Mother's Day: A Mother's Grief

In the night, in my home, in the hustle and bustle of readying to move to another country, Matthew and his mother have come to help me with my last minute packing.  I was auntie to him, not by blood but by tradition and love. As the reality of moving registers, anxiety captures me.  Hot and cold spells ravish my body while nauseating cramps grip my belly.  I travel back and forth to the bathroom, spilling all I had eaten.  
         In a corner, in the living room, in his musical world, Matthew sits, guitar in hand, fingers strumming the guitar strings amidst the chaotic beauty of moving.  He consoles my nervous soul with his guitar playing gift.  He can play the piano, saxophone, drums, including steel drums.  He can play the flute – he can compose and sing songs he wrote.
          November 2011, I see him again.  He has big muscles that help to carry the two remaining baskets full of books and other things I left at his mother's house.  
        "Bring one at a time," I say.  But he brings both.  
        "I'm strong, Auntie," he says.  
As he nears my car, one basket falls and we scramble on the road rescuing the fallen items.  
          "Sorry, Auntie," he says.    

          Then, no one sees it coming—the storm.  There is no forecast like the warnings we get about the weather, no forecast about the personal storm.  Maybe the clouds are too dark for us to see anything behind them.  It comes.  This morning. A lifeless body. Matthew won’t awake to another sunrise in his room.
         She’s inconsolable.  Matthew’s mother.  Her grief comes this Mother’s Day with a magnitude that no Richter scale can read.  The pain is too deep, the death is too sudden, and the shock is too great.  She feels tormented—her tears cannot stop.
         “Why, why, why—my son. Why did my son die?”

          Saturday I cry and cry during his the funeral service.  Young and old people cry, the members in his band, neighbors, co-workers, soccer teammates, church members, friends and fans.   
         Where was his father through all the years when food was scare to feed a growing boy?  He shows up for Matthew’s funeral, holding Matthew mother’s hand, pretending to be her rock, pretending….  Audacious.  Guilt.  I want to yank her arms away from his hold, but he holds on and on, until… I think he slowly releases her. 
         Matthew is now a memory—son, brother, nephew, cousin, friend, musician—a talented kid.  A memory for all of us.  I’ll hold the memory of him, his big smile, fingers against strings on the guitar, singing softly.  I’ll remember and listen to the melody that plays in my head.  Sleep, Matty-Jae, sleep.

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New graduate dies in car accident – Read her beautiful story - "The Opposite of Loneliness"

"Live Like You Were Dying" - Dying From Cancer

Terry Fox, Thunder Bay, Canada

Can you "live like you were dying, meaning having fun or doing "things" you wouldn't have done but you do them because you have a terminal illness? Some people say it depends on the situation. Some people say you can.  Some dying people become kinder and more loving. Some, like Terry Fox, do great things.  Do we truly know how they feel?  Do they honestly tell us what they think?

In the true sense of the phrase, I declare that most people who are dying do not try to live as though they are dying. They just live. The man who's given two weeks after a medical diagnosis cannot truly live as if he's dying.  The thought of dying probably makes him dead even as he laughs.  He has no control over his fate.

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

I'm not saying that most dying people don't make plans and don't go out.  And maybe I'm even presumptuous to attempt writing about this topic. But I've seen much and I've heard many stories.

Dunn's River, St Ann, Jamaica

When my mother first realized that her cancer had spread, I bought the "live like you were dying idea."  I told her to buy clothes, travel (go to places she did not know), enjoy life, and cherish the last moments.  Being with her, doing all of those things felt weird because I knew and she knew--and I had never forgotten why we were doing certain things.

I now see some of those things she did as masquerades over feelings. Masks.  The masking of blank stares and sadness that her slow death did not reveal until the the cancer loomed over her like a hawk over carcass. Under the masks were fears and tears and pain and sadness, feelings too sad to express.

When my radio coach found out he would not get a lung transplant to save his life, he gave up living.  His soul died, I think.  I observed him.  Happiness walked out his door.  He lived for each moment he got.  When my sister's cancer returned like a tsunami, I saw unspeakable sorrow in her eyes as she waited to die.  When the doctor gave my mother three months, I saw life pulled from her.  She died before she was pronounced dead.

Washington, District of Columbia

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm foolish, maybe I'm grieving, maybe I'm just trying to come to grips with my own mortality, but I don't think dying people live as though they are dying--in the true sense of the phrase.  Dying people live thinking that they're already dead because all eyes are on them as everyone waits to witness the last minute, the last second, the last breath, the goodbye ritual.  Dying people know we wait to dispose their bodies.
Please tell me I'm wrong, that I'm taking a simple approach about a complicated matter, tell me that what I'm saying--does not make sense.  Enlighten me.  Please.

Here's an article about dying: The Waiting 
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