Waiting…

So baby girl is 4 days late so far, though it feels like so much more since I was told to be ready ahead of the due date.  She did not come early though, and when the due date finally arrived it was pretty anti-climactic.  The last few weeks, but especially the last week were strange. I would wake up every day not knowing if that day would be “the day”. Similarly, I would make plans, not knowing if I would be able to keep them or not.  I suppose we never really know what’s around the corner, but these past few weeks have been especially suspenseful. I have found that in the midst of this, I have started to feel a little more overwhelmed by the world. Reading the news has affected me in a way that it never did before. I really feel like I can’t handle hearing too much news, or too much bad news, at once. This was never a problem for me. I have also found myself overwhelmed by technology and needing to take a lot more breaks from my phone than I used to. I’m not sure if this will be a permanent change, or something that is just temporary during this time, but nonetheless, it has been interesting to observe this change.

More than anything else though, these past few weeks have been strange because they have really been reminding me of the last big event I experienced: the loss of my mother.  In the days and weeks leading up to my mother’s going to heaven I felt many of the same emotions that I have felt lately.  To be clear, those days were amongst the saddest and hardest of my life, while these days are of course amongst the happiest. Nonetheless, it is interesting how the feelings of suspense and uncertainty have presented themselves in the same way in these two polar opposite life events.  In the days leading up to my mom’s passing, I went to bed not knowing if my life would be changing in a major way the next day. My mind could not comprehend how life would possibly go on without my mom and every minute of every day felt so precious. Now, I feel similar emotions, but in the opposite way. Again, I go to bed wondering if I will be meeting my baby girl the next day. And again, my mind is just not able to wrap itself around this life change. Losing a mom and gaining a daughter are just two things that you really cannot imagine until they happen. And even then, they are still both very hard to understand fully.

I think the experience of loosing my mother has made the pregnancy journey that much more interesting because I feel like I am experiencing it all over again — but in reverse.  In the first instance, I slowly said goodbye to the most influential person in my life, as well as to the role in life that I played as her daughter. I slowly learned to adapt to life without her physically here. And now, in the second instance, through this pregnancy, I slowly started preparing to meet a person who will soon play a very central part in my life, and when she arrives, I will learn to adapt to a life with her physically here. Again, I will need to learn to adapt to a whole new role in life; that of a mother.

The circle of life kind of amazes me.

Remembering Mom – 1 year anniversary

Today marks one year since my mom’s soul left this world and entered another. A lot of people have been asking me how I feel so here are a few of my thoughts:

In a lot of ways, today feels no different than any other day. I think of my mom daily. In fact, I think about her several times a day, and as I told my husband not too long ago, I feel as though she is a constant background to my thoughts. She is always on my mind, whether I am thinking about something in specific or whether I am just missing her presence. I plan on writing a separate post on the things I learned about how to support someone through grief, and one thing that I will include, is that you never need to worry about bringing up someone’s loss for fear of “reminding them” and making them sad. When you lose someone special, they are always on your mind, whether people bring up the topic or not.

At the same time, today does feel like a special day to me. And that’s because it marks the day my life changed in a very big way. In the same way that my birthday and the birthdays of my friends and family will always be special days, February 4th will now forever be special to us, and will be a day that we will always set apart to collectively and intentionally remember mom. I tried to think about what my mom would want us to do today, and all I could really think was that she would want us to spend time together as a family, strengthening our relationships. This is one wish that she spoke of often during her last few years, and one that I plan to honour.

In my culture, as in many others, the first year is the official “grieving period”. It doesn’t mean that the grieving ends after a year, but just that the first year is a very special one. We hold a commemoration 40 days after the day of death, and then another one on the one year mark. There is even a special saying that you say to those grieving on the days of those commemorations. Translated to English it means “May you continue to live and remember”. I think that is a beautiful saying, and in general, I have found these cultural traditions to be a huge help throughout this first year when everything seems new and foreign and nothing else really makes sense. Sometimes, it’s nice to have some guidelines that take a little bit of pressure of decision making.

