Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.
Well, today has hit me harder than I was expecting.
I was out last night with my friend Krista, who is just -- an amazing human creature, and one of the reasons we bonded so quickly was that my mom was getting sicker and sicker at the time we met and she had lost her father while she was in high school, and she's the person I can talk about this shit with who knows exactly what I mean. And she asked me how I was going to be today, and I said, quite honestly, fine. I'm sad in the abstract, but now it feels like she's always been gone, and that's more upsetting in a way.
No, she said. Don't be upset. That means you've moved on and you're living your life, which is exactly what your mom would want for you.
And it's true, in some ways. During a workshop on interviewing, a guy in my class opened with Esther, why are you so happy all the time? And I think I sort of bowled him over when I said Because my mother died of brain cancer last year and I spent the middle five years of my twenties in a constant state of grieving. Now I'm this person who's going to be a journalist and who rides bikes in Chicago and takes swing dancing classes and does things my mom would probably disown me for. It still baffles me, that this is what life is supposed to be like, not constantly under this 500-ton ACME weight of grief and paralysis.
I'm going to be fine today. (I have too much work to get done to not be.) But I wish I could call her up. Hell, I wish I believed she was someplace else where she could hear me and see me, but I don't. But I do think the subject line should be on her headstone -- that or her other great phrase, which she lifted from the rabbi who trained me for my bat mitzvah, and who couldn't perform it, in the end, because she had to have surgery for the cancer that would later kill her.
Nothing will spoil my beautiful day.
Love you, Mom. I love you I love you I love you.
This was originally posted on Dreamwidth, where it has
comments. I would love to hear from you at DW! If you can see this post, you can comment here using OpenID. Thanks!
I was out last night with my friend Krista, who is just -- an amazing human creature, and one of the reasons we bonded so quickly was that my mom was getting sicker and sicker at the time we met and she had lost her father while she was in high school, and she's the person I can talk about this shit with who knows exactly what I mean. And she asked me how I was going to be today, and I said, quite honestly, fine. I'm sad in the abstract, but now it feels like she's always been gone, and that's more upsetting in a way.
No, she said. Don't be upset. That means you've moved on and you're living your life, which is exactly what your mom would want for you.
And it's true, in some ways. During a workshop on interviewing, a guy in my class opened with Esther, why are you so happy all the time? And I think I sort of bowled him over when I said Because my mother died of brain cancer last year and I spent the middle five years of my twenties in a constant state of grieving. Now I'm this person who's going to be a journalist and who rides bikes in Chicago and takes swing dancing classes and does things my mom would probably disown me for. It still baffles me, that this is what life is supposed to be like, not constantly under this 500-ton ACME weight of grief and paralysis.
I'm going to be fine today. (I have too much work to get done to not be.) But I wish I could call her up. Hell, I wish I believed she was someplace else where she could hear me and see me, but I don't. But I do think the subject line should be on her headstone -- that or her other great phrase, which she lifted from the rabbi who trained me for my bat mitzvah, and who couldn't perform it, in the end, because she had to have surgery for the cancer that would later kill her.
Nothing will spoil my beautiful day.
Love you, Mom. I love you I love you I love you.
This was originally posted on Dreamwidth, where it has
comments. I would love to hear from you at DW! If you can see this post, you can comment here using OpenID. Thanks!