One Year…

How is that possible? I asked myself this when I woke up this morning. It was just yesterday she died.

It’s said your life can change in the blink of an eye, a single heartbeat, the flap of a butterfly’s wings, once.

All true.

What’s never discussed is how that change impacts your life.

A year ago I lost the person I was more closely connected to than any other.

The very first heartbeat I heard was my mother’s.

The very first voice I heard and recognized was my mother’s.

The very first smell I recognized was my mother’s natural scent.

I grew inside her. She was, truthfully, my everything for the nine months I gestated. Her body fed me, and nourished me. Her heart beat for me. Her lungs breathed for me.

Without her, I simply wouldn’t be.

And there’s something I’ve never thought about or considered until today.

She truly was everything to me; my very existence.

She was there for me every day thereafter, guiding me, caring for me, feeding me, and keeping me safe. Until I didn’t need her help any longer. Until I was able to do all that for myself.

Or until I thought I was so grown up I could do it for myself without any help.

How is it possible it’s been a year?

But then, I remember everything that’s happened this past year, all the grief, all the horrible moments of indecision and mental clouding; the pain – physical and emotional; the way I had to grow up in an instant at the age of 62 and do things I never thought I’d need to do as someone’s child.

Or wanted to.

I look back on this year – God, is it only a year? – and think of everything my mother missed. The birth of her great-granddaughter; her 56th wedding anniversary; the way her husband bounced back from his 2 surgeries.

I look back on this year and think, I can’t believe in the span of three weeks I buried my mother, faced a second surgery in as many weeks with my stepfather, sold their house, assumed guardianship financially and emotionally of my stepfather, settled my mother’s estate, as small as it was, got rid of all their possessions – except for the ones that meant something to me – made all the financial decisions for both of them, which I will continue doing until my stepfather joins my mother, and managed to still write 6 books and not lose myself completely in paralytic grief.

I look back on this past year with surprise and real regret when I think about how much I didn’t know about my mother and my stepfather’s lives, both before they were married and after. About how much I missed because she kept things so close to her vest and never thought saying them aloud was the right thing to do. About the secrets that unfolded, slowly, but assuredly, after she died. About how much she suffered, mentally and emotionally, throughout her life.

Real regret. I think sometimes it edges out the grief.

But then…grief returns.

A year, in the big scheme of things, isn’t that long. Considering the average person can now live beyond 90, one-ninetieth of that seems so small an amount of time.

But then, consider all that’s happened in this year and maybe, not so small after all.

I was asked how I feel today, one year since my mother died. How am I doing? How am I handling the anniversary?

I’ll tell you how I feel, how I’m doing…I’m…surviving. That is, after all, all I can do. One foot in front of the other; one day at a time. All the ridiculous cliches that mean nothing and everything.

I’m surviving.

Every day I’m a little stronger; a little more able to get through the day without blackness circling my heart.

Every day I move through the pain a bit better; faster. It doesn’t incapacitate me any longer. It doesn’t paralyze me, or make me numb. Some days, the pain is actually just a memory, not a living, breathing entity.

And every day I get back to being just a little bit more…me.

One year…