t get over it. It doesn’t go away. You don’t even make peace with it even when making peace with the grief seems like the healthy thing to do. It’s always there, coiled, fangs out, ready to strike.
I feel robbed that I lost my mother at an age where I remember her in bits and pieces, but at an age where I didn’t know her. Tiny little fragments of memories are nestled in my heart, but she often feels like a fuzzy mirage and not a real-once-upon-a time-in-the flesh-person. I’m grateful that I knew my mother at all and that I had time with her. Yet, the bitterness is always there, tucked away, ready to slither out.
Not getting the opportunity to know her is what I grieve most. I fantasize about sitting across from her as she drinks a cup of black coffee and we share a giggle. Wishing we spent Saturday mornings going to garage sales with my daughter and cooking Thanksgiving dinner together. I long to know her better. Which movie star made her breath quicken? Who was her best friend? What was she like as a child, quiet and introspective like me or loud and friendly like my little sister? To ask the questions I didn’t think to ask when I was a kid. I don’t even know what her favorite color was. I often think I should sit down and compile a list of things I know about her but fear that the list may be heartbreaking in its brevity.
A scrapbook of the random pieces I have documenting her life was a project I worked on many years ago. Carefully opening the black embossed cover, I turn the pages and look at her face, seeing the person that loved me first and most, but also, I see a stranger. Poring over the details in each photo, noticing the décor in my childhood home, what she was wearing, how her hair was styled, and how she posed seeking, searching, grasping for anything. Chasing anything that sparks a flash of memory. Grief, sometimes poisonous, is always with me.
As I work on a memoir about finding myself in my complex parental relationships, I notice I’m spending more time editing the pages about her than the rest of my story. Writing about her is giving me a tiny bit of the connection with her I’ve longed for. Now, I welcome the grief as it twists its way through my days because each tear that falls brings me closer to her, where I’ve always wanted to be.
