dmk1026

It's hard to say goodbye to someone who has been a part of your life from the instant you were conceived. On April 24, 2006, I had to say goodbye to my mom. I knew the moment would come; she had been battling cancer for six and a half years, and the fact that she lived through the last three was nothing short of a miracle. But selfishly, I wanted her to keep fighting. I needed her here for me; to be around for all the moments in my life that hadn't happened yet - moments that would seem less scary or more joyful when I shared them with her. Despite this selfishness, it had become painful to see her alive. To see her struggle for every breath, to see her body worn down and beat up, to try to find the essence of who she was hidden inside what was left of her tiny frame, and to see the passion and enthusiasm that used to emit from her dark brown eyes replaced by pain and agony.

You can't prepare yourself for the moment when it's over. That one moment which becomes a perfect and absolute contradiction in your life - simultaneously bringing relief and utter devastation; bringing an end to one grief, and the beginning of a whole new grief. You don't realize how loud emptiness can be until the sound of life is replaced by the quiet that signifies the absence of it.  

Two years after her death, I still yearn for the normal life I had before the diagnosis, before the surgeries, before the chemotherapy, and before the quiet. But I've come to realize that my normal is forever gone. My new life, my redefined "normal," feels kind of like a turtleneck that is a bit too snug around the neck and too short on the arms - making it difficult to breathe normally and leaving me with a constant chill. That discomfort isn't completely unwelcome; it means that her absence in my life is noticeable. The void a mother leaves behind cannot be filled, so really, how could life without her ever be truly normal again?

I know I'll never stop missing her, never stop needing her - but in the cruelest twist of irony, I need her the most because she isn't here. I needed her to help me through my father's remarriage before I was done grieving her death. I need to hear her voice so I don't forget what she sounded like. I need her to teach me how to cook her mother's Lebanese dishes so those traditions don't die with her. And I need her to help me make sense of a world that seems to make no sense without her.

I can't believe that all evidence of her could truly be gone, and so every day I look for her somewhere. In the shape of the clouds, in the whisper of a breeze, in a bird's song, a flower's fragrance, or the flutter of a hummingbird's wings. I search my dreams at night and my memory during the day. Occasionally I feel her warmth; though, it could just be the sun. And sometimes she guides my decisions; though, that could just be my conscience she helped shape. But every now and then, I'm lucky enough to see her smile. And when I do, I know it's her because it appears on a picture of me. It's almost as if, magically, my own smile was replaced momentarily by hers. Just long enough to remind me she's still with me; that I'm not as disconnected from her as I sometimes think. Just long enough to make me feel normal again.