Lovely Smile

I lost my beautiful mother to cancer in August 2020. It was a long 2-year journey of bravery, crying, laughing, joy, and so much palpable love. My journey with grief started before her passing, and is something I expect to carry with me throughout my entire life; grief is ongoing. 

You can have health care professionals tell you to prepare for a loved one’s passing. You can listen to all the grief podcasts, read all the books, articles, and research on grief. You can expect to feel sad and expect to miss them. But here’s the thing about grief, nothing can ever prepare you for a parent dying. 

Grief can be an isolating, painful, and lonely experience —especially as a young adult, because death is something many young adults feel invincible to, and haven’t experienced yet. As such, to any griever reading this, I hope to hold your hand as you continue life alongside grief and let you know you are not alone. To anyone else curious about grief, I ask you to just imagine losing a loved one by putting yourself in the shoes of someone mourning a death. It may seem so foreign, unnatural, and painful even, but it is my hope this article gets you to at least open the conversation about grief with yourself. 

Here is my story.

My mom was a beautiful, healthy woman. No family history of cancer and ultimately no causal explanation as to why she was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. Despite having a deadly cancer, she didn’t look sick. On the surface, she was so joyful, hopeful, loving, and always wore an ultra-radiating smile on her face. Though slowly and surely, her cancer continued to spread. As such, she fought. She fought so hard. 

I remember the day cancer took her smile away. I visited my family soon after my 20th birthday, and I instantly noticed something was different. Hesitant to acknowledge it myself at the time, I knew deep down she had lost her hope. She no longer wanted to fight for her life, because it is exhausting to fight against something so vicious. Instead, she was holding onto her lifefor us as we could never accept the idea of her stopping treatment —even if it made her feel terrible. Before I left my family to return to school, I told her to keep smiling. In fact, she was the person who taught me how important and powerful a smile is, so she needed to listen to her own words now. That was the last time I hugged her. I held her so tight and then left with false hope. I reassured her that she will overcome this, but deep down, I had let go of that hope too —  although I’d never vocalize it due to the guilt and shame following those thoughts. 

Soon after, she was under hospice care. Her body was too weak to continue treatment; I could not even fathom this. In the world of advanced modern medical technology and research, you’re telling me we are out of options? There is nothing medicine can do? Simultaneously, I couldn’t help but think, had we pushed her to this state? Are we to blame? My mom’s health reached a point of no return, a state of being so incredibly weak, too fragile, too vulnerable, and it’s a monstrous and invasively morbid thought to think I helped provoke this. She deserved better. Then came anger. At myself, my family, medicine, cancer. On the surface, I hold a smile, I hold her hand, I tell her it’s going to be okay and that I love her. 

This is when grief uninvitedly entered my life for good. Life at this point looked like caretaking —which is a full-time job on its own, even without the emotional turmoil of the patient being your mother —all while being a full-time student. Every day I was focused on just getting through the day, just surviving it because all of it is so painful. I feel nauseous thinking back to that part of my life because it was truly torturous. My thoughts tormented me and my feelings hurled out of me. Every “goodbye”, “good morning”, “good night”, “I love you” feels like the last one. The spirit feels crushed. This is not what life should be like. But the routine is never dared to be questioned, and naturally so. 

Arguments with family also start because someone looks after or nurses mom in a way you don't agree with. The stakes are high because everything feels like life or death. But then again, this is just background noise, because who really knows best? Certainly not me and certainly not them. It’s mom, she knows best. 

But then she passes. 

Numb.

Sure, there was sadness and sometimes anger, but there was also extreme and severe fatigue. I was always cold and I couldn’t remember anything. I felt dumber because I would be mid-sentence and forget what I was talking about. There were lots of hugs — some fake, and some really comforting. Lots of people looking at you with a sad face, lots of phrases like “I’m here for you”, and “I love you”. But at one point, those things come to an end, and all I’m left with are feelings of void. This is where I’m at now, trying to navigate life without mom. 

Some days are simply just so deeply sad. I wish she were alive to see me graduate, get married, achieve my dreams, and meet her grandchildren. Thinking about the future saddens me to know my mom isn’t physically going to be there. It’s not fair. It’s on those days that I especially feel her absence and I feel empty. Similarly, my grief can feel like anger. I’ve just lost the most important person in my life, this is all I can think about, and yet the world continues with or without her. I still have to run my errands, clean my apartment, get groceries, finish schoolwork, cook my meals, etc... But these tasks can feel monumental, especially when no one helps you. It feels like nobody cares about mom dying. Other days, it feels strange. I may not actively think about my grief daily, but I truly carry it with me every single day, and everywhere I go. This new baggage feels unnatural, like an ill-fitting shirt that I’m forced to wear all the time. Eventually, this discomfort expresses itself as random bursts of crying for something unrelated, but in reality, I just needed a catalyst to cry about mom without making it too obvious. Sometimes grieving feels like laughter, because I recall my fun moments with her, or I can imagine her reaction to something foolish I did. Sometimes it feels like pure vulnerability, like I’m facing an obstacle so overbearingly unmanageable. Sometimes it feels like stillness, where I could stare at a blank wall all day without a complaint, not necessarily being sad, or thinking, but rather just stillness. Lately, it feels like the air around me suddenly contains less oxygen, as if I’m trapped in a hypoxic chamber. Each breath feels inadequate, hoping the next will bring me enough oxygen. But it never does. Soon, I learn this is just my new normal. Living without my mom makes me feel like the air will never have the same amount of oxygen again. 

Grief is an incredibly painful experience, as if the pain will never leave. And perhaps it never will. I don’t think I will ever get over this loss, but rather I will move forward with it. Getting over something implies forgetting about it, or that bringing a certain memory to mind no longer elicits a significant reaction. That said, my mom gave me a love unmatched, and that is something I will never forget. It is that love that makes grieving so painful because, although I’ll never forget her, it’s also a sad reminder of what I no longer have. 

Further, I’ve come to learn that no two people grieve the same. No therapist, book, or support system can tell you how to grieve. Although those resources may provide aid during bereavement, it is ultimately something to navigate on your own because this journey is uniquely yours, just as your relationship with your deceased loved one is uniquely yours. This also reflects on howisolating grieving feels. Likewise, there is no right way to grieve. There are no stages or steps to grief. My reality shows, these stages of grief are felt all at once in sporadic order. Frankly, I view the stages of grief as western society’s attempt to compartmentalize the topic of grief in a linear fashion that is easy to understand. For truthfully, grieving is messy and difficult. There is no sugarcoating it.

Today and every day, I wear a necklace with an angel wing on it to represent an angel always watching over me: my beautiful mother. This reminds me that she is still always with me. I can feel her presence in me — in my habits, quirks, the way I talk, and everything else in between. For now, I want to let go of the pressure and pain I feel from grieving, and rather be kind to myself and keep trusting that I really do know what is best for me —even in times of disarray. Lastly, I hold onto the love I shared with my mom as being uniquely mine, and something that can never be taken away from me, dead or alive.