A few months ago, I moved across the country. And that was less than a year after landing myself over 1,000 miles away from where I’d been living. Now, I’m thinking about doing it all over again. Most 20-somethings move. This isn’t news. But unlike many of my fellow millennials—including my partner—I’ve never been able to fit my entire life in the back of my car.
My mother died when I was 11 years old. And despite being terminally ill for months prior to her passing, her death came with many fires. Most of which her living will couldn’t put out. In which she left everything she owned to me.
How many sixth graders do you know in possession of an eight-person dining room table set? Or a box of spices taller than them? Yes, the movers packed literally everything in the apartment. They even left the paper towel in its holder and placed all the CVS receipts into cardboard boxes.
I spent the summer of 2014 going through my mother’s life. All of which somehow fit into a singular storage unit.
I cried in that metal tin box. I made out with my high school love in that 75-square-foot coffin. I grieved so loud once the manager asked me to leave, but not before placing two plastic water bottles outside the door. Crying in summer is dehydrating after all.
Now I’m 28 and thinking about moving to the West Coast. And I’m seriously considering placing everything back in storage for the first time since I pulled it all out. I hired a third-party moving service for my first long-distance move. And they not only lost all of my irreplaceable belongings for weeks on end, but they also damaged said irreplaceable priceless items.
For my most recent trek back to New England, I hired a prominent moving company (one which I’m fairly certain I’m not legally allowed to name). So, let’s call them CASE. And CASE not only lost my entire—well—case, they also damaged my property upon delivering it. After ripping nearly 30% of the siding off my apartment building, they gave me a whopping 10% refund. Needless to say, your girl is not a luck magnet when it comes to moving companies.
Hence the storage unit dilemma. My partner and I recently fought about the cost of our potential move. Where he blurted, “why don’t you leave her furniture with your dad or ask one of your cousins to keep it for you?” This gave me pause. Because how could he not know that I want nothing more than to have someone who would cherish my mother’s belongings the way I do?
See, my parents divorced when I was just a year old. So there wasn’t much grieving to be done for my father. And she wasn’t in my brother’s life post their divorce. He’s fully disabled, with the brain capacity of a two-year-old. So there isn’t a lot of lively therapeutic processing happening about the meaning of her passing between him and me. And my mother’s nieces and nephews live on the West Coast already. Besides, they truly don’t carry her corpse with them on a daily the way I have these past 16 years. Her brother doesn’t speak to me and her mother is—to put it kindly—a train wreck. And rightfully so. Same girl.
That leaves me. I’m usually alone on her death anniversary. I never know what to do on her birthday. I was so little when she passed. And so many of my memories revolve around her illness more than they do around her. My emotional soulmate who is a member of the Dead Mom’s Club likes to remind me that not everything I write needs to be about my mother’s corpse. But I’m not sure there is a me without her.
I’ve said for as long as I can remember that a piece of me died when she did.
And I mean that. But what if all of me actually died? What if the entire life I could have lived—the one where my mom didn’t lose her battle with cancer—happened? Would the dresser and nightstand she hand-painted be in my room in her apartment instead of beside me right now? Would she have gotten rid of the multi-print armchair I’ve managed to find a place for in all of my apartments?
Sometimes I think about everything I’d give to have her back. And when I’m in a really dark space, I think about what I’d give to have someone to grieve with: a kidney, all the money in my bank account, the chance to see Taylor Swift live again. It took me years in therapy to realize that I had a valid reason to be destroyed from the inside out. It’s clear how much my father’s family didn’t care for my mother. She, much like me, wasn’t their cup of tea.
We’re a lot, she and I. We’re the kind of people you love to invite to a party but maybe don’t have the energy to handle early in the morning before your cup of coffee. I think if she were alive today, she’d be more than my best friend. I think she’d be my compass. And after living in a world where she’s been dead longer than she was alive for my life, I sometimes truly struggle to find reasons to get out of bed.
