As we close out 2024, I’m sitting here in my office, trying to put down what I’m feeling just so I can get a handle on my emotions.
It’s 2 a.m. – my usual writing time, and my entire body is filled with so much immeasurable…sadness.
The holidays officially ended tonight and a new year has begun ( in the time zone I live in, anyway), and as I look back on 2024 and the few years prior to it, I can’t help but simply cry.
Most of the emotion is coming from the fact that I miss my mother. Horribly. With each holiday that goes by, Mother’s Day, Christmas, Easter, and her favorite St. Patrick’s day, sadness consumes my soul and squeezes until I am choking, literally, with tears.
She missed out on so much that has happened since she passed away, suddenly, in 2022. Watching her great-grandson mature into an amazing boy. The birth of her great-granddaughter, whom she would have adored; the rising success of my writing career; just the simple day-to-day stuff she loved, like watching Entertainment Tonight and commenting on the lifestyles of all the celebrities. This may sound a bit shallow, but she got such a kick out of hearing of all their foibles and flubs. She used to say, “All that money and fame, and they’re as screwed up as the rest of us.”
Truer words…
My mother, although plagued with mental health issues, always found a way to find little bits of happiness where she could. It could be something small like having an unexpected lottery ticket win – never more than a few dollars, but it made her week; Or it could be something major, like being able to cook again after her two broken hips relegated her to a wheelchair for most of her day.
These past 2.5 years have been really tough on me without her. I never leaned on her, emotionally, for anything because of her fragile mental status, but just knowing she was “there” was, in some way, a small comfort when the darkness invaded my psyche and needed to be shown the door. I knew if I called her and told her I was having trouble, she would have talked my ear off about anything and everything just to try and get me to laugh and pull out of my funk.
God, I miss that.
I miss her.
I miss her.
She would have had some rich comments about the political upheaval in this country right now and its impending implosion, let me tell you. She would have been very vocal about how much she despised the incoming leadership. A lifelong Republican, she’d never voted for a Democrat until Joe Biden. At 84, she changed her political party because she knew hate was wrong and people were more important than billionaires getting richer.
Who says you stop learning and growing at some point in your life?
I am positive if she had lived, my stepfather wouldn’t have gone down hill, mentally, as fast as he did after her death. 2.5 years, 4 major surgeries, and leaping dementia later, he asked me just the other day, “Where is your mother?” I replied calmly, “In Heaven.” He didn’t seem to know how to respond to that. Then, he shook his head and asked me something about his shoes.
This was the man who cared for her after her first two broken hip surgeries. The one who got the mail every day, heated the food I’d made for them, did their laundry. Despite their tumultuous early years, their later ones were filled with a calm respect, mutual devotion and love.
When I say my prayers every night, I add one to my mother to please call her beloved husband home to her, because I know he is suffering and missing her so much, even though he can’t verbalize that.
Do you ever wonder if life simply happens, circumstances occur and you respond to them just in that moment? Or do you believe, like I do now, that our lives are predestined and predetermined? I ask that because when my mother was still alive and had just gone into the nursing home to be with my stepfather, one day, out of the blue, she said to me, “Promise me you won’t forget about Jack when I’m gone.” I waved a hand at her and said, as a joke, “You’re gonna outlive him, so don’t worry.”
One week later she was dead.
Ever since that day, I’ve wondered if somehow, she…knew. If she’d made the decision to be admitted to the nursing home because she had a feeling, an inkling, a fleeting thought that this would be her…end. She could die with the knowledge and comfort of knowing her beloved husband would be cared for and I wouldn’t forget about him.
The more I’ve thought about this, the more convinced I am that she did. She could leave us with the knowledge and promise that he wouldn’t be alone.
And he hasn’t been. I’ve kept that promise and intend to until the day he goes to meet her.
This piece was supposed to help me resolve some of the grief and sadness swirling in me as we come to a new year. As I write this, I can barely see for the tears shunting down my face.
Do we ever get over the loss of our mothers?
Or does the grief, as it’s done with me, ebb, dissipate, then swell again for no apparent reason?
Like I said, it’s been a rough few years.
Writing about my grief and sadness does help – to some degree. It actually helps me compartmentalize my emotions by showing me that even though I am sad, I still have joy in my life. I am still standing, breathing, loving, writing, every day. And speaking of writing…
One thing I have noticed in my writing since my mother’s untimely passing is that I incorporate a great deal of grief into my stories now, whereas before, I …. didn’t. I was convinced just writing happy tales of love was the right way to go. Who wants to read a supposed romance story that’s filled with death, sadness, and loss, I thought?
Now? Well, I see that death is part of love and life, a great part of it for many people, so I don’t shy away from writing about loved ones who have died. I have widows, widowers, and children without parents in my stories now. I’ve written about beloved pets dying – and have had to take a break for several days after writing about them because I’m such a wreck. And I think – or at least hope – my stories are richer and more relatable because of it.
Time will tell if that’s true.
For now, I am going to wipe my tears, go make a cup of tea, and say a few prayers for the year ahead.
I have no wisdom to impart on how to get through grief. I have no words to help anyone resolve the death of their mother or father.
All I can simply do is tell you how I’m getting through it. Some days are good. Some days are fabulous.
Some days are pure, unadulterated torture.
Grief is the price we pay for loving people.
~12.31.24
Peggy Jaeger, Author 