Mother's Day Kind of Sucks
THIS IS PART OF MAY’S “OUR PUBLIC MEMORY” PIES SPIRITUAL PRACTICE ON SHARING OUR STORIES. IF YOU MISSED THIS NEWSLETTER, READ IT HERE.
No matter what your relationship to the word “mother” is, we want to hear from you. Share your stories about mothering and you’ll be entered into a random drawing to win some Lovegoodness soap. Plus, your story could be shared on our social media during the month of May. Feel free to remain anonymous if you choose. For some inspiration, some of our staff and leadership team shared their stories.
Read Williesha’s and Mich’s stories too.
My name is Emily Terrana and I am Julie's daughter.
When people die, we tend to paint their lives in our memories in only the bright, happy colors of who they were and leave all of the shades of grey out of the picture. I don't want to do that. My mother Julie was kind, caring, loving and silly. She could also be a huge bitch who was stubborn and depressed most of her life. She took care of my children so I could work, and she could be super distant and didn't say "I love you" very often. My mother was messy and complex, as all of us are, but I loved her all the same.
When my mother was first diagnosed with cancer, I remember going to the hospital with my sister and my child Oliver who was only 5 at the time. We sat next to her in her hospital bed, the baby on my lap, and she broke the news. Those three words shook me to my core--"I have cancer". I wanted to scream, to cry, to go and cuss out her doctors and anyone else I could get my hands on. The moment those words passed her lips, she looked me straight in my eye and said "don't you dare cry in front of that baby". My sister had already left the room in tears at that point, wailing in the arms of our father in the hallway, but I did as I was told.
I didn't cry, I didn't let any emotion show, and began to ask logical follow up questions so we could make a plan on what to do next. It wasn't until Oliver was distracted by the Easy Bake Oven game on her phone that I was able to step away, lock myself in the bathroom and let it all out. My mother was sick for three months and I did as I was told for much longer than that. Really, she had been sick for years, but because she was fat, smoked cigarettes and drank diet pop, no one believed her when she said she wasn't feeling well; she was doing as she was told too.
I am the oldest of my siblings; the eldest girl who was trained since she was very young to be totally prepared for moments like this. I was taught as my mother was taught as her mother was taught as her mother was taught to keep our emotions in a little box so that we could get shit done. So that we could make sure everything happened as it needed to while tending to those who were falling apart around us. To keep the coffee hot, coordinate meals, clean for company while our loved ones were dying in the next room, get the photos ready for the wake and plan the funeral mass in a little notebook in between cleaning up vomit and dispensing morphine. I come from a long line of strong women who do what they were told to do.
In those three months I spent more time with my mom than I ever had before. We found moments of joy and laughter when she was hooked up to IV drips and chemo ports. We talked about things that were now my responsibility to know like how much dill to really put in the tuna macaroni salad and family ancestry lines and stories. I listened to her wish out loud that she could have gone to Hawaii, to San Diego to see the orangutans, to have had the courage to tell my very Catholic dad that she wanted to be a witch; all of the things that cancer was stealing from her.
I was at her side in countless emergency rooms, hospital beds, doctors appointments, taking in information together and figuring out how we'd tell this hard news to our family without hurting them too much. I yelled at nurses and calmed down aunts and cousins when things just weren't getting better. I held, like a vault, the things she said that no one else could handle. I held, I maintained, I did as I was supposed to.
The morning that my mom died I had a new set of tasks. I jetted over to my parents’ house to see her one last time before she was pumped with formaldehyde and caked with makeup, taking a moment to feel it all. Then, back to work. To make the phone calls to my aunts and uncles, to make the coffee for the people who were starting to arrive, to call the funeral home to set up an appointment and to somehow find time to find my kid a suit for what was to come next. I did as I was supposed to that week of formal mourning. I wasn't stoic but I was in control. I had it all under control as everything was ripped out from underneath us.
My mother died on April 30th, 2018. She was 54 years old. She died just as her favorite flowers began to spring up from the cold earth--daffodils. She died under the light of the full moon in Scorpio; the moon of death, transformation, letting go. She died with crystals I snuck under her pillow, facing the window that overlooked the grown out railroad tracks where deer would gather to send her home. She died, and I did as I was told.
I'm an organizer for environmental justice in Buffalo, NY. I channeled my grief for a long time into a righteous rage at the corporations that we lived next to for decades who filled our lungs with benzene and other toxic chemicals who took root in our cells so they would multiply and not ever stop. The summer after my mother passed, a well known polluter in our community was brought back to federal court on charges that they had violated their probation. My comrades at Clean Air and I sat to bear witness in every court appearance, making our anger and grief known to all. We sat and listened to corporate lawyers mow over our stories, our experiences, the science we know to be as true as the sun is warm to protect their perceived right to make money off of our health and joy.
We cried together and held each other up—we didn't do as we were told and made sure everyone saw us. We yelled and called people out, we brought people together to take action, we made offensive puppets of CEOs and agency heads and we made the NYSDEC Commissioner sit in front of an altar we built for all of those who had died due to their lack of action to save our lives. We made our grief, our rage, known and we used its power to change the world.
“I’m not done grieving my mother. I’m not done being so angry I could cause an earthquake; so sad I could flood the rivers over their banks. ”
It has been four years since she passed now, four Mothers Days without my mother. Four years of visiting the cemetery on this day instead of going out for bottomless mimosa brunch with her. Four years of wishing I could be the bright and sunny mama to my kids who bring me breakfast in bed and homemade cards without feeling a guilty rage at them that they still have a mom, and I don't.
I don't have any kind of brilliant grief advice or wisdom to share other than that the grief keeps going. The grief isn't linear and it's not something that can be controlled--it doesn't do as it's told. Grief pops up in the airport and at the perfume counter at JCPenney and on a random Tuesday in September. It just...is.
I gave the eulogy at my mother's funeral and shared this Spell for Grief and Letting Go by adrienne maree brown. I hope that today, if you're grieving, it can be something soft and warm to hold on to for a while. I hope that you, like me, can start to let go of doing what we're told and instead, do what needs to be done.