What It’s Like Being a Mom Without One

My four-year-old was recently trying to grasp why Daddy had produced her a Grandma but Mommy hadn’t. We were in the van, just us two, after having dropped a million other kids off at a million different places, and I wasn’t in a particularly warm nor coddle-eriffic mood. I finally just said it: My mom is dead. 

The aggravatingly inquisitive type, she kept peppering me with follow ups. How did she die? When did she die? Where did she go when she died? When will you die? I forgot she was four for a second and found myself accelerating to the bottom-line sort of steeply, “There comes a time when all of our bodies are all done living, Sweetie. Everyone eventually dies.” 

To which she lost it. 

Flailing in her car seat, hyperventilating, she screamed between breaths, “I! Don’t! Want! To! Die!”

I wish I had my mom here to help me explain things better to my kids.

Lucky for me, I got to have my mom through teaching me how to put a tampon in, at my wedding to her charming son-in-law, and for the exuberant announcement that we were pregnant with twins. Not so lucky for me, I lost her before she could meet those twins and their subsequent siblings, before a peppering of mental health spirals I’d never seen the likes of, and before several cross country moves that left me feeling desperately family-hungry. Now at age forty if you asked me what grieves me most, that’s easy: that my mom was never able to hear the word from my babes she most longed to hear: “Grandma.” 

When it was starting to become clear that cancer was going to get her, I had a friend who had lost her own mom lovingly take me aside one day and say this: “Whatever you do, make sure you have all her recipes.” I’m thankful for this, because I made sure to secure every last one. Mom’s Angel Biscuits, her Bean Dip, her Fudge, her holiday Peanut Butter Balls… they will continue being made in the exact way she made hers. Once I lost one of these recipes and staved off the mounting panic by remembering I am not her only memory keeper… I had enough aunts with their own handwritten copies to serve as co-conspiring historians. 

Recipes aside, though, there’s so much that is lost. There’s this ring with blue sapphires surrounding two small diamonds shaping the loveliest of flowers all secured in white gold that I’d never seen her wear and made no sense to have found lurking in her jewelry box; she only wore yellow gold. Was it from an ex? Was it special to her in a way I’d love to know? I’ve asked and nobody can explain; its information I’ll never know. Lost.

But the biggest loss is the one I never had: my mom as a grandma. I still get a lump in my throat the size of Hawaii at the thought of the exceptional grandmother my kids aren’t getting. Just as bad is the reverse thought: the exceptional grandkids my mom isn’t getting. All the giggles, the baking projects, the playground trips, the personalized birthday gifts, the first haircuts, the lessons, the holiday traditions, the no-nonsense disciplining, the famous line by which Mom was known best – when they whimper over a skinned knee— “You’ll live.” 

I had no idea I was holding all of these expectations for my kids and my mother’s relationship until I realized there’d not be one.

How could I have? Right up until the end, I thought my mom was invincible. 

When a disfigured, unhappy mole on Mom’s shoulder first alerted us all to her melanoma skin cancer, my father and she were quietly cryptic about what lied ahead. “Just surgery to remove a cancer spot,” is what my brother and I breathed in over the phone, quite satisfied with the conclusive explanation. “Great, no worries then?” was where our appetite for inquiry and sixth senses screeched to a halt; we were away at college and clueless. What was kept from us was that my mom’s diagnoses was stage four status, nor did we know to look into what the word “metastasized” meant. 

Which is the only reason, months after the surgery to remove Mom’s “spot” and once things had in my mind gone completely back to normal, I would ever go into a line of questioning drilling straight down to the future. Filled with reflective levity and ignorant that I was treading on delicate ground, I asked Mom the question, “What are you most looking forward to in the life you have left to live?” My mom got quiet, then looked away towards something that was not me and said, “I’m looking the most forward to being a Grandma and watching you be a parent.” I didn’t understand that, when she looked back at me with pink-rimmed eyes, this wasn’t sentimentality of the general variety. Even though I didn’t know it, Mom was aware that the chances her cancer would show back up were staggeringly high and that she had no idea whether or not she’d get to have any of the things she most looked forward to. 

The cancer did show back up. Several more times, in several different organs. And my brother’s and my ignorance evaporated; Mom was in trouble. Between her seasons of wellness, she fought. She fought with everything she had, and she fought even when she didn’t have anything at all to give to her battle for survival. More surgeries, experimental chemo, clinical trials, radiation, hospital bed after hospital bed. But in the end, she died seven years after that college phone call. And that was also the day my twin baby boys were two weeks old.

