What I Got From My Mother

My mother passed away last week. It was a long time coming, expected, desired even. She wanted off the ride. I respect that.

I still miss her.

I walk around like a zombie and forget what I'm doing. Why am I standing here with an egg in my hand? How did I get to the bathroom? Did I already go?

I don't feel a great looming grief. I feel a scrambling of my brain. Fond memories of my mom saying things she always said. Work, phone, interlude. Dinner, interlude. It's chaotic but quiet.

I keep having the feeling that I'm supposed to be doing something. Honoring her. Celebrating her. Remembering her. Maybe I'm supposed to be angry, or crying, or one of those stages we're all supposed to go through. I don't know how I feel.

I loved my mother. She was a great mom. She was harsh at times. She put up with more from her husband and her kids than she should've. She could be a bulwark — strong, invincible. She could be weak, petty, unforgiving. She was human. I'm not here to build her a pedestal. She meant a lot to me, and she meant a lot to my family.

Our family is small. She didn't have many friends left. Her whole family was her four kids. No parents, no siblings, no cousins, no one — all gone. She was the last of her line, and now we stumble forward and carry it.

I used to imagine, when I die, there would be people to mourn me. To remember me. To celebrate me. Because who doesn't want to have mattered? Who doesn't want to leave a mark, preferably a good one?

Watching this play out peels back another layer of innocence. When you go, there will be a few friends and a few family, and then they have to move on with their lives. That's it. That's the scale of it.

I think about my father, who died when I was nineteen. He was an alcoholic. Abusive. Emotionally closed off. He was also funny, charming, likable when he wanted to be. When he died, I mostly felt relief. That the chaos would finally stop.

I still think about him. Most of those memories are traumatic, blurry, dark at the edges. There are good ones too, but I have to dig for them.

When I think about my mother, I don't have to dig. I remember caring. Hugs. Protection. Sometimes anger, sometimes unfairness — but mostly an unfailing, bright, intense love.

That's the thing I keep circling back to. Whatever else life brought, I never once felt like I was anything but loved.

I try to do that now. For my wife. For my son. For my friends, for my family. I'm emotionally closed off, like my father was. If you asked me outright, I probably couldn't say it out loud. But quietly, internally, I am loving the people in my life with something you can't break. Can't defeat with mistakes. Can't take away with words or actions.

Some people, you just love. The way my mom did.

That's what she left me. Not the trauma my father left. Not the silence he modeled. Something else, underneath all of it, running quiet.

I'll carry that one forward too.