In this last year, I also struggled between finding the balance between grieving and going on with my life. Does grieving mean that you are not supposed to feel any joy? Or should I think that mom would want us to continue to be happy and go on with our lives as much as possible? I struggled with this question a few times over the course of this year: on my 30th birthday, at Christmas, and just recently, when I learned my husband and I were expecting a new baby(!). The answer hasn’t been fully answered in my mind, but I have learned that it is impossible to stay in a permanent state of grief. Even if you try, life passes by, other people get sick and pass on, and if you don’t move beyond yourself and your sadness, you will regret celebrating all the joys that life does bring our way. You will also regret honouring the life that is around you, because it too will one day end, and you will have been too busy stuck in your own little world. So – with that, I’ve strived to find a sense of balance between grieving my mother’s loss and trying to enjoy the life around me at the same time. It’s a tough balance I tell you.

Finally, one thing that has brought me peace this entire year has been the thought that a person’s memory really does not end with their earthly death. My mother has truly left us with so much. She has planted in me more than I could describe here, and it brings me so much comfort to know that that will never die.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading, and for being along on this journey with me.

Community

Shortly after my mom passed away, I came across this blog post that someone I knew had written about my mom – and about my broader community in Toronto.  Since that time, I have been wanting to share it with you.  I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of community in the past few years.  I haven’t looked into it, but I bet there are a million studies out there discussing the popular idea and oft quoted proverb that it takes “a village to raise a child”.  I know it is true because I am a product of it.  As I’ve mentioned before, I always find it so difficult to decide what city to live in. Each one I’ve lived has its own unique features that I love.  I must say though that one thing that constantly draws me back to where I grew up, is the wonderful extended family that has developed around me over the years.  I was reminded of this the week my mom passed away when my family and I were so blessed to have been surrounded by so much love.  Anyhow, please enjoy your read, written by a lovely woman who a few months before me lost her wonderful mom as well.

mothers

I am sure some of you will be able to relate to the kind of extended family i am about to describe. My parents immigrated from Egypt in the late 60s with a handful of other Coptic Egyptians. It was not long after that they along with a priest from Egypt formed the first Coptic Orthodox Church in North America…meeting in a small chapel on the second floor of a church that is still nestled behind the Eaton Center in downtown Toronto. Slowly more friends and families immigrated and congregated…and so, by the time I was born in the late 70s I was born into a community that was tightly knit by its roots of the home they left, the experience of immigration to North America and by their deep faith.

I was born into an extended family that knew me from the moment i came to be until this moment today. Going to church every Sunday throughout my upbringing i would see the same familiar faces, bond with the same friends i had since before i was consciousness of my own being and sense the many people loving me and watching over me and caring for me. Although i have been absent from Toronto throughout much of my 20s and into my 30s these connections were always there and this family would always care for me in my absence. They knew when i was overseas teaching in Southeast Asia, they knew when i was working in Yemen, they knew when I was living out East and through conversation with my parents were always thinking of and loving me.
The gift of this community and family is that it meant there were so many mother mothering each child. So many caring, smart, intuitive, passionate, warm mothers looking out for this flock of Egyptian youth making their way through an upbringing quite different than their own. We were all so lucky to have these moms lovings us in all directions…innately enveloping us.

And so, another such mother, just like my mom, passed away this weekend. It is not that i spoke with her very often but i knew she loved me and cared for me and always asked about me. She visited us in the hospital frequently when mom was sick. And she too has daughters who adore her because there is nothing not to adore. And she too has a congregation of children who grew up with her love wrapped round them.

It is the nature of life. It is inevitable. Our mothers are being taken. And it is juxtaposed by new mothers being given. Many of my Egyptian friends have children but it is only in the past couple of years and particularly this last year and in the coming months that so many of my dear friends from all different nooks of my life have become or are to become mothers. It is such an amazing time to see these sisters of mine become transformed…to see them born as moms.

And so, as always it is strange to feel as though i am watching something unfold beyond myself, beyond any of us. To see this great shift in life take form, where it feels as though changes are being made in order for new spaces to be created, where one things is making room for another without particular question or reason or qualifying manner as good or bad but rather simply being.

