It was Monday afternoon. I’d just finished my first day back at work after my mother’s funeral, four years after my father’s. Without thinking, I reached for my phone to call her on the drive home, the way I had almost every day for decades. Then I remembered. It was the most excruciatingly quiet drive I’d ever had. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Grief after losing both parents is inconceivable.
That drive was just the first of a hundred times I’d reach for the phone to share good news, vent about a rough day, tell her about a graduation, an engagement, a wedding – only to be met with silence on the other end of the habit. There’s no one to call. It’s like I’m an island.
About two days before one of my sons was to get married, something happened that was equal parts awkward and hilarious, the kind of story that writes itself, and my first instinct was to call her because she was the only one who would have laughed in exactly the right way. Every milestone, every accomplishment, every small piece of good news that used to belong to all of us. I’d start to dial before I remembered there was no one on the other end.
It’s the bad days that surprised me, though. The ordinary Tuesdays when something at work went sideways, or one of the kids needed advice I wasn’t sure I had, or I just wanted to ask the only question that really matters at this age: am I even adulting right? My mother would have known. Or she would have laughed and said she didn’t know either, which is almost the same thing.
Nobody warns you that the loss isn’t one big event. It’s a slow drip of small ones. A hundred tiny moments where you reach for someone who isn’t there anymore.
But here’s the part that haunts me.
My mother went through this. Exactly this. When her own parents died, she became an island too, and I didn’t see it. I was sad about losing my grandparents, of course, but I was in my own life, growing up, and I had no idea what was happening underneath my mother’s day-to-day. I didn’t know she was reaching for the phone. I didn’t know she was driving home in silence. I didn’t know she was wondering if she was adulting right, with no one left to ask.
I wish I had known. I wish I had called more, just to be on the other end of the line. I wish I had asked her how she was, really, and waited for a real answer. I wish I had understood that she wasn’t just my mother anymore. She was somebody’s daughter who didn’t have a mother either.
That’s one of my biggest regrets. And I think it might be the most Gen X regret there is. We were busy. We were in the thick of it with growing up, careers, kids, marriages, and our parents were quietly losing the generation above them while we weren’t really paying attention. By the time we look up, it’s our turn.
There were condolences and texts on the anniversary of their deaths for the first couple of years, but those fade away as people move on with their lives, and I understand that. It’s human nature. It’s not like I’m keeping track of every person’s death anniversary and sending messages year after year either. The quiet gets louder.
Each anniversary is sad, but cloaked with a smile to not drag everyone down around me. I don’t remind anyone, just like my mother didn’t remind me. But there are aunts and uncles, their siblings, who check in. And I’m glad that most people don’t understand these days. It means they have not gone through this pain yet. Just give us grace, because grief doesn’t come with a manual.
When I cook from my family recipe collection, I feel a mix of warmth and weight. Most of the time I save my family recipes for the holidays and special family events, so it’s bittersweet. And now here I am, preparing to make a batch of my Grandma’s spaghetti sauce, dipping french bread into the sauce to test its flavor, waiting for the tastes to meld for hours before the sauce is really ready.
Still, after all these years, I occasionally pick up my phone to call or text. I’m sure their numbers have been recycled by now. I wonder if a stranger would show grace for a few moments while I text my mom.
