I woke on September 26th filled with an overwhelming knowledge that it was an important day.
A date of significance.
The thing is, I couldn't remember why.
I couldn't remember the what.
I opened the calendar on my phone.
Nothing.
I flipped open the old school paper calendar on my desk.
I checked the date.
It was blank.
Nothing.
September 26th...
What is so important about September 26th?
I spent the entire day with the nagging feeling that I was forgetting something.
I asked my husband...
"Is something happening today?".
He didn't know of anything.
I wasn't really surprised, I'm the one who keeps track of things.
But it was eating away at me.
So I asked my daughter.
She's probably the first person I should've asked,
she has a photographic memory for dates.
"Is today an important date or something?"
She didn't know of anything.
Weird.
I tried to distract myself.
I tried to shake the feeling,
but it lingered.
It more than lingered,
it was pertinacious.
It stuck with me until I crawled into bed that night.
And it disrupted my sleep.
I woke the next morning with the instinctive feeling that I needed to write.
I had all of this weird energy that I needed to get out.
All this weird energy of knowing that yesterday was important but I just didn't know why.
It didn't feel right that I had forgotten something...
but there wasn't any explanation for why I was feeling this way at all.
I thought "I haven’t blogged in a while", so that's what I'll do.
I brought my Macbook into the kitchen.
Not my normal writing space.
I usually sit in my office, right next to the front door.
The significance of where I chose to sit and write that morning is not lost on me.
I made a latte.
Sat down at the table.
I logged onto this site.
I paused and looked out the patio window.
The early morning sun beaming a warm glow over me.
There was a knock at the door.
It pulled me out of my blank moment.
I looked up to my husband ~ I’m not answering it, I’m in my pyjamas.
I didn't even speak the words.
He caught the drift.
He didn’t mind.
At first all I heard him say “Oh hey buddy”.
An uplifted sing song in his voice.
Oh ok, it's someone he knows.
I thought it must be a neighbour ~ I mean it’s so early.
No one would stop by our house this early in the morning.
I looked back to my keyboard.
An unfamiliar voice spoke, something muffled.
My husband replied with an "Oh?"
His tone had shifted. Darkened.
My ears perked.
My keyboard forgotten.
I heard the unfamiliar voice speak my Mom’s name.
Her Full name.
I waded down the hall to see a man in familiar uniform standing inside the door.
In that moment something inside of me broke.
In that moment,
We discovered the significance of September 26th.
That is the night my Mom had suddenly and unexpectantly left this earth.
***
Ok. So here’s the thing.
I’ve had messed up things occur in my life.
I've suffered. I've lost. I've grieved.
But nothing is comparable to this.
I never considered living as a daughter in a world without my Mom.
I might have been naive with that, but nothing could've prepared me for this anyway.
Nothing prepares you for living in a world without your Mom.
No matter how old you get, you're always her child.
And I have never felt more like a child in my entire adult life than I have in these past few weeks.
You don’t really realize how much it’s going to hurt.
But it does, more than you could’ve ever imagined.
You fall down the rabbit hole of playing out all of the things that you could’ve done differently.
You flip and flop all the words you could’ve changed or said, or not spoken at all.
One of the hardest pieces is that you never knew that this was about to happen.
I just never knew.
She seemed to me, to be The One who would always be here.
The hardest thing through all of this has been the instinctive feeling that “I need to call my mom”.
And then being hit with the realization that losing her, IS the reason that I am crying.
I don't know why this had to happen when it did.
But I do know that she would want me to be strong, to learn from this and to grow.
To navigate through this experience of grief in ways that will only be for the better.
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