364 Days

364 days. It's stunning to think it has been nearly a year since my world turned upside down. And that I've lived without my mom for 156 of those 364 days.

Numbers...gosh, how I like numbers. I like balancing my checkbook and doing my taxes and statistics. Numbers can help you ignore reality though. 364 days. 156 of them without mom. I had 208 days with her after she was diagnosed. They are all numbers. They can mask all the feeling and emotion behind them. They are, after all, simply numbers. The events and tears and laughter and hurt and joy that make up all those numbers can get lost behind them.

But the numbers also bring their own emotion with them.

I have to believe that this is what I've been dealing with this month. The numbers sit in my head and I am taken back to a year ago. And the emotions are bubbling over. I am back to crying every day. Sobbing sometimes. And damn I hurt. And I'm searching for answers I can't find. And I know that they probably don't exist. This is just a journey I have to keep walking.

I can't help but think that this time right now is causing some of this though. Tonight I teach the last class in a 5 week series. It was this class series and this particular class last year when I received that phone call from mom and dad. I know none of that is going to happen tonight. I know I'm not going to get a phone call that leaves me crying in a birth room, trying to compose myself. I'm not going to teach this class numb and confused and lost. I know all of that. But THIS class is monumental for me and maybe I just need to get through it. Maybe I just need to get through these next three days to find another side of what I'm feeling right now. Or maybe there will always be another "thing" to get through. I don't know. I just know what today means. I know that this class tonight holds some power over me. I know that tomorrow is 365 days since I started this blog. And that Saturday is day 366...or day 1 again. It will be one full year since I found myself on the floor of my kitchen with a phone to my ear hearing the confirmation that my mom had cancer and it was bad.

I know I have to walk through these days. And as I've mentioned, I really was in denial that this particular time was approaching and that it was going to be tough. But it's here...and it is harder than I expected. I think the anticipation has been building all week, pehaps all month, even though I try to keep pushing it down. But it's been there...bubbling...and building to today.

In the book, Motherless Daughters, Hope Edelman says, "Grief goes in cycles, like the seasons, like the moon. No one is better created to understand this than a woman, whose bodily existence is marked by a monthly rhythm for more than half her life. For centuries, writers, aware of grief's organic cadence, also have used seasonal metaphors to describe a process that continually leads us from the deepest sorrow toward the peak of renewal, and back again." She goes on to say, "We're an impatient culture, accustomed to gratifying most of our needs quickly. But mourning requires a certain resignation to the forces of time. Expecting grief to run a quick, predictable course has led us to overpathologize the process, viewing normal responses as indications of serious distress." And lastly, "I used to criticize myself: It's been six months already. Get on with your life. Get over it. I tried. I really tried. But it's impossible to undo fifteen or twenty years of learned behavior with a mother in only a few months time. If it takes nine months to bring a life into this world, what makes us think we can let go of someone in less?"

Yet another reference to birth. And a good one. And one I needed today. Hope lost her mom when she was 17. I lost my mom when I was 40. I have 40 years of of learned behavior. For instance, I managed another 4.0 last term. In 6 classes, I have managed 5 As and 1 B+. My cumulative GPA is nearly 3.9. I KNOW...I simply KNOW how proud my mom would be. And that learned behavior had me wanting to pick up the phone and immediately call her when I got my grades this week. I could HEAR how proud she would be. I could SEE her smile. But I couldn't call. I couldn't truly hear her or see her. I have to accept what I have in my head. But honestly, that's simply not enough. I want more. And I'm so angry that I can't have it.

And so, I keep walking through another stage of this grief process. I'll finish with one more quote from Hope Edelman as it is exactly what I am in the process of learning right now.

"Here's what I've learned about grief...It's not linear. It's not predictable. It's anything but smooth and self-contained. Someone did us all a grave injustice by first implying that mourning has a distinct beginning, middle, and end. That's the stuff of short fiction. Not real life."

This is real life I'm living. And I am still living. But some days are harder than others. Some days are like climbing mountains. Days like these next three. But I'll get through them, emerge on the other side, and keep walking towards the next mountain. And I'll get over that one too. And the one after that. And the one after that. But it doesn't mean I won't get sad or angry or want to quit halfway up the mountain. But I will keep going. I will keep walking like all those who have gone before me have continued to do as well. I follow their footprints. And I keep walking. As long as I keep walking, I know I'm doing okay, no matter how hard it seems at times.