Still Processing

A thing people tell you a lot when someone dies is that you need to process it. It was never very clear to me what that actually means. I know everyone meant well but mostly when people told me this, or asked me how I felt, it felt like I had failed some sort of test. There was some process I was supposed to be going through, some new understanding or perspective I was supposed to find, but all I ever really had to say was some variation on "my mom died, it sucks, I'm sad about it." This remained the case no matter how much or how little I focused on my breathing or meditation or exercise or self-care or mindful eating or whatever else. Just another thing I was doing wrong somehow.

That said recently I think I'm starting to get it. Grief itself is a process. It doesn't feel like one I've really had any control over, but I can't deny that things are starting to feel different. Lately it's not all the same shade. Unfortunately everyone is right when they tell you these things take time, as unhelpful as it feels when the problem is happening right now.

I would like to offer some better way of putting it but unfortunately I don't think there's a good way to talk to a grieving person. Words can't do these things justice. It's going to suck no matter what and the fact of being there and caring is what matters. It would be worse not to bring it up. And the tropes are true! It's a process. These things take time. You have to give yourself space. Kind of like nails on a chalkboard for me at this point but none of them are wrong. What the hell else can you say?

Anyway. I cleaned out her old house today with some family. The distance that time and death create have gradually started to give me more of a sense of my mom as a person and not just my mom. She was a lot like me in ways that I have long been reluctant to admit. One very obvious one from cleaning out her stuff is that we had the same organization style (bad). It would have been great if she had, like, labeled her stuff in storage or not just thrown a bunch of useless trinkets in the same box as priceless mementos but I guess she would have been an entirely different person if she had done that. I am very much the same way. Hopefully I can improve this habit before my own kids are digging through my stuff but I doubt it. Some things are just a part of who you are.

I found a whole bunch of old journals with different prompts for keeping track of her feelings or her recipes or her yoga practice. Also much like me the majority of them are only partially filled out; she kept them up til she got distracted or gave up or whatever. But I read through them and saw the handwriting that will never write a new letter again. Will never send me another kind-of-hard-to-decipher postcard.

What I read was mostly a person who was doing the same things I do. I journal almost every day - try to keep track of my feelings, make sense of things, talk myself out of constantly assuming the worst. So did she. She wrote about being stressed and being sad and being happy and being hungover and all the little things she wanted to work on, wanted to do better. Wrote little notes of encouragement to herself alongside admissions of how hard everything was. Basically she did the same thing as me but with a lot more focus on yoga.

Since my mom's death I have to admit that mostly I have been angry. It sucked, you can go back and read about it if you want. I was stressed out of my goddamn mind for a few weeks and then I didn't have a mom anymore. I think I felt robbed of a lot of things, most of all the opportunity to "process" or come to peace with anything that happened. Probably not the healthiest response but I'm told anger is one of the major stages in this process so I guess I'm allowed.

It's really only in the last couple of months that I've been able to let go of a bit of that fury and just be sad. Just think about her as someone with a whole life and all the pain and triumph and love and hurt that that entails. As someone who didn't get to have as long as she should have and who did her best to keep true to herself amid all the ignominies of adult life that I struggle with too. Someone who was a lot like me. Seeing all the little memories that make up a life - the record of someone trying to make sense of things as best she could, the same way I do - helps make it clear how I want to remember her. She was someone who tried as hard as she could until her very last. I'm proud of her for that.