Coping in the aftermath...mama is gone...

People keep asking me, "how are you?", or they keep saying, "I can't believe how strong you are", or "how well you are holding up", but the truth is, I feel like a mess inside.  I'm no different than anyone else though. I hurt, I feel pain, I cry. I mourn, but I suffered through depression for twenty years, many of them without medication and I learned that by suppressing my feelings, they just fester and burst out like a bottle of Coke that's been shaken and the cap left on.  I'm not strong, I just have a good, tight fitting mask, that comes off every night when I crawl into bed and goes on every morning before I step out of my room.

Actually I take that back. I do feel like I have gained a little bit of something I never had before, my Mama's strength and the I'm-not-going-to-take-your-sh*t-attitude.  Yeah, she wasn't big on swearing, hence the *.  I guess it is a little shout out to her, since I am sure that even though I try not to swear in front of my parents, they probably know at times I can, and I say this sadly, rival a sailor.  Hmm...Might need to work on that.  *smile*.  Anyway, Take this as you will, since this is my own feeling and mine alone, but I felt as if something happened to me within the moments that my mama transitioned and began her spirit journey. 

I have always been somewhat emotionally fragile. Okay, some would say "Somewhat? Shelly you would cry if a blender broke", but fine, I am sensitive, it can be a redeeming quality. My mom and dad have feelings and can be sensitive, but yes, I am overly sensitive and at one point in my life to a fault and I mean a bad fault.  Well, when my mom died, I felt a bit of strength come over me, as if she were able to gift to me an essence of her spirit and gave me the strength she had while in body form. She always told me, "I raised you to be strong, so I always know you will be okay, but I worry about you, because you don't seem like the way I thought we raised you."  She didn't mean that in a disparaging way and I know my mom was aware of the fact that I can take care of myself, ahem, with the help of people I have adopted as siblings (haha!), but now I get it.  I feel her strength in me and perhaps that is what gets me through each day.  I feel like she was able to bestow a gift to me as she left her body and made her "spirit journey", as she called it, and that gift was her strength as a human being.

We all cope in different ways and yet we all cope in the same way...My dad feels like he wants to get busy living, but that's because if he stops, he will think about mom and lose himself in the thought of her and that could be bad.  I understand. I know he misses her, he spent the last four months caring for "his wife of 47 years and his best friend of 48", as he puts it and then holding her hand while she slipped away.  I would wake up in the middle of the night and just watch quietly as he sat with her next to her hospice bed and then stood over her just hours before she left us.  Her departure left him "empty" and he will handle it the best way he knows how.  Heck, they spent almost six years together before I came along, so that is quite a bit of "them" time too...so you can imagine how much they love each other.

Then there is me.  I think I am all over the place in the post, but that's how I feel. Like an emotional rollercoaster.  My cousin Marie gave me a message, "turn your tears into writing, it will help you feel better", and it has. I took a short vacation from my story I am writing and I am writing another I dreamt up about 9 months ago, which oddly enough was about a family losing their mother. I never saw that coming, at the time it was just story, but now, it is my reality.  It doesn't make me feel one hundred percent, but I think time will help heal that.  Mama left a big void and not just in dad's and my life, but those who loved her so much and knew her so well. 

Mama had a laughter, a giggle and a smile that lit up a room.  She had a temper that could shut a room down and she had a way about her that made her unforgettable, that's why it hurts so much that she is gone.  So yes, I am okay, I am sad, I am angry, I am in pain.  My heart is sad and blue, my life feels a little less vibrant and I dread the holidays and birthdays to come, because I feel that is when I am going to feel her absence the most.   

So even if you hear me laughing, it doesn't mean I am not hurting, it just means that I am doing my best to abide by what my mom asked, "don't be sad, be happy for me, because I will no longer be in pain."  Well mama, I am glad you don't hurt anymore and that you are able to fly free, but I am sad, because you are no longer with dad and I and because the world has lost a shining light.  Don't worry though, your gift of strength resides in me and in time my tears will turn to smiles and my sadness to joy.

Time heals all wounds.  I won't ever forget the pain and void of losing my mama, but I will learn to live with it, just like everyone else does when they lose someone they love.

I got this....tears and all.....putting back on the mask now.