Say goodbye

Four years ago today, my Mom left this world very suddenly, just days after testing positive for covid. And just weeks before the vaccine was rolled out.

Time is a tricky thing, because it feels like it happened yesterday, but also like it’s been a hundred long years since the last time I heard her voice.

It happened very quickly. But it also seemed to hit like a car crash in slow motion.

It didn’t feel real, because we couldn’t be with her in her hospital room. But at the same time it felt incomprehensibly real.

First I sat in a hospital waiting room, frozen in shock, with my family. Physical distancing was still mandated and hugging was still outlawed, even when you needed it the most.

Then I sat alone in my apartment, separated from my family by strict lockdown protocols that applied to you once you’d set foot in a hospital’s covid ward, until I got the call that she was gone.

And I watched my phone for weeks afterwards, secretly hoping for a call from some embarrassed, overtired nurse who would tell me there was some mix-up at the hospital and she was actually fine.

My friends went to great lengths to make sure I knew they cared, as evidenced by the constant flow of deliveries to my door and my cell phone. It was winter. We were in lockdown. Nobody was vaccinated yet. We weren’t allowed to gather. So I experienced this in solitary. All of this made it feel not real. I waited months for some kind of unpause that never came.

Four. Whole. Years. Ago.

I’ve experienced loss before in my life, but it almost always looked like the gradual winding down of a long life that you see coming from miles away. Soft words and holding hands beside a hospital bed. Final goodbyes that you’ll always remember. Getting coffee and snacks (that usually go untouched but you keep buying them) for family members in waiting rooms. Never being alone in the constant revolving door of loved ones floating in and out of the haze of sadness, shock, and fluorescent hospital lighting. Passing the time by telling your best stories to each other. Being held when you need to cry, or someone else needs to. You honour the person you’re losing by being near to them as they leave this world, and being together with others who are also being there for them.

This was not like that. In a sharp, sharp contrast, I’ll never be as alone as I was that day.

Four. Whole. Years. Ago.

The world lost three million people to covid, and to the world, my Mom was just one of them.

And time marched on mercilessly. Months crawled by with still no funeral. No speeches and embraces to soften the sting. No tangible, formal acknowledgement. It wasn’t safe. It wasn’t allowed. So we had no semblance of closure until we finally gathered in 2022.

I thought that when that day happened, a switch would flip and the tension would be relieved. I thought the closure would happen all at once. But that didn’t happen. Nothing was linear. Nothing is linear.

And the thing is, life does go on. Something will eventually make you smile, and that will feel like a federal crime. The first time you go an hour without crying, you’ll feel incredibly guilty. Distractions will come, and it will feel wrong to let them take your mind off things.

Until, enough time passes that your life becomes an eternal toggle between grief and regular life. Sometimes it’s a whole day of regular life with 30 minutes of grief. Sometimes it’s a whole day of grief with 30 minutes of regular life. It’s never zero minutes, and usually it’s somewhere in the in between. The summers are brighter. Holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries are the darkest. And for me, November is the worst.

Four. Whole. Years. Ago.

It’s been even longer since I last hugged her (or since anyone in the family did), as we all tried so hard to keep each other safe in those first months of compulsive hand washing and N95s. It never doesn’t gut me that she was taken from us in November, without having been hugged by her family since March. 8 months of video calls and talking over the phone through window panes with some promise of being reunited at an end that never came.

I feel her absence with every passing day that I don’t get a phone call or text from her. But I also feel her presence almost every day.

Like every time I make rice, because she taught me how.

Every time I put syrup on pancakes, and I wish it was her homemade syrup.

Every time there is any mention of Blue Rodeo, Bruno Mars, George Michael, Queen, Johnny Depp, or Marilyn Monroe.

Every time something’s happening in the news that I know she would want to talk about.

Every time I need advice, and I have to try to imagine what she would tell me to do.

Every time I accomplish anything worth telling anyone about, because she used to be the first person I’d call.

Every time I interview for a job, because back in the day before Zoom interviews, my Mom used to drive me to every job interview without me ever asking her to do this, and she’d wait around to drive me back home after. This went on well into my twenties and well after I needed it. She was my good luck charm.

Every time I wear a peacoat, because every single time I landed a new job throughout my teens and twenties, my Mom used to take me out and buy me a new coat (usually a peacoat because I was very into them) to wear on my first day. She fiercely believed in me and would do anything to make me feel confident on my first day at a new gig.

Every time I’m dancing, because she was always dancing.

And a million other little things that remind me of her all the time. I could go on forever. And this is how she stays a part of my life forever and I feel her with me every day. This is how I keep her with me and still get to think about her every day.

We can all only hope that someday, we make this kind of impact on someone that means they instinctively think of us with love every day, every time they make rice or do some silly thing or another.

Rob Thomas once said “there is a little bit of something me in everything in you”. But what is also true is that there is a little bit of something my Mom in everything in me. And there always will be.

I didn’t get to say goodbye to my Mom before she passed. She didn’t get to say goodbye to me. But I hear her say hello to me every day, in all these million little ways. And sometimes when I close my eyes, I hear her goodbye.