It’s creeping up on the anniversary of Momma’s death. Fall has always been my favorite season. New crayons, school buses, football, fires, soup on the stove. It’s my birthday season, my anniversary season, and the birth of my first child season. It’s also now forever known as the season in which I lost my mom. An anticipated yet unexpected loss occurred during my most treasured time. I’m doing my best to embrace the beginning of autumn by bracing myself for the onslaught of emotion that is coming my way. Sadly, grief isn’t mine alone to navigate.
On Monday, I opened the door to one of my truest friends. She is grieving the sudden loss of her beloved father. The day he died, August 27th, would have been my parents’ 52nd wedding anniversary. That Monday, I was pushing back at grief all day, knowing that Daddy was visiting Momma’s graveside. Then, around 8:30pm, I received a call with news that my friend’s father had unexpectedly died. I was shocked and heartbroken. Angry that death had touched someone else that I loved, that she now knew this specific and raw truth.
On October 8th, on her father’s birthday, she gifted me and two other amazing women that share the same love for her a bracelet and letter of thanks for supporting her through her grief journey. The bracelet came with a card that interpreted the design: “The Path of Life captures the essence of life’s odyssey and, with its knotted design, reminds us that we are all connected.”
I feel so strongly about this sentiment. Her heart has broken wide open and she is in so much pain. She and I are connected in so many ways: motherhood, friendship, values; now the death of a parent. I’m overwhelmed with love for her, our group of friends, her mother, my father, my mother.
Looking at the bracelet and the knotted design, I see so much symbolism. Knotted is a perfect word to describe not only connections, but complicated connections. I want to remain knotted in this friendship I have for eternity. Grateful does not even begin to describe my feelings for this beautiful soul, the gift giver bearing so much loss and love simultaneously. As friends, we can be knotted, secure, and safe.
But, in truth we sometimes try so hard to untie a knot that we completely give up. Sometimes we ignore it and find a way to get around it. Sometimes we cut at it furiously until we ruin what we were trying to fix in the first place. Sometimes we tie knots to cause a problem. And just maybe, we furiously tie a knot because we don’t want to let go. This has me thinking about Momma and our continually changing relationship. I have been overly emotional these days about Daniel starting high school. For me, 9th grade was the year that my mother and I became the most distant. I know most would say that this is true of all teenagers, but it didn’t have to be and it isn’t always true. It just isn’t. She was who she was.
Momma didn’t have a close group of women to lean on for support at any time in her life that I was alive to witness. She just didn’t and she was happy, I suppose. She was not comfortable in close groups of women, that I did observe. I didn’t think about that as much growing up, but it absolutely affects my perception of my relationship now. She’s not here to tell her story and I won’t interpret it in depth for her for fear of failing her, but I never saw her lean on other women the way my friends and I lean on each other. We lift each other up. We support without being asked. We are knotted by a love and connection that does not need to be displayed on Facebook to be proven. We do not need to be thanked for mothering each other’s children, for listening, for picking up slack. But we do give thanks. Always. As in a knot, I believe that we are made stronger when we layer threads and pull tighter to those we trust.
We ARE all connected on the path of life at some point. I’m so grateful for the strong women in my path.
Just Say Momma 