So, she did get to exist as a grandma for a couple weeks. It’s just that she wasn’t very lucid or mobile, and I, tethered to a NICU with premies a couple hundred miles away, couldn’t introduce her grandchildren to her in person. The days on bedrest leading up to the birth of my babies and the days after their birth nursing them to health in a hospital were some of the hardest I’ve ever endured; I wanted to be a daughter to my mother in her final days but no one besides me could be a mother to my brand new babies. There were about thirty minutes, though, when I got to hold her hand. One of the greatest miracles of my life is that after my husband and I got the call that set us blazing on the three and half hour interstate path toward her, my mom held out until we arrived. She stayed alive for me so that I could have thirty minutes, and there we were: me a new mom, she a new grandmother. When I look back, I’m both aware of my gratefulness for that time and aware of its tragedy, the newness of both of our roles was not ripe enough to have one of them taken away. 

Now my babies are a total of four, ranging from middle schooler to pre-kindergartener. With the exception of the four-year-old who is now scarred for life thinking about her own imminent death, they are all developmentally capable of handling the complexity of their Grandma’s passing. And they know her well, too. I tell them story after story. I show them picture after picture. And, in-between these intentional sharings, they get me: a living, breathing daughter to their Grandma, one who often catches herself saying, “You’ll live,” over their mild injuries and the feeble attempts made at getting attention. 

It’s not always easy to be a mom without my own, but I know I’ve got a cheerleader. I can honor my mom by remembering that, even though her absence leaves a wound deeper than any skinned knee, I too will, in fact, live.

I Shouldn’t Have Gotten Off My Mental Health Meds and Other Confessions

I created this while smack-dab in a low mental health place over the Summer. My anxiety was causing my hand to no-joke shake with the paint brush in it, yet I felt so sure: everything I was going through (everything I ever go through) was material; it will take me somewhere.

Well, it happened again.

I feel like life for me over the past decade has basically been this: me scurrying around scooping up my marbles, then losing them again. Scoop em up, lose em again. Scoop, lose, scoop, lose.

The particular Marble Scattering that just occurred, though, I mostly did to myself.

In late Spring, I had successfully thrived through several consecutive months of strong mental wellbeing and successful management of my ADHD symptoms. I had all my personal/home support systems in check, was straddling clouds of inspiration and creativity, found myself plowing through to-do lists and social endeavors like a John Deere tractor, enjoyed almost all of my inner thoughts about myself and the world, and generally found life to be manageable, maybe even - dare I say it - easy.

Let me pause here to offer my medication backdrop: My anti-anxiety go-to med for these ten years has been Lexipro. I have done lots of personal development around acceptance of this gift from modern medicine; therapy and inner work have assisted in my slow descent off the pedestal that used to be a shrine to my ego. When anxiety first presented in my early thirties, I used to sit on that pedestal - suffering and panic-ridden - as if by not accepting the assistance of pharmaceutical intervention I somehow was stronger (albeit iller). But then I got wiser. I've written a "Medication Manifesto" to myself and have it tucked away in my journal for regular review, its core message that I am strong for all the work I put into my wellness - medication included - and that it's not cheating. After all, strong people accept help.

But, after having just explained to you how much comfort I had worked hard for surrounding the gift of Lexipro, I still had this quiet eagerness to get off of it. Without even consciously knowing it, I think I was secretly looking for enough evidence, enough stability, enough consecutive weeks/months of my marbles well-kept to warrant an off-ramp from anti-anxiety meds.

In May, I was solid. And I was ready to hit the eject button to my pal, Lexipro. I said, "Thanks, old friend. You were there for me when I needed you, but life is telling me I'm ready to move along now. I'm grateful for you, and I will now say my goodbyes. SEE YA!"

So, I did. I removed Lexipro from my regiment.

Oh friends, that was not the right move.

I don't mean to throw life under the bus (because it's just doing its thang, nothing personal of course), but shortly after I said ta-ta to Lexipro, I did unexpectedly lose my favorite housecleaner/laundrymanager/homeorganizer (my beloved Jane) and I did transition from school mode into summer mode with four kids around (I thought I had a balanced-out summer plan with proper self care but apparently not - the ample amounts of me-time I glean during the school year didn't transfer over) and I did have back-to-back houseguests (which sorta throws me off without enough reset time between).

Actually, to be fair, life only threw the first curveball in that list. The others I knew were coming. I was just too much of a dingbat to not account for them when I made my "I"m OK to go off Lexipro" decision. Like I said, I was in conquer-life mode when I made the decision, not prepare-for-the-worst mode. Oh, and also, I was on Lexipro when I made the decision to go off Lexipro. Kinda twisty, the way that works.

By early July, I had lost a couple marbles. I was instantly aware... on standby as I ramped up mindfulness meditation and self care as best I could. But by mid July I had lost the whole lot of those fucking things, my mind a pretty panicky and whacked-out place, my body affected by sleep loss, appetite loss, heart racing, and overall pretty darn shaky.

