Incorrect Sentiment

When someone close to you dies, there are no right words, no correct ways to feel or express yourself; but in no case is that more apparent than when the deceased is a parent, more particularly a mother.

I haven’t blogged about my mother’s last joke…dying on April Fool’s Day. She loved a good prank and a joke at her own expense. (As do I.) Go Mom!

What perplexes is there is no amount of humor, teasing, jibing or good fun; no amount of grieving, crying, wailing or starving; that equitably attaches itself to the loss of one’s mother. Sure, there may be people you believe you love more. There may even be people you think you need more. But when all the chips are tolled, there is no more ambiguous count than regard for ones mother.

If you had a perfect childhood, you question why you? What were your parents hiding that your playmates’ parents revealed?

Were your youth unsatisfactory, why, even HOW, can you miss this parental unit so much?

No, you aren’t missing her much, yet. You’ll miss her on Mother’s Day and your birthday (even though the cards became cheaper and lamer as the decades rolled on). You’ll miss her on Thanksgiving and Christmas. You’ll miss her when you make a buttonhole, hoping to remember all the tricks she taught you. And when you fold piles of towels, with no children to help, recalling how you felt indentured folding her laundry basket of clean towels.

Whether your mother was your favorite person, your favorite person to rag on, or your favorite demon, when she sheds this mortal coil and moves to the next stage, it will be impossible to hold to a feeling that is 100% true. Your sentiments will run a gamut–you choose its lengths and breadths. But they will not stay a single course.

Humans do not have pure, singular motives, at least not very often. We’re mixed bags. Therefore, we must see the objects of our affections as equally mixed (they are, but when we add our ‘mixations,’ they’re more screwed than ever!).

This being accepted, there is no way you can go to your parent’s (mother’s) memorial service with a completely pure heart. Nor will your grief in the coming months be singular.

You will love everything she taught you and bemoan she isn’t here to answer questions about it.

You will hate that she left you so young and while you still needed her (as she may have felt when her own crotchety mother left at 84).

You’ll recall her as the most generous soul you ever knew — okay, this is NOT an exaggeration. I’ve known many gracious peeps. NONE out gave my mother!

She could also cut you to the core – something others could never do. How much you cared? Is that what this shows?

Oh, don’t get all high and mighty, like you hurt only because you loved her. You also hurt because you were human and not drawn to pain and blood.

It is impossible to imagine, select and hold the ‘correct’ sentiment at such a time as this. And if you feel yourself becoming righteous within the next biennial, well then you just might be making it up.

There is no simple response to the passing of a complex person in a multiplex relationship. So stay on this roller coaster and choose to enjoy the ride.