The title of this is a little misleading, because I’m not without her… she’s in my thoughts daily, constantly, in the background of everything. If anything, I’m more ‘with’ her than I’ve ever been – just not in the way that we were (I’ll get into this later).

I am just a baby in the world of grief. A 6 month infant, barely able to see – to comprehend, to understand the world around me. That said, for some reason I feel it’s my responsibility to normalize grief within my own life – and that means sharing it with the people near me. Loss is hard enough on its own, this all-consuming thing in and of itself, but there’s a second piece associated with loss that you don’t realize until you’re in it – how much it reshapes the entire world around you. Your personal life, your professional life, your friendships, relationships… everything gets painted a different colour, and in a lot of instances it’s not the colour you’d like.

This is written for my fellow grievers, but also for my friends, and I guess whoever stumbles upon it really – because one day, unfortunately, some of this will apply to you too.

Time…

As mentioned, I am 6 months deep in grief. By far, my least favourite period. It sounds psychotic, but the further you get away from what happened – the more you long for the time just after it.

I miss the week after I lost my mom, and I can sense you wondering ‘why in the world would you want to experience that again’… let me tell you… regardless of the pain, I felt close to her then. I could recall our conversations from just days before, her laugh was right there – there was no searching for it yet. Everything about her felt so accessible, her face, her hands, the way she smelt…

Our relationship a few weeks post loss was still one I had with her living self. I was still attached to that, I wasn’t being asked yet to move on from it. It meant everything, and at that point it was almost as shocking to the world as it was to me. People understood, to the extent they could, what a tragic, devastating, all-consuming thing this had been. They were sad, they were thinking of her… they were thinking of me.

At 6 months, hell, at 3… the world doesn’t hold your hand anymore. There is an expectation to be better. So many words I’ve come to loathe these days, ‘heal’, ‘move on’, ‘better’, ‘accept’… none of these are accurate. There is a massive misconception of what grieving the loss of a parent actually looks like, feels like. I know this from being blessed enough to have been on the other side of it until last November. 32 years I didn’t know loss this intimately. I had lost people, but nothing that rocked my world, flipped it upside down, the way losing my mom young has.

From the outside, at 6 months – you’ve got to get back to ‘life’, learn to carry them with you, care more about your 9-5, hopes and dreams, attend the things, eat the things, do the things… but it’s not that simple, because being ‘better’ comes with its own mess of emotions, primarily – guilt.

I wrote once in a mom loss group I’m a part of, that I don’t want to get better. Consciously, I know moving forward isn’t forgetting my mom, pretending what happened was ok, or betraying her… but there’s this feeling that if I become a fully functioning person again, I can’t go back.

And back is still being close to her – as she was – as she always had been. It’s not acknowledging that this is ‘just life now’, which feels a bit like I’m leaving her behind. Being close to when I lost her, and experiencing that pain, means she was just here. When I lose that… the relationship changes. It’s no longer the one we’ve always had, the one I’ve known my whole life. It becomes different, quieter… something else. Less like my living mom, and more like my mom’s memory…

I don’t want to accept that. Not yet anyway. But I know one day I’m going to have to. Unfortunately, I don’t get much say in any of this.

I don’t get to choose whether or not time passes, it just does… and it passes quickly. One month becomes two months, and suddenly it’s half a year. Half a year since I’ve hugged my mom, talked to my mom, hell – texted my mom… half a year since she’s hearted a post, or sent me a picture of some crazy pillow she just painted.

I don’t feel any better about what happened to my mom. If anything, I’m more angry having moved out of the shock of it all. To me, this will likely always feel like this earth-shattering thing – something I want everyone to feel, know, witness… There are days where I could rip my own shirt from my skin, where the only release I can get is banging my fists against the table, or screaming with my mouth closed (something I picked up during anticipatory grief – and quite therapeutic if I’m being honest).

And then there are days where I’m totally numb to it. Days where it feels like it never happened, where I can function almost as I was – but in the back of my mind there’s this conflict, this sick feeling… how can you be ok after something so… not.

When it starts to become clear it’s not as big of a deal to other people anymore, when they get worse at hiding that they don’t want to hear about it, when they stop asking at all (ps this happens at like month 2), when you feel like the world is revoking your ‘sad card’, or when you’re normal and don’t want to be… it becomes this whole separate thing you have to grieve.

Who you are, and what the world wants of you, will never fully line up again. I’ve never really thought about it like this before, but it’s the truest way I can describe it. I am not what I was. I will never be that version of myself. This will always matter a great deal to me. I will always replay it, long for the time before it… I will never be ‘uncomplicated’ again.

