5 years without her

five years gone.

five.

the first two to three were rougher than rough. trying to handle this monumental change on top of other monumental changes that occurred in the 11 months prior to my mom’s passing was trying, exhausting, and numbing. i missed so much of my 2nd daughter’s early childhood as a result, and while the mind understands, the heart finds it hard to forgive. there were milestones both daughters’s met without my mom’s cheers or without her words of support. there were moments of getting blind-sided by overwhelming grief like coming across a forgotten hand-written note while looking for something else or opening the closet and suddenly getting a waft of her smell that is still on the scarves i inherited.

having to redefine and reconfigure your life without a loved one as the rest of the world hums along is one of the most challenging experiences many of us will go through.

is today as difficult as it was 4-5 years ago? no. life’s routines and responsibilities, in this way, are a saving grace. my girls were my saving grace. they were a daily reminder that “life goes on.” but the brain still seeks a “How To” book; a timeline of what happens when. we want answers. we want to know what to expect. we want to be prepared. we want to gauge others’s experiences, compare it to ours and determine if we are “on the right track.” someone said to me that i must share my grief so that they will know what exactly to expect and how it will “be.” i am here to emphatically say there is no “How To” book. this is fundamentally why grief is so God damn lonely. your grief will be different from mine. it may take years for one to reach the anger stage. it took me less than 4 weeks. some stay in that stage for a long time. i didn’t. there is no guidebook to say “On Day 46 you will feel like ‘     .’ it all sucks, and the only way is through. 

the only way is through.

it's easy to think the big events will get you: the bday celebrations that won't happen, the holidays, the anniversary of the passing... those aren't easy, per se, but, for me the hardest has been all the little things in between that i always took for granted. the letter in the mail, the phone call, the "just because" packages. i still sometimes check my email in the morning to see if she's written me. 

i recently handed off to my sister some clothes that our mom had sent me for my daughter, and as i showed them, i happened to say "Myti" out loud (which is what we called her). as her name passed my lips, i realized i couldn't remember the last time i said her name out loud. that stung. 

then, a few weeks ago, i went for a walk and found myself at my daughters's school and it hit me that soon it'll be a year since covid shut us down. i stared at the jungle gym bar that my older spent the first 4-5 months of school playing on trying to learn how to flip over. i remembered the day she met me after school excited that she had finally accomplished her goal. seeing her so happy overflowed my heart with joy. i turned it into a teachable moment about how important it was to not give up and not give in to fear when you want to achieve something. i stood there now recognizing that my daughter’s accomplishment was something i could never share with my mom. i started to cry as my grief for my mom became entangled in my grief for this last year with covid, and the crying turned to sobbing as the hole in my heart throbbed wanting nothing more than for my mom to tell me all will be ok. that i will be ok. that i can handle all of *this.* that i'm strong and will survive like i always have.

this is why there's no "How to." what hit me maybe wouldn’t hit someone else. and if it did, maybe it would happen on Day 73 or Day 5,227, respectively. for me it was Day 1,798 and Day 1,800, respectively.

despite the heaviness in my heart, i have done much emotional kneading in the last five years. i’ve always been pretty good at self-analysis, but this time it’s different because it is punctuated by, and driven by, my mother’s loss. i continuously analyze my life and my past, and how it all fits into the road that i wish to carve out for myself. i will share one thing that has become crystal clear. it is so cliché, but, for me, it is so true, and so important that i’m going to say it anyway: my life isn’t driven so much by fear now as it is driven by my desire to accumulate as many moments (memories) as possible that fulfill my soul. i am lucky that prior to my mom’s death, i already had many such memories, but it is now a purpose. often such occasions are spontaneous and i try to seize such experiences when they present themselves. it’s good to have a plan, but it’s even better to be open to flexibility. this has also been, unfortunately, a rather challenging wish to fulfill because not everyone around me feels this way, or even ever understands this. sometimes reaching fulfillment takes effort and to some, the effort isn’t worth the reward. it’s possible “reward” is viewed differently, but i have become all the more convinced that effort is in of itself a “reward.” after much self-reflection, i realized i have spent quite a bit of my life in the last 23 years or so in a passive state because of fear, allowing the trap of don’t-venture-outside-of-your-box to dictate decisions.

