what I didn’t eat monday, march 27th: my mom’s birthday

grief is fucking weird. I mean, it hit hard in the days/weeks/months when my mom first left the earth, but since then, it’s been a real fuckin creeper. you’re staring at a cardinal, thinking how maybe it’s your mom because people say stupid shit like that to feel better about their dead people, in hopes they are still surrounding them — but you realize the cardinal is regally red so it's a male and would your mom be a male cardinal? you think not. (also please tell me why the male creatures are often given more elaborate beauty features. whyyyyyyy I will die angry over this)

okay but who cares; there are the days you smile at a cardinal and feel like you know how to let go of things you have been forced to let go of and then there are the days that your body freezes in grief and you drop your phone in the Walgreens lotion aisle (don’t buy your lotion there; almost none of it is cruelty free) because you touch a bottle and picture her there — in that product heaven that is Walgreens — and you wonder why in fuck’s name you wouldn’t get to have a mom anymore. who cares if you were mean to her a lot? who cares if she didn’t love you in ways you wanted. it was still you and her — and now it’s just you — standing here on the earth morphing into her and she’s not even around to admire your hands turning into hers.

monday was her birthday. you’ve talked about this before but what is cute is that you didn’t know when her birthday was when she was alive. you only know it now because she died, (you piece of shit.)

on monday, you woke up and you knew it was her birthday and that was all. the year after she died, you bought an incredible thrift store dress (she taught you how to thrift your ass off) on her birthday and walked around in the rain and mourned the shit out of all the shit you didn’t do right with her while she was here. and it’s only been four years but apparently you get it now. she’s gone. her birthday came in and out without so much as a single tear.

a friend of yours texted you monday morning, to say she was thinking of you. you liked that she did. but you felt nothing.

the two girls you grew up alongside, to whom your mom was something like another mom — texted, too. they celebrated her birthday with coffee and ice cream and were considering cake. your sister had cake. you tried to use the correct emojis and iphone reactions to show that you cared about a) her b) them c) what they were trying to relay to you — their immense care — but you felt nothing.

you felt like a piece of shit. again.

you had a list of questions you meant to ask her a few weeks before she suddenly died. you were ready. to find out who made you. and why. if she meant to.

but you waited it out and look what happened, you piece of shit. (don’t worry; I’ll call my therapist tomorrow. just kidding my therapist broke up with me and therapy is too expensive.)

**

when you went to bed on monday, you kept wondering why — after the texts arrived — you didn’t at least find a piece of her favorite candy and eat it. or go buy an ice cream cake. why you didn’t do something to celebrate her birthday. you always say that if you suddenly disappear, all you ask is that people keep you alive. and there you were, refusing to let her live in your heart and your mouth and your body on the day that commemorated when she first landed here.

the rituals we make around grief matter. loving someone while they are here matters. loving them after they are gone matters. loving matters. love matters.

I don’t know if she’s ever shown up as a goddman male cardinal, perched outside my front window or flying alongside me as I walk, but I hope she has. I hope she has seen my hands. my dark brown eyes that are hers. I hope she sees me still here, loving her, mourning her, celebrating her, becoming her.

on March 27th of next year, I’m going to eat cake.