1:58 am. Staring at the clock, I try to recollect my thoughts. Where am I? What just happened? Oh, it was just a dream…

The daze after a dream. I’m sure we’ve all felt it at one time or another. But this feeling has occurred on a far more regular basis for me than I’d like. Too often in the past several years I’ve found myself waking from a dream, with a similar theme each time. It poses as reality, and shatters my hopes when I realize it was just a dream.

I have lost count of the number of dreams I’ve had about my mother since she died. These dreams are often the same: I’m usually either telling her goodbye, or know I soon will be. But there is still a deceptive hope that comes with those dreams. I always wake up thinking she is still alive, at least. It’s a crushing thing to realize that isn’t so. These dreams make me feel like I could just pick up a phone and call her, or that she has gone a way for a little while and I’ll see her again soon.

Sometimes these dreams cause me to wake up and think that everything was a dream, and that somehow I just imagined that my mom had cancer, and died. My hopes, again, are dashed when I realize it isn’t that way. She did die, and the dream only makes that reality hurt even more. It’s as though I have to “lose” her all over again.

I had heard people who had lost loved ones say that they thought about them every day. I always wondered how that was possible. Even though I had faced grieving before with other family members, that didn’t seem to be true. Sooner or later it just wouldn’t be something that was a daily part of my life. With my mother’s death, I can honestly say that not a day has passed that she somehow hasn’t been on my mind. Maybe not at the forefront of my thinking, but somehow the pain of that loss has never released its grip. Sometimes all it takes is a word or a phrase, a memory, a question, or a dream.

I have not written on grief lately, mostly because I have not had much to say. This is not to say that grieving has ceased to be a part of my life. The pain of loss is a constant friend and bitter reminder of the events of the past two years of my life.

This “year two” thing has been an interesting mixed bag as far as grieving goes. On the one hand, it is much easier to walk about life when there aren’t so many “firsts.” I still miss mom, but the pain of that loss is not as fresh in my life. And in some senses, this year so far has been really enjoyable.

The flip side is that most people around my, outside of my family, no longer have the freshness of my loss in mind either. Not that I would expect them to, of course. But it is hard when this is still a very real part of my daily life. Not a day goes by without thinking about her. Not a day. And that is kind of hard to explain to people. I don’t think people expect me to “move on” I think they just don’t think about it.

Navigating life after the death of someone close is unlike anything I have ever experienced. It has challenged me, hurt me, grown me, and transformed me. I can say without hesitation that I am a different person than I was before my mom became sick. Hopefully different for the better.

The grieving process is, I don’t think, a static process. Nor is it something that I think has a definitive ending point. I will always morn the absence of my mother from my life. Always. Thus it may be fair to say that I will be grieving for the rest of my life. The sting of that absence may not be as strong as it is now, but the wound will always be there in some form. It may become a rather distant memory, but the memory will always be there. And her memory will never be distant. There are few people on this earth who can claim to have truly seen you grow up, starting from day one. Losing a person who has that insight is devastating, but also not something that you ever forget.

So I keep going. Grieving each day as needed. Living life as best I can. Enjoying the beauty around me. Trusting in a faithful God. Hoping for a joyful reunion today with all those that have gone before me.

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

December 10 marks one year since my mother passed away. I know we as humans often talk about how quickly time flies, but really, one year already? I find that hard to believe, and perhaps even hard to accept.

I know a date passing does little to really change the grief process. But still, it is a pretty big deal. Thanksgiving was the last “first” holiday. Christmas will kind of be a first, but not really. December 10 is the last “first”. That side of things is nice, and welcomed even. Yet…

In some ways, I really don’t want that date to come. I guess with time being under one year, mom still feels close in some ways. December 8 will mark one year from the last time I spoke to her. It doesn’t feel too bad to say you talked with her less that a year ago. More than a year? That starts to feel like history. And I’m not ready for it to be history.

I wish heaven had a “call-a-year” policy. I wish I could catch up every now and then with mom. As a Christian, and believing in an afterlife, there is a sense in which death really does feel like a temporary thing. In fact, it seems so temporary that I forget at times it does mean I have to die as well before I see her again. It feels as though she ought to be able to just call every now and then.

Looking back at the year, conversations are definitely what I miss the most. You never fully appreciate how much you enjoy having a “goto” person for different things until they are gone. There are still plenty of people to share my life with. Dad and brother, family and friends. But even so, I want to talk to her. I want to tell her about my life. My grad school craziness. My friends. The good things about the semester. The not so great things about the semester. The times I laughed, and the times I hurt. She filled a place in my life that no one else ever will, and that is hard to lose.

It seems like only yesterday that I sat with my mother on a sunny Arizona day talking about life. Her last words to me were “We’ve had lots of good conversations, lots of good conversations.” So true, mother so true. But never something you want to see come to an end, either.

Don’t take people for granted. I know we hear it a lot. And I’ll probably sound like a broken record for saying it again. But I hope if you take nothing else away from my story, you will appreciate the people in your life more. If you haven’t lost someone close, the idea of death can seem distant and unreal. But, trust me, it can knock at your door when you least expect it.

Amazing what can change in a year, isn’t it?

I started the day with a small bowl of yogurt. A seemingly insignificant thing, right? But this year, nothing is really insignificant as it was before. The death of my mother changed what it means to live a normal life. I can’t live normally anymore. Little things remind me of her every day. You never know where a little reminder of her, or her death, might be. It might be on a yogurt lid.

I never really believed it when people said “I think of her” everyday, talking about a lost loved one. Everyday, really? How is that even possible? My friends, I am here to tell you, you do. If you haven’t “lost” someone close, this is one of those areas you probably can’t really, at least fully, appreciate. I have thought of my mother every day since she died. Every day. And it may start with something even as simple as a yogurt lid.

You may have grown tired of my return to the yogurt lid. Why, you ask, is a yogurt lid a reminder of my mother? Quite simple really. Several major brands will donate to Breast Cancer research for every lid returned, or by entering a code in from a lid. While I think this is great, it also strikes really close to home for me.
Breast Cancer killed my mother.

See what I mean? I cannot escape. Every day, something reminds me. Yogurt lids, they remind me.

But the yogurt lids are more than just a reminder because of some text printed on them. I feel a bit more passionately about actually returning my lids now than I did before. I was struck today with the thought that, if a cure had already been found, my mother would be alive today. Think about that. Alive today. What I wouldn’t give for that. I’d certainly trade in a few yogurt lids.