Muck Buddies

Today marks one month since my mom left. I still can’t believe it’s real some days. I’ve picked up the phone to call her so many times, only to hear it ring and feel the sudden remembrance crush me like one of those falling pianos in an old Looney Tunes episode. It just doesn’t seem possible that a month has passed since I held her hand and kissed her forehead for the final time. All at once, it seems like both a moment ago and an eternity since I heard my mama say she loves me. This feeling is a greedy, gnawing mouth. Grief is a thing with teeth.

I’ve been reading books on grief and trying not to shut down emotionally. People mean well, but so much of what I hear and read feels hollow. You will survive this. It gets better. What you feel is normal. Focus on the positive. You have so much to live for. All of that is 100% true, but also 100% generic. It is massively uncomfortable to sit in the muck with someone and not try to lift them out of it. We want to fix – it’s just how we’re wired as humans. I really do understand that the desire to lift someone up is rooted in love and how hard it is to watch someone struggle, but I would submit to you this truth: the world needs more muck buddies. There are cheerleaders aplenty, but a definite shortage of humans who are comfortable enough with emotion to sit with someone else’s and accept them as they are.

This is not about wallowing. I don’t believe I’ll stay in this place forever, nor would I want to. But every time I hear, “It will get better”, it is literally all I can do not to scream back, “IF YOU TRULY KNEW WHAT I’VE LOST YOU’D KNOW THAT’S A LIE!” I am so damn angry and so tired of feeling like I need to justify how hard it is to just exist in this world without my mom. The whole world has just kept going – shopping, eating, living an actual life – while I am a clock whose hands are frozen at 5:29pm on March 28. Things move on around me, and I just sit here, neck deep in emotion and unable to breathe. It’s bewildering. Doesn’t the world know what’s been lost? How could anything ever be the same again?

My kids try to help. They really do – Pook & Boogie have rarely seen me cry and pepper me with kisses every time I get weepy. Bean gives lots of snuggles. Noodle cries with me. But, surprisingly, the most meaningful moments for me have come from Roo. He’s a very black and white thinker and he doesn’t sugar coat. When I get stuck, he takes my hand and acknowledges the things I feel. Tonight he said, “You’re right. You don’t get your mother anymore. You don’t get to hug her or talk to her or give her a present for Mother’s Day. And that’s not fair. Can I give you a hug?” He climbs down into the muck with me and he doesn’t try to lift me up. He gets it. He validates how unbelievably bad this hurts, and he commits to loving me through it. My darkest moments have been made more bearable by my beautiful, mouthy, Tasmanian Devil of a son. He’s a muck buddy and he makes his mama proud.

We made it through the first month, even though it sucked. Tomorrow we start month two and it’ll probably suck too, but at least I can count on company in my mudpit. That’s something.