And I think I will always have a hard time relating to people who haven’t been here, in one way or another… (though, I envy you).

Identity…

Losing my witness in my mom really shook my sense of self, in a way that’s difficult to describe.

Your parent is your witness. From the day they give birth to you, all through your life… they’re there. Cheering you on, wanting what’s best for you, looking out for you when no one else is. Even if the relationship isn’t perfect, they’re there – that’s the long and short of it.

And they know a version of you no one else does. The ‘Ash’ I am with my mom is unlike any other relationship I have in my life. It’s special, it’s sacred, and in grieving my mom, I’ve also had to grieve that version of me. I was naive. I smiled in a way I don’t really see anymore. I felt relatively safe, whole, cared for. I knew who I was, where I came from, and had some sort of expectation for my future story. Tragedy was not supposed to be part of it.

It feels as if my parents were these two giant tethers holding me to the ground. When my mom died, one of those tethers lifted. Suddenly I’m half attached to the earth and half floating off into space. Some days I feel grounded, other days completely disoriented, scared, confused… Like I’m trying to relearn the rules of a world I thought I already understood.

I’ve looked back on everything, listened to voice memo after voice memo… things I recorded that I thought might someday give me comfort… and I just hear this little girl. I hurt for her. I can hear the pain and fear in her voice, how desperately she didn’t want to lose her mom, or the world as she knew it. I feel like I’ve aged forty years since then. Like I’m my own caregiver. My mom is in me now, and I have to look out for myself in ways I was never responsible for before. Cheer myself on. Think about what she would say to me. Know she’d be proud of me. Look in the mirror and compliment my outfit the way only she could.

It’s all these little things you never appreciated at the time, or never realized were such a massive part of the way you saw yourself. And then suddenly, all of it is stripped away. Normalcy as you know it becomes completely redefined.

That said, you also become aware of all the ways you are who you are because of them. So much of what is good in me comes from her. Little idiosyncrasies too.

I carry her on in me. As cliché as that sounds, it’s this deeply important, beautiful thing I never had to consciously think about before.

My mom said it best:

“I loved you from the day I set eyes on you. Loved you before the day I set eyes on you, when I knew you were in my belly. I loved you. From then on, girl, that was you and me. You and me, honey. Mother’s and daughters go through trials and tribulations, things all the time. But that’s nothing. You’re tied, you’re always tied. You’re a piece of me. A huge piece of me.”

The things you believed…

There was a fair amount of safety I used to associate with the world.

I had young parents, and I always assumed they’d be with me until I got really old. Forgetting why we walked in the room, old.

There were other things I sort of assumed too. What goes around comes around… karma… that there was always some sort of predetermined path for me. Manifestation is a big one. Throughout my life I’ve always had feelings about things, and almost always they turned out to be true.

When my mom first had her CT, I was CONVINCED – I can’t tell you – every bone in my body knew this was sarcoidosis. She had this rash all summer. It shows up as spots everywhere that resemble tumours… but aren’t. It was easily curable. It explained some of the muscle weakness, and she still looked so much like my mom – healthy, normal. There was just no way this was cancer.

I remember thinking:
“How lucky we are that we experienced this shocking thing and now know what’s important – not to take each other, or our time together, for granted.”

Hanging out in the ER, I was reminded how fun my mom can be, and I made all these promises to myself that we would see each other so much more often, stop putting off all the things we wanted to do together…

What a blessing this sarcoidosis was.
Just the shake-up our family needed.

I went on a hike sometime between the first day she was admitted and when we got the scope results. Everything about the way the leaves were blowing, the way the sun was shining… everything told me this was going to be ok. Not to worry. Then I got to the hospital and was told it was cancer. Aggressive, incurable cancer. And suddenly everything I believed to be true about the world was wrong. My entire belief system flipped upside down.

My mom – the kindest person I know, someone who never truly got the life she deserved, who had just turned this corner… I got this house in large part for us, this new chapter… there was so much about my future that relied on my mom being in it. And how could someone as pure as her be faced with this? What had she done to deserve it? What had I done?

Life truly didn’t make any sense anymore. If this is it, it’s pointless. Absolute garbage. It can’t be. There’s still so much I struggle with here.

The first month was reserved for an obsession with death. The second, I realized I would not survive psychologically if I didn’t force myself to believe in something more… something greater (see spirituality below). And now, though I still often feel like I’m living on the wrong timeline, some butterfly effect business… I’m able to get up, shower, do my makeup, and try to find my place in all of this. Though usually with a fair amount of guilt and overthinking.

There’s a final piece here I’ll say, and it will make me sound a bit nuts (though maybe not as nuts as what’s to come below).

