My mom died five months ago. As could only be expected, the months following her death have been intense. There’s been a lot of grief to wade through, grief that comes in many flavors — saccharine to stinging, buttery to bland.

It’s one of life’s ultimate futilities, losing a loved one — a mother, no less — to death. I already knew this.

Now my heart knows.

I’m no longer crying myself to sleep each night, but still the slightest moments or conversations can bring me to tears, often without warning. The feelings are so fresh that sometimes I can simply think my tears to flow. Much like my tongue instinctively responds to the word “vinegar,” my heart reacts viscerally to specific memories or images. I can call them to mind, or block them out when it’s been too much, at will.

Sorting through my mom’s personal belongings, I almost want to binge on her cross-stitching threads … the outfit she wore last Christmas, her “transplant recipient” hoodie … her paper trimmer. No matter that I don’t cross-stitch or that her clothes don’t fit. No matter that I already have three better paper trimmers. Hers, with its dull blade and cheap plastic ruler, is the one I use now.

I’ve developed a fierce nostalgia, holding on to recipe cards I stumble across, or her notebooks, even shopping lists. Her elegant loopy cursive, right in front of me, helps keep her close. I’ve read and re-read, scanned, and then electronically backed up each and every letter or poem my mom wrote me over the course of my life. She gifted me with well over a hundred of them — taken for granted previously, but now bridges to her voice, her humor, her love, her insights about me.

Emotions need to move, so I do my best to let them do their thing. I also know that sometimes feelings go bland, get stuck. There are times I’m just so tired of this grief. I want life to be “normal” again… and yet I don’t want to pretend everything is the same. I don’t want to forget my mom … and yet I want to forget that she died.

At home, I’ll be stuffing the washing machine with clothes while thinking about something funny or sweet that my kids said that my mom would love to hear about, when suddenly I’m struck with the absurd thought that it’s been too long since I’ve called my mom. Um, yes. It has. We’d never gone more than a few days without talking. But for a nanosecond, my brain forgets to quantify time.

Similarly, on many mornings I wake up rattled by my dreams. My mom and I are together, enjoying a trip to the spa, or just about to meet up with the rest of our family. But suddenly, she’s missing. No matter how hard I look or where I search, disturbingly, I can’t find her, can’t reunite our family, and this becomes the dream’s frustrating focus. My alarm subsides when, awake and freshly showered, I place her butterfly pendant around my neck again.

The way through, it seems, is in holding my mom close, any way that I can.

And not only for my sake.

I’ve still got two young children to raise — children who need me, just as much as, and more so, now that their eyes have been opened to an awareness they are too young to have to see. Their Grammy has died. Mothers can die.

Each day I try to ask myself: Am I giving my children enough to hold on to their Grammy? Am I pausing enough with the busy-making activities in life to be sure that I am creating for my children these same gifts that will help them hold on to me, one day? Can my newfound understanding of grief help them through theirs?

For starters, we read a lot of books. Books like The Invisible String, Heaven is for Real, If You Listen, Mattie and Grandpa, and The Heart and the Bottle. Books that, like my mom’s handwritten love letters do for me, bridge separation and remind my children that we will always be connected. I will always be their mother, my mom will always be their Grammy. She’ll always be in their hearts. Relationships are forever.

I talk about my mom a lot. Sometimes it’s on a superficial level of keeping her connected through the senses, just as using my mom’s paper trimmer is for me, reminding them, “Oh, you’re wearing the dress Grammy gave you!” Sometimes it’s deeper, touching on the level of being known. “Grammy used to delight in seeing the ways you’re always looking up to your sister.”

Just as I try to accept all the different flavors of my feelings, I do my best to accept theirs, wherever they are at.

At first, my children were quite matter-of-fact and casual about death. In their childlike innocence, they’d blurt out things like, “Grammy’s dead,” or, as my youngest asked my mom one week before she died, in a voyeuristic tone that almost sounded delighted, “Are you going to Heaven right now?”

Inside my head, I’d be screaming at their bluntness — how totally rude! But I understand that developmentally they’re grappling with how-does-this-work, and I can appreciate their lack of filters and desire to get right to the point. Their emotions can’t move — let alone be felt! — until they can make sense of the situation, first, on a factual level.

The facts have sunken in now, though, so it’s about drawing out their soft feelings.

Last week while driving to school my daughter randomly said to me, “I wish I had a different Grammy.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. I glanced in the rearview mirror, curious about my daughter’s feelings, of course, but also a bit protective of my mom. Death has elevated her, in my mind, to almost saint-like status, any faults either forgotten or forgiven.

“One who didn’t smoke and ruin her lungs!” my daughter yelled in frustration.

Reflexively, I started to explain that Grammy didn’t ruin her lungs. A rare autoimmune disease did the honors.

Getting technical or defensive now, though, wasn’t what my daughter needed. My daughter was tasting that same bitter futility that wakes me up after a night of haunted dreams. All that was needed was for me to come alongside her feelings, and then draw out the vulnerable side of things in hopes of helping her move through that fierce anger toward sadness. I changed course.

“I know, sweetie. It is so hard that she’s not here,” I said. “She didn’t want to have that disease ruin her lungs, either. She wanted to stay and see you grow up, too. It’s not what you wanted. Not what any of us wanted.”

My daughter didn’t cry on the spot. That’s simply not her style. But the serene quiet that enveloped us for the rest of the drive held the sense of movement from mad to sad … for us both — inadvertent modeling!

Other times, I don’t have to help draw out my daughters’ sadness. Just as sadness floats on my surface, ready to catch me by surprise, their soft hearts bring out their sadness at unexpected times.

Last month my eldest came home from school, determined to make a shrine to honor Grammy after learning about Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations. She spent well over an hour preparing a table just right, lining up chestnuts and drawing felted butterflies for an elegant centerpiece.

Another day, my youngest spent her quiet time listening on repeat to “I’ll Fly Away,” a song that played at my mom’s funeral. While she listened, she drew a picture of she and Grammy together, a butterfly — come to symbolically represent my mother — fluttering above my mom. She peeked her head around the corner to find me. “How do you write, ‘Grammy, I miss you?’”

I couldn’t begin to push for tender moments like these. They can only arise organically, coming from within. And when they flow out so naturally, I cherish my daughters’ softness, their willingness to embrace all their feelings related to this huge thing, their courage to experience all the different flavors of their feelings. Inside, I even do a little cheer for them. I am so proud.

I rub my mom’s butterfly necklace. Holding on, I can feel my mom giving a little cheer, herself. She’s proud, too.

And so we carry on, holding on.

© Sara Easterly. All rights reserved.
This essay was first published as an editorial by the Seattle Neufeld Community.