work, laundry, paying bills, picking up toys, organizing closets…the list goes on and on…those things are never ending. i’ve done marathon laundry days, i’ve washed mountains of dishes, had marathon cooking days…those help in the short-term, but i know that on my deathbed i won’t be thinking about those never-ending chores. you hear such things over the years, but there’s a difference between hearing and knowing. i still do all of those necessary-to-function chores, but i now view their worth differently which, based on various grief readings i have done, often comes with the territory of losing a loved one, often a parent(s), often your mom.(1)

on February 26, 2016, as my mom transitioned, i stroked her hand and told her to let go, to fly free, that it was OK and that we would miss her, but that i would always remember her and i would talk about her to my girls. i thanked her for everything; for all our times together, for all the experiences we had, for being in my life, and that now it was time for her to be free. not once did i think about all those bills we helped each other pay or whatever fights we had or how she upset me or the ways in which i felt she was being unreasonable. it was the moments and experiences we had together; the overall journey. later, my thoughts fell to wanting to sit down with her just one more time to discuss, or argue, politics, or to discuss religion and spirituality, challenges and/or any hopes and dreams we had, or to talk about mundane things like lesson plans. life’s routine and schedule will always be there. there’s no escaping the societal construct we have created, and there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. but, i no longer want that to be this tunnel vision like it has been for so many years. what’s unfortunate is that covid hit just as i began to awaken to this shift in focus and i’ve been forced to put off some of those bigger moments i seek to have. but, i accept the gift this virus has given and i try to find ways to have constructive time with family especially my girls. i’m silly with them, i dance with them, i play with them, i make art with them, we talk religion or have more difficult conversations like racism and white privilege (yes, you can have those conversations with children!), and i look forward to the many days ahead where we sit down with some wine and some lighted candles, and discuss, or argue, politics, or discuss religion and spirituality, or any challenges and/or any hopes and dreams we have, or to talk about the mundane things whatever they may be at the moment. the only constant is change, and change knows only one direction: forward. 

i want, more than anything else, for my “forward moments” to be filled with many more of my “best moments.” it is how i want to honor my mom, and it is how i want to honor me.

(1) i highly recommend The Orphaned Adult by Alexander Levy

the reawakening

just a day. one day. that's all i needed to complete the challenge.

a year and half ago, i bought a book titled Do One Thing a Day That Scares You and i have done, to date, exactly two things. my second challenge was to live without social media for one day. i've done that before, but it was never on purpose. this time, it would be a conscious choice.

and, boy, conscious it was.

typically, i hopped on FB multiple times throughout the day for 5-10 minutes at a time. i'd be in between something and often scold myself for not just letting myself "be" for those moments, but it was an easy voice to shut off. so, on that first day, it was no surprise to have to stop myself multiple times from logging on. i realized how hopping on so many times affected my attention and how often i used this as an excuse to push off starting a project. this would then lead me to stay on social media longer than planned which would delay starting a project, if at all. then i'd beat myself up for letting another day slip by without getting to "that" (whatever "that" would be). at the end of that first day, i realized that i got SO.MUCH.DONE. i then decided to extend the challenge one more day. then, one more. then, one more, and now i'm at 4 weeks.

keeping myself off social media opened up a world i had forgotten about. it also made me realize how social media affected my mood, and living without it has allowed me to feel grief on a level i didn't think possible because i was present with every emotion. 

let me first say what social media i'm on. i have FB, instagram, and twitter accounts. FB was my only social media outlet for most of the last 10 years. i signed up with twitter over a year ago and quickly realized it made my blood boil faster than FB did, so i rarely went on it by choice. i signed up for an instagram account last year and have enjoyed that immensely as i use it for artistic reasons only. 

the internet is such an easy place to spread misinformation, and as much as i would like to lay misinformation at the feet of trump and his supporters, this issue belongs to everyone, even me. i have been called out more than once for sharing something on FB that was false. and, while i do try to take the time before sharing to do a quick search to see what other news sources are saying about a particular topic, things slip. having to research an article's authenticity takes time and that is scarce. lame excuse, but true.

