A comprehensive list of all the things I’ve cried about since my mother died last year
disclaimers: arranged in no particular order of intensity... including but not limited to...
My mother’s death.
Feeling her absence in the room and in my life. In the lives I share with my sister and my husband.
Realising I’d never ever be able to eat food cooked by her. I can only ever make cheap, first copies of her recipes.
Realising I have only one last chance ever at eating something she cooked. A few days before she died, my mother cooked a jar worth of pasta sauce. It’s hot, tangy and delicious. She packed it in a mason jar and stuffed it in the refrigerator. I carried that jar carefully from Bombay to Bangalore. It now sits snugly in a special corner of the fridge. I don't play around with it - I almost never open it and I’ve eaten from it only once. I know I must get to it sooner or later, but it is the last item.
Flipping through old photo albums. Cliched, sure, but it is a painful realisation to see photos of my parents back in the day when they were the age I am today.
My parents somewhere in Guwahati, Assam, a few years before 1994 Knowing I won’t be able to take any pictures of her on my new camera.
Not being able to say goodbye.
Birthdays and anniversaries. Of late, I’ve been thinking a lot about this girl who shares her birthday with her mother. And then I look at myself, sharing my birthday with my mother’s death. The thought breaks my heart at first. This year marks her first death anniversary. For the longest time, in the months following my mother’s death, I tried hard to find the meaning in that. Surely it can’t be just a coincidence that she’s died the same day she birthed me. Till of course, I came to the realisation that it is just that. There is no hidden meaning behind the dates our loved ones depart. But there is meaning in death - in that it is absolute.
This poem by W. H. Davies. I was in the second grade when the school curriculum had me memorise Leisure. I must have been really impressed by it because I can recall it word for word even today. It evokes the same sadness in me as it did then.
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?—No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.The fucking airlines mandating negative Covid tests before I fly back home for her cremation. So now I have to wait at this busy airport anxiously waiting for last-minute results so I don’t miss the flight home.
Remembering how it poured heavily on the days my parents died.
Wondering what ‘normal’ is anymore. Is any of this pain normal? Is it okay that I don’t feel excited about things anymore? It’s normal for regret to follow me every minute of the day, right? Should I feel guilty about wanting to move forward - live my life like my mother would have wanted me to? Oh, yet I do. Is that normal? fts.
Wondering why this old lady at the supermarket gets to live while my mother had to die so early. Obviously, this is ridiculous if not completely senseless. In her memoir Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner talks about this exact feeling. Even Zauner knows this is as sad as it gets but sometimes, “it helps to irrationally blame someone” for all of life’s unfairness.
When my cook broke a ceramic bowl my mother had gotten years ago. It just slipped off from his hands.
Seeing a young family at the park. Mother, father, daughter - laughing, playing.
Already feeling her absence from all the big and small events of my future - birthdays and anniversaries. But also not feeling her around in the everyday mundane. She won’t be there when I will write my first book. Neither will she be there when I’m stuck in life somewhere. I’m literally terrified of the thought that she’ll be missing for when I become a mother for the first time. So many people get to see their parents become grandparents. Why not me and my mother?
When my therapist told me I was not just dealing with the grief of losing my mother but also grief from my father’s death in 2006.
When I took my first flight after my mother’s cremation.
When writing about her.
Sitting on a park bench listening to old recordings.
Writing this list.
Have you broken down in the middle of the day? A stray memory from the past just struck your heart? Please share if you have felt the same way or worse. At least so I know I'm not the only one.
Pooja, the good thing is that you are crying. Its a gift to be able to express one's grief. I hope sharing this list was as freeing for you as it is for the reader.
Your mother must have been so good to have a daughter like you ❤
You think you’ll just cry over the loss of the person, but nothing prepares you for all the tiny (sometimes silly) things, related to the event or the person, that make you cry.