It’s Mother’s Day and two years to the day I became a childless mother. What does it mean when my dear sweet girl, the one that made me a mother, the only one to whom I am a mother, dies? If she made me a mother and she is no longer living, no longer here to care for, am I still a mother? Yes of course I am still a mother. But I feel stuck in some kind of limbo. All the Mother’s Day ads and store promotions and displays and commercials don’t seem to consider the bereaved moms, the moms with no children (except for Home Depot; someone shared a picture in one of my support groups of Home Depot’s Mother’s Day display and they had flowers considering all. I’m also not forgetting those who are grieving their moms, this day is hard for them as well). I’m not the kind of mother these ads and displays are targeting. I have no child making me a handmade card and gift, or searching for the perfect item. Ariella was good at that. She made cards for no reason at all and was thoughtful with her gifts. The last gift she bought me, with her own money were matching mother/daughter necklaces. She was buried with hers and I am never without mine. Sometimes I feel like I need the reminder that I was a mother. That I AM a mother. Because it doesn’t feel like it.
I never put too much stock into holidays like Mother’s Day. It’s not like we ignored the day. Growing up we always did something as a family and once I became a mom that continued. I always did reserve time on Mother’s Day to do something with just Ariella or just the three of us, like getting pedicures, or going to the zoo, or such, but we also didn’t need a designated day to have our family time. Family time was very important to us and weekends, especially nice weekends would find us at some outing or another. So until recently, until I became a mom, one Mother’s Day wasn’t more memorable than the other. My first Mother’s Day of course I will always remember and then there are a few more that I will never forget.
Mother’s Day 2017. The first after Ariella was diagnosed. The first where I actually wondered if it would be my last with my beautiful daughter. We went as a family to the aquarium with my mother and David’s mother. We got the tickets through Casey Cares and were between treatment cycles. Ariella always loved the aquarium. And there is something so calming about watching those fish. Sinai Hospital, where she was treated, actually has an aquarium cam. There is a camera in one of the tanks so you can watch the fish from the TV in the hospital room. We had a blast searching the tanks trying to find the camera so we would know which fish we were watching during the next hospital stay. After that we went to a sandwich shop for some lunch. The weather was beautiful and it was so special to have such a lovely day in the midst of something so horrible.
Mother’s Day 2018. Oh but how hopeful we were. At that time Ariella was cancer free. We went to a Mother’s Day tea hosted by Casey Cares. We had food and made crafts, and even met some Ravens players. Ariella loved to wear hoodies and she always had her hood on. There was news coverage of the event and in the background there was Ariella working on her craft, with her hood on! I do not remember what we did after that tea but it is highly likely we went out for snowballs. On this day I most definitely wasn’t worried that it would be my last Mother’s Day with a living child. All I felt was joy and relief. Little did I know it actually would be the last.
Mother’s Day 2019. Was I even a mother anymore? This day I don’t remember because it was a blur of the days before and the days to come. Ariella had died three days earlier and we were burying her the next day. I was mostly numb. Isn’t that fascinating? How one can be numb but in colossal pain at the same time? The fact that it was Mother’s Day wasn’t even on my radar.
Mother’s Day 2021. The two year anniversary of the day I became a childless mother. The anticipation of these milestone/anniversary/holiday days is often worse than the actual day. Having these two days in one just increased my anxiety twofold. But on the other hand, I would only have to endure one day rather than two. In the end, I don’t really know if the days leading up were worse, or if having both on the same day was worse. I can’t, nor is there any reason to, quantify my anguish and heartache on really any given day. Some days are better, some are worse. Sometimes there is a reason for it, like a holiday or diagnosis day, or anniversary of death, and sometimes, though the pain and shadow of grief is there every day, the pain increases exponentially and crashes over me out of nowhere, like a tsunami, for no apparent reason other than I miss Ariella. And that of course is reason enough.
We have recently learned of the death of a friend’s son. You’d think I know what to say. But I don’t. Because I know the despair and desperation, torment and grief this family is living. And I know that nothing can make it better. And I know that it’s two years later and my grief still feels so raw and so new and I don’t want to put that burden on another grieving family. I can’t separate my pain from theirs, to give any semblance of hope that things will be okay. The truth is, it will never be okay. And no one has found the magical words that make things better. That doesn’t mean you say nothing. It means you say “I’m here”, “I’m listening”, “Tell me about your child”, “I’ll just sit here quietly next to you”. Or anything else that isn’t advice or some crappy platitude.
To the one that made me a mother, my dear sweet Ariella. The day you were born was the best day of my life and the day you died I had to learn a new way to be your Mommy. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about you. I still cry everyday, missing you, thinking about all the happy times and grieving all the moments we will never have. I will never forget your big, bright, smiles and your tight bear hugs. I miss those squeezes. I hear your giggle, and your evil laugh and am devastated that I won’t get to witness any more of your pranks (though the smoke detector going off at 1:00 AM, was that you?). You lit up the stage when you danced and you were a true leader who would have gone on to do great things. Who am I kidding? You already did great things. Your kindness and generosity, your ability to make friends wherever you went, and of course Ari’s Bears. I know that had you lived there would have been no stopping you. On this day, 731 days since you died, I want to share some of my favorite memories. There are too many to list them all, but of course not nearly enough. We were supposed to have a lifetime of memories. When you were little you had a funny way of saying some things, as all children do. You used to say “little billet” instead of little bit, “gulk” instead of milk, “man old man” instead of man oh man, “goofall” instead of goof ball, “what you said”. I sometimes say little billet even though it had been so long since you had said it. We had such great family moments; going to the beach and amusement parks, Disney World, California. I will never forget your fearlessness. How the bigger and scarier the ride, the better. How you raced down hills on your scooter and couldn’t go fast enough on Mr. Randy’s boat. How much you loved diving through the waves in the ocean. We had so many adventures. Fruit picking, going to the zoo and museums and the aquarium, girls trips to New York, dance competitions. But I loved more our quieter moments. Our family movie and game nights. Reading to you in bed and us quietly reading our own books together. Helping you with crafts. Just being in the same space as you. It is so quiet without you. I still haven’t gotten used to the silence. Noise and joy and laughter and yelling and exuberance were your essence. I still cannot fathom how someone so filled with life and enthusiasm can just be gone. But as I’ve told you many times, life just isn’t fair and sometimes we have to figure out how to live without the ones that make us whole. I still haven’t figured out how to live without you, but somehow I’m doing it. I’m still breathing despite the pain I feel with every breath. Dearest Ariella, the world is a less bright place without you in it. Your flame was extinguished way too soon and I will do everything I can to keep your legacy alive. I miss you more than you can possibly know and I have a hole in my heart that can never be filled. I love you to the moon and back, infinity times. Love, Mommy
731 days without my sweet girl. It doesn’t seem possible. And yet here we are. This second year was harder than the first. Year three is now ahead of us. Just two years down with a lifetime to go. Still doesn’t seem survivable.