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A few nights ago, I was sitting on my couch watching “The Lion King.”
I was feeling somewhat nostalgic after hearing of the passing of James Earl Jones. It had been a long day at work and sometimes clutching to those childhood comforts is what gets you through. Of course, I had to skip over the scene of Mufasa dying. My heart aches for any creature that has to die in such a tragic way—real or animated—and I was not in the headspace to deal with the undo sadness that would rightfully come from seeing this majestic creature killed so viciously.
We all know the story. It got to the scene where Rafiki confronts Simba about losing himself after the passing of his father, takes him to the water and points to his reflection. There, this vulnerable, lost creature is confronted with a truth so universally felt after the passing of a loved one, particularly a parent:
“He lives in you.”
Though I have enjoyed the beauty of this Disney film for all of my life, that scene has never weighed on me as heavily as it did as a 27-year-old child of a parent who has passed away.
I felt a visceral reaction to those words. Like a warm orb had suddenly untangled itself within the depths of my belly. This warm pain that can only come from experiencing one thing: grief.
My mother passed away in April of 2024. I would love nothing more than to write about a valiantly fought battle against cancer, or some almost missed diagnosis of some or other strange, arbitrary disease that one in every 50,000 people is found to have. This isn’t the case. Not for her. Her death was shocking but not unexpected. However, that didn’t make the pain any less severe when she died.
My mother struggled with her demons and had for most of my life. As a young girl, I was enraged by my mother’s choices and the idea that these things could be more important than my sister and I. I was devastated by her actions. And no matter what I did, or said, or tried, she never got better. But life had been cruel to her and she battled daily with the demons that engulfed her thoughts and feelings.
So, as most children who have parents who are struggling, you put up with it. You pretend everything is fine.
In Gillian Flynn’s book “Sharp Objects,” she writes; “I just think that some women aren’t made to be mothers. And some women aren’t made to be daughters.” These days, I tend to agree with the latter.
Grieving my mother has been bitter. It has been vile. It has been years of unpacking and dusting off memories of childhood trapped-ness. Freedom-less-ness. Hopelessness. Feelings of yearning for any other life but the one I had. I chose to become a teacher because I dreamed of being my teachers. They were the women I could look to who were stable and functional. They gave me a sense of safety and home within the confines of a classroom. It’s only now in my late 20s that I have finally begun to come to terms with the fact that being me is okay.
Grief threw me into that pit.
Grief tore open my “little girl-lost” wounds.
Grief had me sobbing in my hands while sitting in a bath.
Grief made me ugly.
Grief uprooted my normality.
Grief turned my heart inside out.
Grief also brought with it a comfort that at once the person I loved most in this world was finally no longer suffering. Grief brought my sister and I into each others arms and allowed us to wrap up tightly with the notion that we had survived. Grief took the sheers to the toxic relationships that had no duty serving my life. Grief, in many ways, greeted me as a friend. Reminding me how much there is to live for.
I miss my mother deeply. I miss her laugh and her embrace. I miss sitting outside with a cup of coffee watching the birds lapping up the pipe water nourishing the garden. I miss her nicotine drenched embrace. But mostly, I think I miss being someone’s daughter.
Grief holds me now, quite gently, in its foul clutches. Always giving me room to return.
~
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