I deleted social media from my mobile phone.
I couldn’t look at people’s joy about Mother’s Day, celebrating their mothers and grandmothers. I couldn’t look at people celebrating what their kids did for them. I didn’t want to take away their joy. I just couldn’t share in it.
I couldn’t look at other people’s grief either. Looking at their heartfelt posts about missing their own mothers triggered this ugly part of me. The “yeah, but” part that would say, “yeah, but at least you are a mother” or “yeah, but you didn’t have to try and mourn during a pandemic” or some other equally inane knee-jerk reaction as if grief were some kind of contest and I was trying to win.
I didn’t want to take away someone else’s joy or their grief.
So I backed away.
My mom passed away on Feb. 16, 2020, not even two months ago. There was a rather long battle with lung cancer and a long time in and out, then steadily in, the hospital. I did a lot of grieving while she was still alive but slipping away from us. Currently, my grief comes out in spurts. And I know it will take different shapes throughout the rest of my life.
For me, the best way to honor my mom and celebrate her is to go on living my best life. Those things I always wanted to do? It’s time to start doing them. For real to start doing them.
So Saturday I ticked off something that was on our joint bucket list — tea at the Asa Ransom House.
It was something my mom and I always talked about doing but never got around to. Stay at home orders meant I didn’t actually go to tea but rather ordered it to go. Once home, I put it out on beautiful china, the good dishes that my mom brought back for me as a gift from my aunt (her sister-in-law) when she and my dad traveled to North Carolina to clean out her house years ago.
She wasn’t one for fancy things. In fact, our recent Mother’s Day tradition had been to forgo the overpriced brunches and head to Woodcock Brothers Brewery for beers and pizza. But this felt right. Like a treat for us. Even if I was eating it with my husband in our dining-room-turned-office.
On Sunday, I stopped by myself at an ice cream stand for a small dish of soft serve. Mom used to keep the opening dates of all the local ice cream joints on her calendar. The opening of Tasty Treat was as important on her calendar as were birthday reminders and doctor’s appointments.
Sunday night was filled watching the documentary Becoming about Michelle Obama. Mom loved the Obamas. She would have loved watching this as well.
And so my first Mother’s Day weekend without a mother came to an end.
At times I need to reach out to people. I need them just to listen to me. Just to say how much it sucks and how much it hurts. I don’t need answers to questions I’m not asking. I don’t need to be told how it’s going to be or suggestions on how to act or think or feel. I just need to be heard and seen.
Other times, I need to keep to myself. I need to be alone. I gather strength from that time of silence and processing and occasional spontaneous ice cream eating.
What I learned from deleting the social media apps from my phone this weekend, is that I know enough myself to get through this. I can reach out when needed and I’ve learned that some people with the best of intentions can’t give me what I need in certain moments. I thank them for their intention and move on.
I’ve learned that I am strong enough to be vulnerable to myself.
The only person who is living my grief is me. And I can make it look however I need it to look.
