Today is the five year anniversary of my dad's phone call. I remember it so clearly. I remember almost every moment of those two days (was it really only two days?) so clearly. I remember not wanting to leave the hospital, because it was my last link to her. I remember wanting to think about her every second. Which is good, because there was no escaping it.
For months after my mom died, I would wake up in the morning and the knowledge that she was gone was like a physical punch in the gut. Every day it hit me - "Gone. Gone."
For a few years I went through months- and even year-long phases of feeling a certain way. I went through a phase of missing her and deeply regretting every minute not spent together, of feeling grief all over again anytime I went somewhere she would have loved, like Taltree Arboretum or the Japanese Garden in Hyde Park. My anger at her loss from Nick and Alex's life was intense. During that phase I also felt like I was understanding her more and more by the day.
I went through feeling guilty and angry with myself for not cherishing our time together more, for being critical when I didn't need to be, for not always understanding where she was coming from. At the same time, I had this realization that I never would have allowed myself to fully see her side while she was alive. I think that's the curse of many mother-daughter relationships.
I went through a phase of being angry with the world - angry at anyone who hadn't seemed compassionate enough, understanding enough, sympathetic enough. That anger could often be irrational, and I mostly bottled it up and felt bitter. And I felt (and continue to feel) incredibly grateful for those friends (and sometimes people I hardly knew) who got it, who made me feel loved, and who validated my grief. I'm still amazed at the people who hadn't been through a similar loss and yet had such deep empathy.
And I went through a phase of being angry with my mom, for all of the regrets of our relationship. It was like the flip side of the coin to my anger with myself.
And then all of those feelings, the hard-core grief, the anger and the resentments, began to fade. We were in the "new normal". The missing her isn't so raw anymore. It's always there, but life actually feels normal again.
