Tonight I wept for my mother and the person who slipped away from me

Photo by guille pozzi on Unsplash

Tonight I spoke on the phone with a woman who had been my mother’s best friend for years. She and another mutual friend --of hers and my mother’s—is coming to visit me.

We spoke for about an hour and a half.

I haven’t talked to her in years.

It was nice, but as she recounted so many stories of my mother from a time period in her life when she was well (well, better), when she was present, when she was still the insightful and quick-witted person, who had friends and who people reached out to for advice. Who made things and laughed and was goofy-

Before she became a shadow, the shell of the person she became, before she became unrecognizable to me.

I knew this version of my mother and had to support her and take care of her for the remaining years of her life, especially after my father’s death.

I am used to that story now.

I tell those stories and recount them now, often.

But tonight, I was made to remember the spirit and the fire and the passion and the light, the aura and soul, that my mother had once been.

I hadn’t heard those stories—some of them at all—or thought about that person in years.

The person who I had loved so much. My person. The one that I called and wanted her input on everything.

The one who would listen to my bitching about something or some situation or someone and then would reply with -

“Do you want me to go beat ‘em up for you?”

The floods of memories came back -who she was - and who she may have been if things had been different -If dad didn’t complete suicide, if she had gotten mental health help, if only -

The stories reacquainted me with that woman.

And the ache in my heart for her grew unbearable.

I grew teary-it crept up, and I wept, deeply.

I felt short of breath and wanted to take in deep inhales and deep sighs of exhales and I was reminded-

That grief exists in our lungs, as unprocessed emotions.

I also realized lately that I am unable to hear the sound of my Grandmother Donelson’s voice, and that saddens me.

I can imagine what she would say or names she would call me, but I can’t exactly hear her voice.

I can my mother, father, and brother still, but not hers.

I miss them both.

I read it once, and have forgotten who wrote it, perhaps it was the author of the Dead Mom’s Club, or Marisa Renee Lee who wrote on grief and losing her mother, but -

“I miss the essence that was my mother.”