In Loving Memory of My Mom – One Year Gone

Jill, Mom and Me – Mother’s Day

April 10th is one year since my mom passed away. I can’t call it an anniversary that sounds too much like a celebration to me. How can it be a year already? Wasn’t she just here yesterday? It feels like she was. I sometimes hear her say my name, but that’s it, just my name. It comes to me at random times, that moment before I fall asleep or just out running errands I hear it. Jody. Is she reaching out or is my brain just conjuring it when I need it. I don’t know. 

This year was the first one where my mom didn’t email me my “Birth Story” on my Birthday. She’s done it for as long as I can remember.

Dear Jody,
At 8:30am on January 14th you were born. You were golden, with little bird legs. Jody Bird…

Only a mom can look at a baby who was surely a wrinkly chunk that looked like Eisenhower and see a golden bird. But my mom did. My mom always thought I was smarter, more creative, more beautiful and talented than I really was, but she often made me believe it. I wanted her to be right, so I tried new things on a quest to make her right. Even if I failed she thought I was brave to try.

It wasn’t all rainbows and sunshine with my mom, like many mothers and daughters we had a complicated relationship. I can be a lot. A LOT! I’m stubborn, quiet and introverted…did I mention stubborn? and maybe a bit broken. But, she took it all in and loved me like I really was her golden bird. Worth loving. Worthy of love.

Something I’ve learned in this harrowing year. There are no seven stages of grief. You don’t just pass through them like a gloomy checklist. 

Pain and Denial ✔️
Anger and Bargaining ✔️

Etc.

But grief isn’t a linear journey. It’s random and chaotic one minute a stormy sea the next a quiet sadness. A heavy heart and endless tears then nothing. My body stops feeling, it goes numb… and then another wave hits. Daily. Every day. But, here’s the truly strange part, I don’t think I want to stop grieving because then I’ll have to accept she’s gone. I’ll have to plan a path forward without her. I’m not ready… My grief keeps her here. 

She would hate this idea.

This season of “This is Us” has been excruciating for my sister and I. Rebecca, the mom, is dying and she calls the kids together and gives this heart wrenching speech. My sister and I both had to pause this speech repeatedly because it wasn’t just a dramatic TV moment it was a message that we needed to hear.

“I need you all to hear my voice right now, your mother’s voice with all of her faculties. You will not make your lives smaller because of me,” she said.

She then implored them to be bold.

“This thing that’s happening to me will not be the thing that holds you back,” she continued. “So, take risks. Make the big moves, even if they’re small moves. Forge ahead with your lives in any and every direction that moves you. I’m your mother and I’m sick. And I’m asking you to be fearless. And if that seems like a tall order, well, guess what? It is, but the only acceptable response is a resounding, ‘Yes, ma’am.’”

“Yes, ma’am,” each child replied.

I can’t even read that without sobbing. 

You will not make your lives smaller because of me.

I can hear my mom saying that, but I’m not ready to say “Yes, ma’am” yet. If we keep our lives small, in this bubble of grief, she’s with us. 

She would hate this idea.

There’s another gut wrenching scene in “This is Us” when Jack’s mom passes away, he clings to Rebecca like a broken little boy and cries, “I don’t have a mom anymore”. I think about that daily. I have no parents anymore. I feel like a balloon that was let go of and I’m just floating aimlessly. Nobody to hold the string and keep me grounded. I’m nobody’s Golden Bird anymore. 

I’d love to end this on a high note of hope, but I’m not sure I can… yet. You get YET, because I do want to live the rest of my life in a way that would make my mom proud. I know my mom would want my sister, brother and I to live our lives to the fullest and we want to give her that. I can hear her saying it… I hope to respond Yes, ma’am soon. 

She would love that idea.