I have been thinking about my mum's death. She died on the 27th of December last year. Christmas seems to be coming along pretty quickly - we're all going away for it this year, just so we can have it in a completely different setting than last time, which was really quite a surreal experience.
I have come to the conclusion that a year seems to be the acceptable, unwritten mourning period. For about a month, one is allowed to be inconsolable. After that, you start making people feel too uncomfortable, so you're allowed to have a wistful look in your eyes and command respectful silence for a few moments whenever you make a remark like "How I wish Mother were here!" - but no histrionics, please. Within a year after the death, you can explain bad moods by saying your mother died some months ago. But once a year has gone - somehow it's a thing of the past. Saying, "My mother died two years ago," or even a year and a few months, doesn't seem to command the same awe.
I'm not being bitter here, though it may sound like it. It just seems to be how things are, and it makes sense. I just never realised before I experienced a death myself that the longer someone is gone, the more you miss them. I'm not sure that grieving is something you do and it's done, over. It changes and fluctuates.
Right now I'm not unhappy. It's something more complicated than that. You're supposed to be the happiest you've ever been when you have kids or get married or things like that, but I know there will be a part of me that's really, really sad my mother's not there if that ever happens to me. I find it weird thinking that if I do ever give up my wild bachelorette lifestyle (haha) and find the proverbial One, chances are he will never have met my Mum.
How weird is life.
1 comment:
That's true about the loss coloring all of those big moments: graduations, weddings, births of children.
I know when my cousin got married, she put up some pictures of her mother in the foyer of the church. I never realized until then how much it must have hurt for her to get married without her mom there. I was seven when my aunt died, and Debbie was not quite ten, so I felt pretty used to having her gone, but naturally it was very different for Debbie.
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