so i went back to reading just the paper that gets delivered. i know i'm getting news that's at least 24 hours old, but i don't care. i'm reading from a legitimate source and i don't have to go research on-line to see if it's true. i trust the journalist at the Los Angeles Times to have already done that for me which is why they're the journalists and i am not. anyone can pretend to be a journalist on-line, and too many do. people also forget opinion is not fact. for this, we can thank trump and his supporters.

even though i'm reading the news from one main source, i still get enraged by whatever idiotic thing trump has done, thought, or said, but i then take that anger and release it by working on, and completing, a project, by playing with my children (imagine that!), by cooking, by going outside and watering my plants and smiling at the butterflies and birds. this is just a small example of what has changed and it has been amazing for my soul. by popping on FB multiple times throughout the day, i've been bombarding myself with all the horrible things that exist in this world. i was angry ALL the time. all.the.time. i felt like the end of the world was happening every day. i worried about the future. i couldn't believe how stupid our country had gotten. all this and more, every day, buzzing around in my brain. for 4 weeks now i have been free of this. do i still worry about the future? hell yes. but it's not all-consuming right now. i find myself more present than before in whatever i'm doing in the moment that i'm doing it.

i've been listening to music more and reading. reading! both for pleasure and academic. i've been writing. i rediscovered photography with my Canon A-1 film camera and, in those "in between" moments, i sit and stare at a wall or cuddle my kids. 

i have also been grieving. hard. i cleaned out closets and approached projects i had wanted to do since we moved 3 years ago and others that i've been wanting to get to for 15-20 years. going through decades of photos tossed me into a whirlwind of emotions. i found letters that my mom left me written by my grandfather and some by my good-for-nothing father. my mom had told me about these letters throughout my life, but i thought they got lost in either the multiple moves my mom made in lithuania or in a flood that she had some years ago. i never realized i had them for the last 10 years, and making this discovery crippled me emotionally for a while. i don't think i would've been able to feel so deeply if i had hopped on FB, nor do i think i would've been able to process my findings for as long as i needed. i'm not someone who hides her life or emotions, but what of it if i had posted about my find that day? people would have read it, commented on it (maybe), clicked "like" (maybe) and then my feed would've scrolled on, the sentiment buried. just like we bury our emotions with all these social media distractions throughout the day. is it any wonder depression has skyrocketed? we hide behind a screen curating our lives to be the best version we feel it should be. most of us hide the ugly, and for those of us who don't necessarily do that, creating a post about the ugly doesn't do justice to the emotion's reality and, so, you're still left kind of empty no matter how many "likes" or comments you get. it took a few days for me to process and accept finding what i thought was lost, and without FB as a distraction, i couldn't bury it all in my feed.

will i be off social media forever? no, probably not, but i went back to instagram about a week or two ago and discovered that i'm spending more time on it than before which made me realize that social media feeds my "all or nothing" personality. it's this "all or nothing" that has gotten me into so much trouble throughout my life. i'm afraid that i will struggle with any attempts to limit my time on social media. 

as a result, i repeatedly ask myself, do i miss facebook? and, honestly? not really, though i have missed communicating with a few people with whom i'd communicate on a daily basis. i've seen that the way the world is now, social media is how we communicate with people. is this good? i don't think so, but i don't know what the solution is. i feel the social media ball is rolling down a hill and there's no way to slow it down, much less stop it. i also don't know how high that hill is, but it's very obvious the more people we connect with, and to, on social media, the lonelier we, as a society, feel. i read somewhere recently that we humans need human interaction and touch in order to function normally. this is one of the reasons it is strongly encouraged to hug children as much as possible; it releases endorphins which helps with development. if we don't get "x" amount of touch per day, we can slip into depression. how much time do you spend behind a screen vs spending time with someone, getting/giving a hug, holding a hand, or giving/getting a kiss? i bet the former gets more time. i know for the last 10 years it did for me.