And I know what you’re going to say, she’d want me to try. She’d want me to go on living. But sometimes all I want is the chance to walk into an apartment that’s filled exclusively with furniture I picked out for myself, instead of the remnants of her life she left for me to sort through. Except, I lost out on so much with her. I can’t imagine trading the little I do have for something as foolish as the IKEA dresser I’ve had my eye on. Especially when what I really want is for someone to be as connected to this loss as I am. Instead, I’ve got a blinking cursor on an otherwise empty Microsoft Word document always waiting for me.
Grief, like almost all things in this burning hellhole of a country, is horribly mishandled.
Not only do we overwhelm those closest to the loss with a never-ending list of questions. Funeral or wake? Casket or cremation? Church service or spiritual ceremony? But we force those grieving the heaviest to host a literal party for those inevitably not holding this pain as closely to their hearts and souls.
Then, usually a week or two after this devastating death, those in attendance disappear. They return to business as usual. And we’re left in total ruins, wondering if the calluses on our ankles from the shitty heels we never wanted to wear to the even shittier party-not-party are going to scar, leaving a physical reminder of this unforgettable pain.
My mother’s death undeniably ruined me. But it has also been the loneliest heartbreak to walk through.
Because, when you get heartbroken, and just enough time has passed that you no longer want to keep bringing it up to your closest friends for fear of being annoying, and all your favourite artists are releasing love songs instead of breakup anthems, you can take comfort knowing that it will pass. That you’re not the first person or the last person to be sitting in tears on the bathroom floor. You will fall in love again. Even if that truth feels next to impossible. Deep down, you know your brain will stop remembering their number. You’ll lose interest in stalking their Spotify and Venmo accounts. Heartbreak is mendable. But ruining? That stays with you.
And I’ve figured enough out in therapy to somewhat grasp why my deepest romantic heartbreak and I have a cat-and-mouse pattern. Every six months or so, one of us reaches out despite our numbers being blocked. And this most recent time, he was the one to text first. And while both of his parents are still walking amongst us, I think him having a phone number my subconscious refuses to forget is directly linked to my mother’s corpse.
You see, she died in 2006. I barely had my first cell phone, which means her number is not saved in my current contacts. There are no voicemails she left me or videos we made together. And the perfume she wore has since been discontinued. Whereas the aforementioned individual–who I can’t even call an ex seeing as how we never truly dated–is alive and somewhat well. He is a person who has the power to respond to me. Whereas the many psychics and mediums I’ve seen over the years have left me with even more questions that only my mother can answer.
And despite falling in love with someone who would never, even on his worst day, treat me the way my not even an ex did on his best, I am still fully aware that there is no second mother for me to move on to.
I won’t fall into a mother-daughter bond with another woman down the road.
Do I have an undeniable female support system in my life? Yes. But will they ever replace the emptiness I feel without my mother here? No. And those I know who are also motherless don’t seem as devastated as me. And, let me be clear, it’s not a contest. But are they all lying to show face? Or am I truly missing the chapter between feeling broken forever and moving on? I’d really like to know.
My partner has both his parents. Many of the humans in my world do too. And while living parents are allowed to suck or oftentimes fall short, I can’t help but feel jealous that they still have a phone number to call. They have an address in which half of their genes reside. I have a brown plastic box the crematorium sent her ashes in and fuzzy memories that only continue to fade with the passing of years.
I can never get more time with her or force the memories to return. So how can I even consider parting ways with her belongings? With the few ashes I have left of the housefire I wish took me along with her. I’m genuinely asking here. Because I’ve written about it for a decade plus now. I’ve sat in therapy for twice as long as that and read every grief book I could find. And I still wake up feeling like she died twelve hours ago. And I become a shell of myself all over again. Then I wonder if I’m always this empty and the in-between is me faking it so well that I’ve even learned to fool myself.
That’s not an ending. I know this. But I haven’t found the answers I’m looking for yet. And until I do, I can’t wrap this essay up in a bow and call it finished. So this will have to do for now.
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Written by Tori Muzyk
Illustrated by Francesca Mariama
