10/4/21 was the day my mom took her last breath. After 0 symptoms, all blood tests coming back normal + over a month of trying to find a diagnosis after some minor tummy pain we got our answer in August of 2021 that Pancreatic Cancer was going to take my mom’s life and we had “maybe a year” left with her + that “year” turned into just 2 months. Grief has shaped me more than anything else I’ve ever experienced in my life – here are my biggest takeaways from the last (brutal) 5 years without my Mom.
You will never be ready
I don’t care how old you are, you are never ready to say goodbye to your mom. She was my best friend. 41 years with her wasn’t enough – I still feel robbed. You will miss her at every occasion and you will never lose the instinct to make her the first person you call when something good or bad happens. You will realize she was every Holiday + Birthday and none of it will ever feel the same. In fact, now you will dread them. You will try to hide from them but somehow you make new traditions and know you need to carry on for everyone else but that empty chair at the table is LOUD. You’ll feel jealous of everyone who can still call their mom and mad when they don’t.
I also think the second year is significantly worse than the first (found this both with the deal of my mom and my brother). The first year is all about survival and somehow you make it through it. The second year you are so sad you survived and the world just keeps on going.
You won’t understand how bad it will be until it happens
I had 1 friend (my Mills 🫶🏻) reach out to me when she first heard and she leveled with me. She had lost her mom a few years earlier and told me how horrible it would be, how I would want to scream every single day and how I will never be the same – she was right and her honesty made me feel normal in the deepest, darkest moments. I don’t ever want to be the “just wait until it happens to you” kind of person but it’s true and nothing will prepare you for how you will feel. You will feel crazy + unraveled and your brain will feel jumbled. It’s trauma and it affects so much about you. I have since found more grace in my heart for anyone dealing with loss and regret for how I wasn’t there for people who dealt with loss in the past cause I truly didn’t get it yet. It’s out of body and you don’t feel like yourself anymore. You sink to the bottom and eventually (hopefully) you rise back up to the top. Grief changes everything about you.
You need time to heal
The loss, the plans that never happened, the emptiness, the loneliness, the regret on how you wish things in the past would have been different – it eats at you every single day. You need to deal with + process the grief. If you numb it in the moment, it will come back later. Therapy helps. It can save you when you need to process the thoughts and need someone to make sense of what you are feeling and give you real coping skills. Don’t ignore it – deal with it head-on. You will be ok but it will hurt – like really, really hurt.
You will reevaluate your life and everything and everyone in it
I see the world completely differently now. What mattered to me in the past no longer matters to me. Your bullshit tolerance will go down to 0. You will know exactly who + what you want in your life moving forward. There is a shedding. A shedding of the plans you had, a shedding of people in your life that no longer make sense, a shedding of things you want to let go of (none of this is bad). You will prioritize things that make you happy. You will learn that work is important but being there for your people and family is what matters in life. You will shed the things you kept in your life that no longer fit.
You will be happy again
My mom helped shape me into the person I am today and she would want me to be happy. In fact, she would be mad if I wasn’t and let her death be an excuse to not live the life I always wanted. You will make new traditions, you will find out who your true friends are (and those bonds will become stronger), your family will have a new dynamic that isn’t all bad, you will meet new people and be able to tell them about your mom and they will see her in you – all of this is good. You also won’t be sad everyday (which is a notion 5 years ago I never thought would be possible). You are allowed to have days you don’t want to get out of bed but those days will become fewer. You will find happiness again and you still have some of the best days of your life ahead of you.
xo, Les