it's up to us to change what's not working in our lives. the internet and social media are addictive, and while i don't have an addictive personality, per se, i totally believe i was - am - addicted. my challenge now is to find a balance between being a part of this century and not losing myself. i didn't like being angry or upset all the time or, dare i say, finding myself jealous of friends' posts, but i did often come across useful information that i wouldn't otherwise see. i need to find that balance, and find a way to have more contact in-person and less contact via computer screen. i challenge you to do the same. 

the only constant is change

two years without my mom.

i had been so eager to get to the 1-year mark because i thought i would magically stop feeling the hole in my heart. but, alas, that did not happen. two things did happen after that first year which caught me off-guard. one, i started to feel an emergence from a dark cloud, which i didn't think i would ever feel. it was baby steps, but the emergence let me feel other things again. by the summer, 16-17 months after she passed, i found i was again aware of my surroundings. i could now look around the house we bought 2 years prior and unpack boxes that were forgotten about, hang up art, or think about decorating for any holidays. most importantly, though, i could be present with my children again.

that first year was all about survival for me. it's cliche to say, "My children saved me," but, in a way, it was true. they had to be dressed, be fed, get to pre-school, have play-dates, etc., and it was up to me to do all that when all i wanted to do was lay in bed and/or stare at a wall. i had to put aside any grief and focus on them, and at the end of the day i was too tired to think or feel. but the grief would creep up and it would come on quickly and suddenly; the second thing that caught me off-guard. it would come out in rare moments i was in the car by myself and i would lose control of my emotions. or washing dishes. or folding laundry. and while these moments in the last year came less, what i didn't count on was the intensity of them staying with me for a few days before getting back on my feet. i felt that for every 2 steps forward i took, those intense moments set me back 5. this made the second year of grief to be a lot more difficult than the first. i felt her physically gone in every one of my pores. and being so much more aware meant the holidays, especially Thanksgiving, were more difficult to get through than the first year. any firsts that happened last year were that much more painful, such as walking my older daughter to school on her first day and leading her to her line for the first time, and then saying goodbye just about killed me.

there are many ways in which my mom's death changed me to the core, and i'm still sorting through those changes and what they mean to me. the sense of finality is so ingrained in me now. i have always strived to live by the words, "Live each day to its fullest"; however, being present with someone who takes her last breath made those words grow life-sized and turn into neon-colored block letters for me. i feel those words. they are not abstract to me anymore. i savor more moments in my life. i tell myself to risk a little more. i remind myself more often to be grateful of the life i've had up to this point.

i still struggle with witnessing my mom's passing. i vacillate between being grateful and happy we were able to fulfill her last wish, and anger because i will forever have those images seared into my memory. it is also my last memory of her.

i feel her sometimes and have dreamt of her, and, of course, i miss her like hell. but i see her in my baby niece and that always makes me smile. i hope i keep feeling her close and i look forward to our fleeting moments in my dreams, but i especially look forward to seeing her spirit come through in her grandchildren.

i don't know what to expect from this upcoming year. from what i'm told, the hole never goes away, but its pain lessens. i can already tell this is true. i try to remind myself that our mom wouldn't want me (us) to dwell on things. for as beautifully, vivaciously, and chaotically as she chose to live her life, and despite seeking out ways to challenge the status quo, one thing she was incredible at was accepting things as they were. she would often remind me that i was stressing over things that i could not control, and i've been trying to work on keeping myself focused on that. i saw her battle breast cancer in 1995 and i saw her fight for 12 weeks in late 2015 through early 2016, defying predictions of top specialists at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix. she shocked nurses and doctors with her will to pull through. her numbers weren't matching the situation she was in. they couldn't make sense of it. but there is always a check-mate and this was cancer's turn. while i'll never know for sure, i think there were a few days of sadness, and maybe even anger, on my mom's part once this reality was presented to her. but 48 hours after meeting with her team where we were told there was nothing they could medically do for her anymore, i noticed her entire demeanor had changed. she was ready to come home and she was no longer in battle mode. she was in acceptance mode. she still had 8 days of hell to go through. we all did. but underneath all of that was the acceptance that this particular life's adventure was coming to an end. out of all that i witnessed and went through in those 12 weeks, this is the one, last, big lesson she taught me. it was also very much in character. so, in honor of her, i've written out the lyrics of the song we played at her request during her memorial - Frank Sinatra's, My Way:

