I try to keep lykksalighet a carefree space where I can keep track of simple pleasures like things I like, books I read, and trips I've taken. But sometimes life isn't so easy and simple. It can be complicated and difficult.
I lost my mom to ovarian cancer 10 years ago.
The day my mom died it felt like a hole had been ripped through me, and I physically felt like a piece of me was missing. The pain lessened with time, but the thing about grief is that it's a continuous process. It ebbs and flows — sometimes stretches will go by where I hardly think about her, and other times the pain is almost as fresh as the day she died.
The last two years have been the most joy filled of my life — finding out I was pregnant and then having my son. But I have also felt like I was mourning my mom all over again. I missed her so desperately. Selfishly I wanted answers to all those questions I never asked - what were her pregnancies like, did she have lots of morning sickness, did she get stretch marks, were her labours long or short, easy or difficult, was breastfeeding painful, were my brother or I colicky babies - and would my experience be like hers.
And selfishly I wanted her to take care of me. The first days after giving birth are so tender and intimate, all I wanted was my mom's gentle touch.
I remember one day when my son was a few months old. I'd taken him to the mall with me to run some errands and I saw a new mom with her baby walking through the mall with her own mother. This was a scene I've seen a thousand times before, but for some reason that day it just hit me like a sack of bricks — I would never have that. I would never have the simple joy of spending time with my son and my mother. And that's not to say I don't have other strong, wonderful women in my life. But I don't have my mom.
It makes me sad and angry that my son will never get to meet her. That a terrible disease that she fought tooth and nail until the very end, took her far too soon. That she never got to hold her grandson in her arms.
And I know I can teach my son about my mom — how she was strong and kind and complicated. How she loved the prairies and thought there was nothing better in the world than the smell of the land after a summer's rain. How she served others and was the glue that held so many things together. How she could single handedly host a sit-down traditional Norwegian Christmas dinner for thirty, still make it to evening service, have the house spick-and-span, and not break a sweat. How she could roll the perfect piece of lefse. How she could grow the most beautiful garden and take pleasures from such simple things in life.
But there will always be a little hole, maybe not as large or as painful as the one that ripped through me ten years ago, but a little sadness where she is missing. Grief isn't something that we get over, it stays with us, and shapes us as we move through life. It's the price we pay for loving others deeply. I'm lucky that I was loved so deeply by my mom.
But I miss her.
XOXO
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