Happy (belated) birthday, mom

I can't believe it's been (almost) one year since your passing.

My mom would’ve loved a chocolate cake for her birthday. Photo by Stephen Wheeler on Unsplash

My mom’s birthday was last Wednesday. I didn’t know what to do to process the first birthday after her passing. Should I go to the Kelvingrove Museum, a place she visited during her trip to Glasgow years ago before the pandemic? Should I watch one of her decorate movies, have some of her favorite foods, or write her a letter detailing how much I love her and miss her and still can’t believe that she’s gone?

When my beloved grandmother died suddenly in 2016, I was working full-time in journalism in New York City. Her death came as a shock. While I’d been in Florida on vacation, knowing that she’d passed (and I’d seen her for lunch the previous day), sent me spiralling in a realm of sadness, contemplation, and that gaping void that doesn’t seem to be talked about enough—or at all. I went through days in a daze, and felt a sense of closure at her funeral, in which close family members were allowed to see the body in the casket. For her birthday the following year, my mom was still alive. I don’t remember what I did exactly, but I probably called family members and went to do an invigorating yet calming yoga session.

Yoga was essential to my healing process when my grandma died. Photo by Sweetyoga Justine on Unsplash

After my mom died, the feelings felt too raw. Everything I thought about and wanted to do for my mom’s birthday seemed wrong. It didn’t seem to work. I panicked. I cried myself to sleep days before her birthday, anxious about how horrible it will be to want to tell my mom happy birthday and being unable to do so. How horrible it will be to witness what should be a happy occasion transformed into a horrifying day. My mind raced, my heart raced, and I didn’t know what to do.

The day before, I went out with to karaoke with some friends. Singing took the edge off of the panic, helped me relax into the evening and find my voice. I didn’t sing any of her favorite songs, but continued to try to be in the moment.

The next day, I stayed in bed. I was, as a friend said, weighed down with grief and didn’t get up properly until late into the afternoon approaching early evening. And I was happy that way. The less of the day I had to experience, the better. I called my sister and spoke to my nephews. I walked to a local pizza shop and ordered a comforting pizza, finished watching the second half of Inkheart, and then fell asleep again.

I was so worried about what to do and how to be and what to write in order to “commemorate” the day. Honestly, I just wanted to forget it. The pain was unbearable. A deep, widening ache in my chest that swallowed my up from the inside out. I told friends about my mom’s birthday, about her being in Glasgow (it always helps talking about my mom) but I just wanted to be alone. I wanted to be asleep. I wanted to experience, in my mom’s words when she slept for days while she was dying, “I don’t want to be awake right now.”

But the day has passed, and then my late grandmother’s birthday was a few days later. And my birthday is coming up soon.

When I was growing up, it was a joyous time to celebrate together. Now that I’m the only one among us still alive, it feels like a unique weight I am carrying. A baton I carry through the days of my life.

I know now that letting the day come and go was for the best. I acknowledged my mom in the best way I could. I let the pain, the grief, the awareness and pass over me, and I came out the other side. I still feel awful, that my mom’s birthday is now something I dread. That if this is any indication of what’s to come, I’m going to take the week of my mom’s deathiversary off from everything.

Photo by Cath Smith on Unsplash

Looking back, I am happy I took the day for myself. I am glad I slept the day away, that I treated myself kindly with a pizza and watched part of a movie and then went back to sleep. I think about my mom often, and the intense, intimate feeling of grief is there, nestled next to my heart in my chest.

with love,

madeline

Madeline Wahl is a postgraduate student pursuing an MLitt in Fantasy Literature at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. She is a writer, solo traveler, and millennial caregiver to her mom, who recently passed from terminal cancer. Her writing has appeared on Reader's Digest, HuffPost, Red Magazine, and McSweeney's, among others. She is working on her first novel in YA Fantasy and her first nonfiction book proposal on millennial caregiving.