Dear Mom: Missing You

Dear Mom,

It's been over a year now since you passed away. I still haven't written the post about your memorial as well as some follow up posts. All of the sudden, I have great difficulty finding the energy to write blog posts. It is hard to write posts without you alive in them. Hospice stops following a bereaving family after 13 months and I'm past that now. I feel...like I need to...like I should move on. But I feel more sorrow than ever. The blog posts helped to give me purpose and to work through the difficult memories of the summer last year, but now we're past that and I feel empty. I shouldn't feel this way still right? I lost you, I lost my Mom, this is not an unusual loss. I'm a grown woman. Grown women lose their moms, it's a part of life. It's not like I lost my spouse prematurely or I lost a child. Just like your and Dad's divorce two years ago, that loss, just like the loss of you, of a mom, is common. It's ordinary. But Mom, the pain I still feel is extraordinary.

Mom, I just can't believe you're gone. You were just here! You were just here. I stand in my kitchen and I look to the lower cabinet where you crouched down to get out pans to help me cook for Christmas 2013. You were just there. I look to the end of the counter where you always stuck your purse when you came over. It was just there. I sit on the couch in the living room and look over to the chair you sat in a month before Lydia was born as you helped me pick out paint samples for Amelia's big girl room. You were just sitting there. Where did you go? How can you be gone? You were just here. 

Mom, October was a really hard month for me. Work was so hard. There were so many of my patients dying Mom. These were patients who were there for rehab Mom, they were supposed to get better, they were supposed to go home. One Monday morning I came in and three people were dying. I had to call and talk to three families to tell them that despite our best efforts, their mother or father was dying. One son told me his mother used to be such a vivacious woman, that this was not her. I said, I know, I know. Another daughter told me that she didn't want to put her mother through any more aggressive treatment, that she just wanted her to be comfortable. I told her too, I know, I know. I have another patient with ALS who is dying. She is your age, she has a daughter my age. I see the fear in her eyes as she struggles to breathe and it's haunting. I try to convince her to take the medications that will ease her anxiety but she shakes her head no. I think she is afraid she will not wake up if she goes to sleep. Her fear is real because it's true. There are a dozen more stories Mom from October, families who are mad at me, families I can't give answers, families who want better answers, patients I can't help. I want to get up and leave, I want to go home, but I take a deep breath and draw all the strength I can muster to push through the day. Every day is so intense Mom.

I went to church this morning Mom. It's the fourth time I've gone to church this year and the first time in six months. The last time we went to our church was in February and I cried as the choir sang Give Me Jesus.

And when I come to die,
And when I come to die,
When I come to die, give me Jesus.

Give me Jesus,
Give me Jesus,
You can have all this world, 
You can have all this world,
You can have all this world,
But give me Jesus.

I know that's what you would've sang on September 19, 2014 if you could've.

The sermon began and the pastor was starting a new series discussing truths we've adopted as biblical when they're not. Today's sermon topic was the phrase "God will never give you more than you can handle." I started crying as soon as they put the topic on the screen. The pastor discussed how the phrase isn't true and it isn't biblical. Nowhere in the Bible does it say we will not be given more pain than we can handle. He discussed how Paul was given more pain than he could handle:

"We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death..." 

I do not mean to compare the loss of you Mom to the sufferings of Paul, but his words are the words I feel right now. I found great comfort in the pastor's words and I cried through the whole sermon. He too said the greatest pain in his life, although incredibly common and normal, had been the divorce of his parents when he was 17. I wanted to say, "I know, I know." He said I shouldn't feel guilty that I still feel so much pain and so much sorrow over my losses. He said we would feel pain beyond our abilities, but with the help of others to uplift and support us, we can get through.

I think I'm a lot like you Mom. Just as you seemed to have an underlying depression your whole life, I too have always felt sadness. I remember when I made my poetry notebook my junior year of high school and made the theme "Loss." You found it a few years later and read it. You told me it was depressing and I said I know, but it's how I felt.

I don't think depression is what a lot of people stereotypically think it is Mom. I think you would agree. I am not incapable of getting out of bed, I am not incapable of feeling happy, I am not incapable of socializing and laughing. Everyone knows I love a good joke. But my heart has always felt heavy, always.  I have sought out measures to help me battle this through my life, but Mom, the loss of you, it was too much. It pushed me further than I can bear and I am struggling, more now than ever.

I'm going to post this on the blog and I've probably shared too much, I already feel embarrassed. I worry about the people who will look at this snidely and think that I just need to pull myself together. But I'm also hoping there are people who will read this and will understand what I'm feeling and maybe it will help them to know others feel the same.

Mom, don't you worry about me, I'm gonna pull myself together, I always do. Everything will be okay. I'll be fine, if for nothing more than my girls need a strong mom and I'm going to be a strong mom for them. But strong doesn't mean invincible and I hope to teach them that.

I miss you.

Love, Danielle

"...But this has happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many." 2 Corinthians 1: 8-9