A very big part of me believed, in some strange way, that the world sort of moved for me. Main character energy. Like this was all some simulation built around my story. Maybe you’ve gone down those Reddit threads: “Have you ever seen your neighbours bringing in groceries?”

I knew tragic things happened to good people, but I was desensitized to death because it never felt like it could truly touch me. Not in the ways it touched others. There was just absolutely no world in which my story became tragic. And so when it did, the bubble burst.

It turns out I’m not the main character. I’m a small speck in something much bigger. I feel like I got a peek behind the curtain, and all the magic I thought was so real suddenly had strings attached to it. Reading stories from people my age who lost their mothers quickly and traumatically should have made me feel seen, should have comforted me… but instead it cemented the fact that I’m not special.

Maybe you’re reading this thinking:
“But Ashley, you are.”

No, in the grand scheme of things, I’m not a significant person. My life but a blink, my tragedy but a drop in the bucket.

It’s a difficult feeling to wrestle with, but one I’ve unwillingly come to accept.

Spirituality…

I don’t want this whole thing to be doom and gloom. Honestly, my search for spirituality is probably what saved whatever lasting bit of sanity I had left. I’ll try to give the Coles notes. In my humble opinion (after many, many 2am rabbit holes), the universe is far too big, too old, too complex, for this to simply be it.

It’s 2 trillion galaxies, hundreds of billions of stars per galaxy, planets around nearly every star, 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution… for only ONE planet, ONE species, ONE moment in time to produce consciousness? “If the universe were a city, Earth wouldn’t be a house – it wouldn’t even be a dust mote, it would be a single bacterium on a dust mote under a floorboard no one’s checked yet.”

Our place in all of this is likely not central, not early, not late, not special in location. We’re a young species with fragile bodies, violent instincts, and brand new technology. If consciousness exists at all, I struggle to believe it’s unique to us, limited to one form, confined to one timeline, or even necessarily confined to bodies. So though I now understand I am not important in the grander scheme of things, I also don’t believe we simply become dirt in the way I once did.

There has to be something else going on here. Do I believe our consciousness continues exactly as we are now? Probably not. Do I desperately hope to experience some form of my mom again? Of course I do. I’ll long for it every day of my life until it’s over. But if this version of life ends, and I’m suddenly sharing an afterlife with a Chad who thinks the Earth is flat and watches videos on his phone in public with no headphones… it doesn’t make much sense.

That said, I have opened myself up to the possibility my mom’s energy can still touch me somehow, show me things, sit with me during times I really need it. I think we might be a very early species, unable to perceive entire dimensions of existence happening behind whatever this is, the veil, the game, whatever you want to call it. Maybe not a game where I’m the center of it all, but something much stranger than we currently understand.

And honestly, I’ve also come to understand there is nothing weak about overriding your very scientific, logical brain at a time like this. Hell, what does science REALLY know.

Relationships…

I didn’t have many close friends, at least not within close proximity, before I lost my mom – so it’s no surprise I had even fewer after.

This is another thing I had to grieve (it sucks).

Again, not long ago I was a griever’s friend too, and I did almost everything wrong. I tiptoed around them, didn’t check in very much, was afraid to remind them of their person (PS – they’re always thinking about their person, there’s no ‘reminding’ them, so remove this fear asap).

I’d often say things like:
“Let me know if you need anything, I’m here.”

A grieving person doesn’t have energy. They won’t ask for help, invite you over, or give specifics about what they need. They are so insanely overwhelmed by awful, heavy thoughts there’s barely energy for maintaining relationships, let alone figuring out what the fridge is out of.

I found a lot of my friends commented on my Instagram post… and that was it. Ghosted.

And honestly, if you’re here reading this old friend, hi – you’re ok. You’re not a terrible person.

But on the other side of loss, I found myself gravitating toward people who got it, or at the very least people who genuinely tried to sit with me in it.

And maybe that’s harsh, but life is short – unbelievably so – and for the rest of mine, I want to do as little pretending as possible.

Trauma…

If you lost your parent (or person) in a traumatic way, there’s so much more to this period than simply missing them, grieving their life lived, and if like in my case they died far too soon – grieving the life they didn’t get to.

I’ve yet to decide if I’ll fully touch on this, it’s maybe a bit too intimate talking about all the things my mom deserved and won’t get to experience. Maybe I’ll just leave it at this – if your person lived long or well (ideally both), it still hurts immensely they aren’t here, but there are fewer regrets. Fewer injustices. It’s this whole other complex clusterfuck of emotions when you know your parent didn’t get the life they were so incredibly deserving of, or the best version of you. There’s a pain there that I don’t think ever fully goes away.

