thoughts on mothers day
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| my parents on their wedding day, 1973 |
Shortly after losing my mother seven years ago I was looking up strategies on dealing with the sort of grief and loneliness that engendered, and found one of the most apt descriptions I've seen. Imagine you are a box with your grief inside you. It's like a giant ball that takes up nearly all the room inside, and it hurts every time the ball touches the outer walls (which because its so big, it's pretty much doing all the time.) But the ball gets smaller and smaller over time, still rattling around and occasionally bouncing off a side or brushing against it. You can go several days without even thinking about it, but move the box wrong, and its there, bruising the side.
Mothers Day is a day when the box feels small and the ball seems larger than usual. Every May, I carry in the grief box and its feels heavy and full. I caught sight of her in an image today and it felt like someone stabbed me. Not that the deaths of both of my parents aren't always there, but more that I am good at compartmentalizing. There are still doors to rooms and boxes I have not opened and perhaps this is better. But Mother's Day, and in a few weeks, the paternal counterpart, are dodgy and chaotic. I never know, going in, how I will feel that day.
I am beginning to think more about this as the wedding gets closer, a time, when were this even a decade ago, both of them would be alive (of course, J and I had just met this month 10 years ago and still hadn't had our first date yet. ) I was by no means ready to marry when I was younger and watching everyone else in my family pair off, nor would I have wanted to marry anyone else I was involved with in my 20s and 30s. But every wedding I was ever a part had a huge amount of planning, even if not financing exactly, courtesy of parents on both side.
This weirdness made getting married at the courthouse downtown and just taking immediate family and best-friends out for a lavish dinner very tempting initially. It would be nothing like the weddings I've been attending that are very much about families and traditions. It seemed a perfectly sensible and logical way to tie the knot on a limited budget. But then again, I have a huge amount of extended family, most of whose weddings I once participated in or attended. Even as older members have passed away, i have a ton of cousins I still see on holidays and other events. And I like parties and drinking and feasting. Also planning and decorating and making choices on menus and paper goods. While its very low-budget and much less traditional a wedding than a big party, I still wanted a celebration for everyone.
But the closer it got to a real wedding, as I did fun things like choose invites and decoration, and all my waffling over dress choices, the lack of my mother and the grief ball felt larger and bouncier than other springs. With both parents gone, even larger. I am not sure how that will feel day of. If I'm lucky I will be so busy and occupied I won't have time to be sad. Though when other family is around, it feels more acute than when I am alone. A couple weeks ago I ordered a little memorial candle for the party, to encompass my parents and J's dad, who died when he was only 20. His mom is still alive, and we'll be spending Mother's Day with her, eating Chinese takeout and watching horror movies, She also said she'll be putting the final touches on the calligraphy for the invite envelopes so I can mail them this week. She's had a few random suggestions we've been working into our plans.
My mother, on the other hand, lived for this sort of thing. I'm pretty sure she spent the entirety of 2008 and 2009 enthusiastically talking about and planning for my sister's wedding. Every so often she would say "This time next year, we'll be having a wedding." Or a year later, "last year, just think, we were getting ready for the wedding." We hosted two rather large anniversary parties for my parents, the 25th of which was almost like a second wedding and vow renewal, complete with an aisle, an altar, and an officiant who my mom worked with who was also a deacon.
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| 1999 |
My sister, having gotten ordained for funsies, is actually officiating ours, which should be great, neither J nor I being particularly religious, and is probably a far cooler way to involve her than as a bridesmaid (though she has always seemed kind of magical and witchy..lol..). Since it will be less formal--no aisle, no wedding march, no wedding party--it will be much more casual and laid back than a traditional wedding thankfully, which may be exactly the way to get over the sadness and the weirdness the day could potentially bring. While you can find lots of advice for brides of a certain age (most of which is nonsense) no one seems to talk about navigating these things after both parents are gone, which is the major thing that feels different about getting married, for the first time at least, in your 50s.
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