So this is Christmas… Sometimes it’s Hard.
If I take a moment, I can still feel her hand in mine as I sat on a cold pew as she grieved the death of her 92 year old mother. I am not certain of my age but I must have been around 30 at the time. Carey Beaube was a loving daughter to her sometimes cranky but incredible mother Idelle Gilliam. She and her sister Gloria embodied what I will always think of as “the way you honor your elders”. If you haven’t experienced loss or been
around those who have experienced loss, it’s easy to adopt an attitude of “well she lived to 92” without acknowledging the great loss the living will feel…. Even if they try to comfort themselves with platitudes. The fact is few people are ever ready to live on this planet with the knowledge that their loved one is no longer physically here with them. And the grief comes in waves.
We lost Carey to the other side of the Veil in June 2008. We lost my mom in January 2016. Alex and I are “motherless” and it feels a bit like being on a boat without your
trolling motor… the one that helps you out in a pinch and is there for you in delicate tricky times. Life somehow goes on without the one who spent blood,
sweat, and tears raising you through all the crazy ups and downs of a childhood and teen years. Milestone moments pass and you think “where are you mom?” and “why aren’t you here to see this?”. And the grief comes in waves.
I learned to appreciate the mother/child relationship early on in my childhood. When I was four years old and Sandy Cunningham Glaze (later Sandy Cunningham Champion) was
28, her mother passed away from cancer. Six months later, my maternal grandfather passed from what we assume was heart failure. Mother suffered. She missed her mother and dad for the rest of her life. Yet somehow, she kept them alive for me. She talked about them, looked at pictures of them with me, and shared stories of growing up. When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, I felt the same rock in the pit of my stomach all humans seem to feel when they hear what feels like a certain life ending diagnosis. Time became precious because no matter how I looked at it, I could only see that eventually this would take my mother away from me. Her name and old phone number remain in my phone. Precious items that are personal to me but are monetarily worth nothing remain with me. I regularly wear a piece of her jewelry or things she gave me to keep her close to my heart. And the grief comes in waves.
So now it is Christmas time again. I hang the ornaments I’ve collected along the way. Many of them were given to me by my mother and my mother-law. I will be perfectly fine, then I get the ornament Carey made for us after our wedding using some of the silk flowers from boutonnieres. At some other point I pull out the old Kris Kringle ornament that is the only remaining ornament I have from my childhood which my parents likely brought back with them from Holland before I was born. When I finally get to the opaque angel my mom gave me on my first “married” Christmas the grief comes in waves.
It’s been years yet I’m in tears again. It makes you feel crazy and alone. You don’t feel like you can or should keep talking about this grief. People have got to be tired of hearing about it by now. And the grief comes in waves. One minute you are fine and next you are in tears over the simplest things, like pulling out an old recipe your mom used or a bowl with memories of learning to make cornbread to just the right consistency.
In the last few months when I log onto social media, another person I’ve known and loved has passed away. Each one with loved ones left behind in their first waves of grief. This first holiday without them is so very hard.
So, my friend, if you are “motherless” or have some other loss this Christmas feeling pretty good one minute but then in a wave of grief the next, you are not alone. You are not crazy. People might be tired of hearing about your grief. But if you need a friend who understands and won’t get tired of sharing this burden with you, my heart is big… give me a call. Whether your loss is recent or has been a few years, I have no answers, but I give great hugs, will listen, and walk alongside you in this part of your journey. Maybe it seems weird to call me out of the blue (call anyway) but at the minimum stay open to friendship with another “motherless” traveler who comes your way. I am not sure how I would have coped with the loss during the initial months following the loss of my mother without my “motherless” friend Melinda. How many random calls did I make just needing to hear her voice and to hear that it was ok to feel whatever I was feeling? And because the grief comes in waves, Melinda still gets a random phone call every now and then.
Christmas 2005 Alex with his sister (Lynne), Dad (Robert), and Mother (Carey).
Me with a few siblings (Will & Angel), Mom (Sandy), and Dad (Sonny)
Contact:
Renee Beaube
renee@beaube.com
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