And now, the end is near

And so I face the final curtain

My friend, I'll say it clear

I'll state my case, of which I'm certain

I've live a life that's full

I've traveled each and every highway

But more, much more than this

I did it my way

Regrets, I've had a few

But then again, too few to mention

I did what I had to do

And saw it through without exemption

I planned each chartered course

Each careful step along the byway

And more, much more than this

I did it my way

Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew

When I bit off more than I could chew

But through it all, when there was doubt

I at it up and spit it out

I faced it all and stood tall

And did it my way

I've loved. I've laughed and cried

I've had my fill my share of losing

And now,...

Buči buči myliu myliu.*

*Lithuanian, "Kisses, hugs/I love you."

Two Deaths, One Week

I started this last week with the sad news of the passing of my dear friend's step-father the day before - which was her wedding day. Her beautiful, emotional, and touching wedding that he was supposed to attend, but didn't. I ended the week yesterday afternoon finding out about a dear family friend's tragic murder in Sequim, Washington (along with her dog) 3 days ago by a young man she knew well. He was recently diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, hospitalized on Tuesday because of an incident where he attacked his mother with a pencil. He had been released the next day from where he went directly to Cynthia's house.

I am stunned to know someone who was not just murdered, but viciously so. I am beyond heartbroken that two families I know have lost a loved one unexpectedly. I am heartbroken that a friend has to start her marriage under such a dark cloud, and that another family has to grieve a loved one lost at the hands of another.

One thing that has made me take a step back is reading comments about the young man who murdered Cynthia. He is sick. He needs help. He needs medication. What he did is wrong. But he is SICK. People are attacking him and calling him names. They probably don't know about his diagnosis but it underscores how quick we are to judge. How quick we are to misunderstand.

Death is so final. I know this brings out a "Duh". But until someone in your inner circle dies, you can't understand the depth of that word "final." I didn't even understand completely despite the painful death of a close neighbor in 1996 from bone cancer and another very close family friend passing in 1999. To me, death was something that happened to others. Of course I knew I'd die one day, but it was in the abstract. When my mom died, mortality punched me in the face. Now, I know. And the depth of the word "final" keeps deepening because, at least, initially, in the first year or two (maybe three, I don't know) there are constant reminders: the empty car you have to sell, the clothes that need to be packed and given away, the books and furniture that need to be given away, bank accounts that need to close... I see all this and think, This will be my stuff one day. My kids will have to do this one day. My kids will feel this one day.

I want to say something inspirational but it all feels cliched. Life is hard. It is unfair. It gives relentlessly and take away mercilessly. We can feel or we can push away. I have mentally aged a lot since my mom's passing last year, and with each subsequent death, I understand more deeply that all we truly have is but this moment right now. Then, it's gone. And we have a new moment. Then, that's gone. And so the clock ticks.

We're so fond of compartmentalizing our lives, prioritizing what is most important to us. For many, it is money at the top of that "most important" list which then dictates every decision in order to reach that goal. I remember the day my mom died, I desperately kept counting the few dollars I found in her purse convincing myself that if I kept counting her money, she'd come back. Money is tangible. You need it. If I just held her money in my hand, she'd be coming back, right? But the fact is, no matter the way of death, you take nothing with you. No body, no car, no money. In the next place, these things aren't needed. Or maybe there's something better.

I can't make these families' pain go away as much I would like to do so. I told my husband last night when I broke the news to him about Cynthia that grieving is such a horrible feeling that I wish I could protect everyone I know from that dark, lonely pain. But I can't. So all I can hope to do is hold my wish deep in my heart for these families to find truth and honesty within themselves to help them cope with this journey. I also hope deeply that we, as a society, get serious about mental health. No one deserves the kind of death Cynthia got. She loved life. She loved to travel. She loved people. A big part of her reminded me of my mom. I hope she is flying free, laughing, smiling, forgiving.