It’s my birthday and the woman who gave birth to me died. 

 

I know I’m not the first person whose mum died. I know countless others have experienced this specific kind of grief. We all will, sooner or later. Some of them had as close of a relationship with their mums as I did. Some didn’t. Some had terrible or complicated relationships, and that’s a whole other kind of grief.

 

All I know is my own and it’s fucking heavy. I lug it around all day and it stays with me at night. 

 

Nobody tells you about that. How the grief rips through your body. It’s physical, painful. You wonder if you’re ever going to get through a day without crying a hundred times. 

 

*****

 

I replay specific moments. When I held her hand as they took her for the first radiation treatment. (The treatments that did nothing because it was already too late. She had less than two weeks left.) But she smiled and said, “Don’t be scared. It’s okay.”

 

When she asked me to cut and file her nails in the hospital, she said, “We’ll only have to do it this once.” I pretended I didn’t know what she meant.

 

The last time she made me macaroni pie and curry chicken. 

 

The last time we stayed up late talking. I asked her questions I’d been wanting to ask for years. Things about her youth, our family’s history. She talked for a long time. Ten months later, she was gone. 

​

*****

 

There were a couple of years in my early 20s when we barely spoke. My parents moved back to the Caribbean. I felt abandoned. She felt untethered and purposeless. Neither of us knew how to articulate or navigate those feelings. Years later, she expressed regret. She was the parent, she said. But age gives you a new perspective on the past and I told her it was okay. It was a blip. And it was. 

 

*****

 

We talked every weekend. She would answer the phone and exclaim, “Dude! How you do?” 

“I do fine, how do you do?” 

“I do fine too.” 

 

It was our routine, our schtick. I’ll never get to do that again. 

 

****

 

It’s my birthday, but I won’t hear her voice. I won’t get a card with her handwriting. 

 

I’m angry about that. Angry that it’s over and all there are now are Last Times. 

 

My therapist says it’s all normal and I know she’s right. Everyone I know who has lost a parent says it. “You have to feel it. You have to go through it.” I always wonder how anyone could manage to  avoid it. 

 

It’s my birthday and the woman who gave birth to me died.