And so, much gratitude to mothers for all they have done and all they will do. To the moms that have mothered for so long and to those that are in their first moments. What a precious gift to be a mom and to be mothered be it by one or many.

8 minutes

I recently checked out the movie “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”.  Have you seen it?  It is about a little boy who loses his dad on 9/11 and his journey through the grief that follows.  Near the beginning of the movie, he made what I thought to be an excellent analogy.  He said that if the sun were to explode, it would take us 8 minutes to notice because that is how long it would take for the light and heat to go away (based on the speed at which light travels).  The boy in the movie says that after his dad passed away, he still felt as though he was in that 8 minute period in which he still felt his dad’s light and heat so to speak.  He finds a key that belonged to his dad and spends most of the movie searching for the lock for the key.  He says that he feels that finding this lock would help him to extend his eight minutes with his dad.

This analogy really helps put into words a lot of what I have been feeling since my mom’s passing.  A few weeks ago I wrote about how I still feel her presence in our home through all the little touches that she left behind.  Now that I think about it, I realise that this is me in my 8 minutes.  Like the little boy in the movie, I fear what comes after 8 minutes and I find myself trying to elongate it as much as I can.  There are a few things in my mother’s belongings that I have wanted to go through and look at, but have decided instead to “save” them for later, because I feel as though that will draw out my 8 minutes with her a little longer.

Without spoiling the movie for you, the boy does end off by saying that he never thought that he would be able to live without his father, and that making it to the end of the 8 minutes taught him that he could and would survive.  Though I don’t think I have quite reached the end of my 8 minutes, this experience has indeed been life changing for me.  There are people who say that life can be described as “life before losing a parent” and “life after losing a parent”.  I think that is such an accurate description.  Life will never be the same, but life will continue.  This I now know.

Valuable Lessons Learned

Before my mom passed away, I had the honour of spending a diffucult yet wonderful and memorable ten days with her.  I am still processing everything I thought, saw, and experienced during that time.  One of those events is a visit paid to my family by a very lovely and kind palliative care doctor.  Up to this point, I have been fortunate enough not to have had very much interaction with the health care system.  However, during the time I spent at home with my mom, I got a small glimpse into her relationship with the health care system, both good and bad.  I think that this particular visit was probably one of the best experiences she has had with the system.  This doctor provided her not only with medical care and attention, but with the emotional support that one needs as they prepare to end their life on this earth.  The doctor gave my mom some advice that I know I will remember for a long time to come.  Here’s what he said:

1. You are not a burden until they say you are.

For whatever reason, my mom felt like she was a burden on us while she was sick.  No matter how much we told her that we wanted to take care of her, she just kept repeating it.  She even mentioned it to the doctor when he came to see her.  I loved what he said in response.  It was so powerful for an external party to tell her that she was not the one who could decide whether she was a burden on us: we were.

2. You cannot deny them the righ to take care of you.

To follow up with the above piece of advice, the doctor also asked my mom if we were a burden on her while we were growing up, or when we got would get sick.  She answered “Never! It was a joy to take care of them!”.  He then very wisely said “well then, in the same way that you had that right to take care of them, you cannot take away their right to take care of you”.  I had never thought of caring for someone as a right, but I really liked the way he put it.  It was a privilege to take care of her. One that I will always remember.  I’m glad that was not taken away from me.

3.  Even though the definition of your quality of life will change, you can still have quality of life.

This one was particularly special.  It’s true.  When one is sick, everything changes.  Answers to questions like “how are you?” or “how is your mom doing” start to become very relative.  The answer “good” has a very different meaning than it does coming from someone else.  In the same way, how one defines good quality of life must also change.  The doctor said that even if one could only lie down with their eyes closed on a bed, they could still have quality of life simply by having a close relative by their side.

4.  You are not the only one suffering. This cancer belongs to this entire family, and everyone is suffering; albeit very differenly than you are.