I texted my favorite full-disclosure people to fill them in and got back on Lexipro on July 14th.

It's been a slow return to mental health wellness since.

And, since I'm 76% not embarrassed about it, I'll say that because Lexipro was taking a much longer time to kick in and since I was forced to admit that I couldn't handle continuing to go downhill during the wait, I layered on a second medication to try to get some relief.

And I did.

So, here I am - a little beat up and weary - but better. Much, much better. And fully aware that anti-anxiety meds might be in my life for a lot longer than I was expecting. I can live with that.

I'll stop here to share with you what one of my favorite people gifted me as I was getting better:

 I was feeling like my inner tube might actually be losing air, but it turns out if you're breathing then you're doing the most important thing right and that must have meant my head was in fact above the water. 

Thank you, my dear friend who reminded me of this when I needed it most.

Now onto a confession that is related by a thin chord to my Summer/Early Fall mental health bottoming-out.

It probably comes as no surprise to those who know me that I'm a sharer. I'm often filterless, No Holds Barred, unbridled, honest. Sharing by writing often exposes me further, and that's by choice. I tend to just wholeheartedly put it out there. This style isn't for everyone, I know. (Some of my peeps probably silently wonder, "Does she know she can have a thought and keep it to herself?") I've adopted two philosophies surrounding this: #1) That, while my sharing might not be for everyone, it might just be for someone. #2) That, in a time when public consumption of personal information is often one-dimensional (think social media), the light shining on only one surface area of the complex stones of our lives, I'd like to offer for public consumption the gritty angles, too... the unpolished, rugged surfaces of our crazy geodes. The spotlight belongs on those parts, too, because if those angles of all of our lives are only allowed to be seen by the darkness, then that darkness and its bedmate - isolation - will start consuming the best, glittery parts, too. Darkness, the selfish bastard.

On to the confession.

I liked my dress in the picture below. I had found it by sheer luck at a consignment shop just in the nick of time for the fanciest gala of the year Scott, through work, invites me to. Bag in hand, I skipped out of that shop like a toddler with an ice cream cone, a childish grin on my face. At this point, I was finally feeling good internally, I was pumped about a steal of a deal on the most glamorous dress I've ever owned (frugality for me is like crack cocaine), and was genuinely eagerly to go on a date night with my husband knowing I'd feel pretty.

So, when the night came, I had one of our kids take this picture on the way out the door and no sooner had I proofed it (no lipstick smears? all four eyes opened? how're my boobs... even and in the right places?) did I plaster the hell out of it on my Facebook page.

Can I admit that I checked probably six times throughout the gala to delight in the Facebook comments and likes? OK: a dozen times. OK: fifty.

Gaaaah. Why am I such a shallow son of a gun?

My closest peeps knew this was a happy ending photo to a Marble-Losing period of time (which is probably why I fell a bit into social media self-involvement in wanting people to see it). The other twenty-two and a half Facebook friends of mine - the ones who haven't seen me since high school or college or acquaintances from church/school or even my neighbors on the street - they don't know the following:

1) That the weight loss that allowed me to fit into this dress was the unhealthy kind, the kind not won voluntarily nor by hard work. In fact, during the past couple months, I'd look at my body in the mirror and frown at my diminishing, gaunt figure, thinking I was wasting away. Since, with my anxiety, my appetite decreases and feelings of nauseousness increase, this weight loss was a mental health by-product, not a get-skinny phase.

2) That whatever toneness that might present in this photo is a product of exercising almost daily during this bad patch; the endorphins offered by a cardio work-out were some of the only things that made me feel mentally better. So, while I am a lover of running, I don't necessarily normally run every single day. I had been running every single day. Again, this extremeness is a mental health by-product, not a get-fit phase.

3) That the smile on my face is genuine and real and relatively freshly so. Most pictures from the previous period would not have been so, given that I was struggling so big time.

4) That my front yard normally looks like that of the family in "Overboard" before Goldie Hawn straightens them out: we don't take good care of our belongings or our lawn. The frame barely cuts out bikes, balls, cardboard boxes used for play, toys, weeds, and a gaggle of kids. Glam is not how we roll normally, which, along with reasons #1-3, is why this picture can come across as ashamedly deceptive.

It's ultimately ok to get gussied up by comparison to my normally sloppy life. It's even OK to share it. Just as long, in my belief, as I'm sharing all of the other difficult angles of my life in an equally bright light... which is what I hope this post does.

Thanks for hearing out my most recent dip in mental health.

It's. All. Material. It'll take me somewhere... hopefully to the someone reading who needs it most.