So trauma… hospital trauma, hospice trauma… things you’d only ever seen in nightmares, suddenly lived in real time. There’s still a lot happening behind my eyes throughout the day. I’ve mostly moved past replaying every breath sound over and over, rehashing timelines, trying to understand what went wrong, why didn’t they try _, why didn’t they tell me about _, if only I did _. But I think I’ve slowly had to admit I’m dealing with some level of PTSD, not some personal failure to cope correctly.

I’ve put so much pressure on myself somehow to have all these things figured out… my life, my purpose, my job, my home even… maybe because, in a way, they’re things I can control. And when for the first time in your life you’re completely out of control, living through something you cannot change, watching a person you love suffer and not being able to stop it, not getting to decide what your future looks like anymore… waking up to your nightmare, rather than falling asleep to it… there’s this desperate need to control something.

So maybe I racked up a line of credit, but I could control this renovation… and my mom would love every inch of it (just saying).

I’m also doing what’s referred to as “constant bracing.” It’s another thing that can happen after your first major loss, you brace for the next horrible thing to happen. My experience was an extra mindfuck because around every corner there was more sudden, devastating news.

I went from sure-as-shit sarcoidosis, to stage 4 melanoma, to:
“6 months with your mom.”
To:
“Maybe two.”
And then a few days later, the two became:
“A couple weeks if the stent works.”

And overnight, the weeks turned to days… but not with the waking version of her, that I’ll never see again…

It’s no wonder my body is constantly bracing. The grief moved from my neck, to my ear, to my teeth… migraines… and then of course there’s the hyper-awareness that any person you love could go next. That’s this whole other piece of it.

Once the death door is opened, it’s very hard to convince yourself it closes again.

Work… 

I won’t belabour the point, work is hard to care about after seeing behind the curtain. It’s equally difficult to play pretend alongside people who can’t fully comprehend what you’ve experienced, and who naturally compare it to their own hardships (I’m not saying your breakup wasn’t devastating Janet, it’s just… not quite the same as losing your mom).

I need to work, and honestly, I want to work, but I can’t say what’s happened hasn’t made me question what that work looks like now – and how I fit into it.

I also think I’ve realized how dangerous it can be to blow up every stable thing in your life while grieving, no matter how tempting it feels. That’s currently my goal anyway… tbd how it goes. 

Family…

Because of everything mentioned, I can feel myself becoming reluctant to get close to my family again. I pushed my Dad away out of fear he suddenly dies too, and maybe if we’re less close it won’t hurt as much when it happens.

I’ve isolated myself from friends, but more unfortunately, from my family – the people I care most about, the only things that truly matter to me in this world.

I’ve always known, and I’ve said to my partner many times, my biggest fear in life isn’t sharks, snakes, spiders… it’s not even dying myself. It’s losing my family. I knew if I lost them early it would destroy me. I brought it up more often than the average person probably does.

Maybe I manifested my own nightmare, who knows.

Regardless, I’m realizing consciously distancing yourself out of fear of the price of love isn’t fair. Being alone has its perks, you can ugly cry, scream if you want, disappear for awhile… but you know deep down it’s not what your person would want for you, and it’s not what you want for yourself, not really.

The future… 

When I think about “moving forward” there’s still a lot of hesitancy. And as much as I would give anything – literally anything – to not be part of the dead moms club, I can say I have a deeper appreciation for whatever this is, “life” as we call it.

That’s not to say I don’t still wrestle with the purpose of it all, my place in it all, what comes next… I think this is probably a lifelong conversation now.

If I could say anything to myself at my absolute lowest, it would be this: there are moments where you’re able to come up for air. The brain does this interesting thing where it manages itself, protects itself. It knows when you can’t handle anymore, and it sort of shuts that terrifying centre off for a little while. There were times I tried desperately to access the grief and physically couldn’t. You cannot carry that level of heaviness 24/7 without breaking completely, so somehow the brain intervenes.

There are times grief will absolutely knock you over, and times where you’re able to laugh again. The hard part, I think, is getting to a place where behind that laughter there isn’t guilt lurking underneath.

Where maybe you become friends with your pain, in the least destructive way possible. Feel the feelings, deeply, but hold yourself there too. Like the hand of your mom in yours when you’re most afraid.

What you’re living through is an impossibly hard, lifelong thing. Your biggest problem that can’t be solved. You are forever changed by it, in devastating ways, but beautiful ways too. Life feels deeper now. And though I’m still incredibly reluctant to move on from the living relationship I had with my mom, I can feel this very profound relationship forming with her memory… where she’s with me all the time.

I hate to say that though. I would give anything to go back to what we had.

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