This was another good one.  People do not realize that in the same way couple’s say “we’re pregnant”, families can be thought of saying “we have cancer”.  Though the family physically does not have the illness just as the husband does not physically experience pregnancy, the other members of the family are still very much affected, and the doctor was right to point out that we were all suffering.  During my mom’s illness, I sometimes felt guilty for being sad and making it about myself, when it was clearly about my mom.  It was comforting and reassuring for someone to say that it was actually about all of us.

It was amazing how often these insights stayed with me during the days that followed.  They motived me to care for my mom as best as I could, as well as to make her quality of life the best that it could have been.  I’m grateful to this doctor who came into our lives at such a critical juncture.

Her Children Rise up and Call her Blessed

One day, during the week before my mom passed away, we were all sitting at the table having dinner.  At the end of the meal, a whole bunch of us got up to put dinner away.  My mom was too weak and tired to help but she expressed that we were all doing so much and that she felt badly that she could not get up and join us.  My brother responded with what I thought was the perfect answer.  He said: “Mom, this just goes to show how many of us it takes to do what you have been doing alone your whole life”.  So true. In the days leading up to my mom’s departure to heaven, it took so many of us to try to keep the house running semi-normally.  As the days continued to pass, I could not help but think of my brother’s comment.  It was so true and so fitting for the situation.  Now that mom has passed away, I find myself thinking about this even more.  I think about how despite her physical absence, we still benefit so much from all the work she has done for our home.  It goes beyond saying that we have  benefitted enormously from her raising us, but the little things have begun to stick out to me more in the last couple of days.  I look at how she has lovingly decorated the house with pretty paintings and framed family pictures, how she has organized the medicine cabinet and how her kitchen is fully stocked with all the kitchen tools a family could ever need.  It never occurred to me that even after her passing, we would continue to benefit from the household that she had put together and kept up for us.

Noticing these little details reminded me of a Proverb from the Bible that my mom loved to read. It’s the passage she read to me at my bridal shower.  It is also the passage that my grandfather would often read to my grandmother every so often.  The entire chapter is about the “virtuous woman”.  It was so sweet when my grandfather would read it and then lovingly gaze at my grandmother and say to her “that’s you”.  What a blessing it was to witness such love (you’ll understand what I mean after you read the passage below). Whenever I would come across this chapter I would always think about my grandparents, but this week as I looked around our family home I could not help but think of how fitting this chapter is for the legacy that mom has left behind:

An excellent wife who can find?
She is far more precious than jewels.
The heart of her husband trusts in her,
and he will have no lack of gain.
She does him good, and not harm,
all the days of her life.
She seeks wool and flax,
and works with willing hands.
She is like the ships of the merchant;
she brings her food from afar.
She rises while it is yet night
and provides food for her household
and portions for her maidens.
She considers a field and buys it;
with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard.
She dresses herself with strength
and makes her arms strong.
She perceives that her merchandise is profitable.
Her lamp does not go out at night.
She puts her hands to the distaff,
and her hands hold the spindle.
She opens her hand to the poor
and reaches out her hands to the needy.
She is not afraid of snow for her household,
for all her household are clothed in scarlet.
She makes bed coverings for herself;
her clothing is fine linen and purple.
Her husband is known in the gates
when he sits among the elders of the land.
She makes linen garments and sells them;
she delivers sashes to the merchant.
Strength and dignity are her clothing,
and she laughs at the time to come.
She opens her mouth with wisdom,
and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
She looks well to the ways of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children rise up and call her blessed;
her husband also, and he praises her:
“Many women have done excellently,
but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.
Give her of the fruit of her hands,
and let her works praise her in the gates.

(Proverbs 31:10-31 ESV)

Picture of the Week – A Life Well Lived

This week’s picture is particularly near and dear to my heart…

Six days ago the world lost a very precious soul…my mother’s.  In the coming days and weeks I’ll be posting a few thoughts on this topic as well as some of my mom’s favorite recipes.  My hope is that this will allow me to reflect on my mother’s life, while also allowing you to share in her memory. xx