Five Years Without Mom

Five years ago today, my mom died in a room at St. Thomas Hospital.  She was surrounded by loved ones, as they say, including me. 

Did she die peacefully?  I'd like to think so, although who knows for sure.  Our weeklong vigil at St. Thomas Hospital after she had a stroke remains, in my memory, a blur of visitors, tears, and interminable waiting.  Time seemed to stand still for me that week.  There were a lot of trips to and from the hospital, as I tried to make sense of what had happened to my mom and, more importantly, how I was going to live a life without her in it.  

My mom was 31 years old when my father died at age 30.  Suddenly, she was a widow with two young children, living in California, far away from her parents and sisters in Tennessee.  How did she overcome such hardship at such a young age?  How did she get over losing someone she loved?

When I asked her this, she told me there was no real secret to overcoming such a devastating loss.  The answer was straightforward and uncomplicated.  It didn't involve therapy a long-term sabbatical from work, although she wasn't against those things and neither am I.  

Simply put, you get up every morning, put one foot on the floor and then the other, and start you day.  You love and care for those that need you, that depend on you.  In other words, you do what you have to do, what you need to do, each day.  Then, you get up the next morning and do it all over again.  

"Each day," she told me, "the hurt and sadness get a little bit easier to manage."  It's incremental and not really noticeable but things get better by the tiniest bit each and every single day.  

I think there's some Zen in this, somewhere, because it requires a focus on the present moment, the present day, that seems to be a necessary element of the healing process.  It's important, I think, not to get too lost in the past or too worried about a future without the one you love.  Stay present and get through this day, then get through the next day.  It's living, quite literally, one day at a time.  

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, you place days beside each other and stack them on top of one another, until you are well on the way to building a foundation of recover and of a new life.  Different from the old life, sure, but life nonetheless.  And you develop an appreciation for the new life.  That doesn't happen overnight, at least it didn't for me, but it did happen.

Most important, I think, from my mom's point of view is that you do all of this with an incredibly strong faith that God is with you, really WITH you, at every point in the journey through unimaginable grief and hurt.  Without faith, for her and for me, tool, I am not sure recovery is possible.  Not in the way she accomplished it or in the way I have tried to accomplish it after her death.  

Five years without having my mom in my life.    

There are so many things I would love to have shared with her, almost all of them involving JP and Joe.  Their academic and athletic achievements.  Their successes and failures.  So many questions I would have loved to ask her.  So many laughs I would love to have had with her the last five years.  

I still think about my mom all the time.  In fact, rarely a day goes by when a memory of her doesn't cross my mind.  In church on Sundays, I always think about her, and Carley, too, usually saying a prayer of thanks that my life was enriched by their presence when they were here with me and my family.

Five years is a long time, objectively.  This five years, though, seems to have passed by in the blink of an eye.  

I miss you, mom.  I love you.