All in Mom
Grieving is hard, rarely linear, and shows up in the most unexpected ways.
It was my dad’s birthday party. My brothers and I were all there. I did my best to cook some nice food and take care of the cleaning so my dad didn’t have to. My dad had his friends over but it felt a little hollow for me.
And I just… missed her. I just missed my mom.
While classroom work became much easier again, sports became problematic: I came to rely on the improved vision I had when wearing my glasses and having to take them off for Taekwondo or school sports started to give me anxiety. I couldn’t see the kicks or punches coming during sparring or the balls thrown at me during the traditional volley, basket, and football sports.
With my interest in writing, it probably comes as no surprise that I had a blog as soon as they had been invented. “Weblogs” were one of the first flexes the average, everyday internet user had to begin expressing ideas that were never going to get published in mainstream media.
I thought I knew what homesickness was when I moved to the U.K. from Canada. But this is a new kind of homesickness I wasn’t prepared for: It’s a weird mix of missing my mom and missing my husband.
The first family computer entered our house around 2000/2001. We were a techy family even in the 1990’s, having had desktops (with and without internet) for my dad’s business and work since the late 1980’s. But he was sick and tired of us “accidentally” moving icons around or deleting important files on the work computer.
Somehow Mama P just knew that the way she did things were good, useful, and healthy. To this day I only have vague rationalizations for her practices, which I have adopted. So this post is more to pay homage to Mama P’s instincts than something spectacularly backed up by research. But in an ironic twist, a lot of government advice sounds very similar to what Mama P had been doing all along.
It’s my birthday. I’m turned 34 yesterday.
It’s the first birthday I had without my mother, and it was so different:
I used to love travelling.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate it. I just don’t love it right now.
It’s not what you think.
I wasn’t waiting for the turn of the decade to create a New Year’s Resolution and start another blog, although I can appreciate the timing is suspicious.
