My mom passed away 3 years ago in August.
Mourning has gotten easier, or at least more compartmentalized.
I have long since stopped tearing up when I unload the dishwasher with no one to call on the phone, or when I walk around the garden, or slice a home-grown tomato. I can walk around the mall on Mother's Day and not frighten store employees when I'm surprised by a sudden sob while watching people interacting sweetly with their mothers in ways they take for granted.
I still steel myself against sadness when the spring comes. It's not that spring is sad, but that it was my mother's favorite season.
She hated winter, when what little amount she could walk was made treacherous and slick, and she felt shut in by weather and her withered leg. Winter is dark, and her life had shadows that grew too easily in the dark. Alone and confined, they threatened to engulf her.
But she loved the spring; green things, the new beginnings, the lengthening light. She poured over seed catalogs and saved her energy for the garden center, and for pointing out where to plant things to my brothers.
The growth of the new beginnings was nurtured into the summer, and the plants would thrive and the backyard became a well-tended jungle. I used to laugh when she'd declare that she was going to go out "looking at her crops" growing in the 10 x 10" space where she grew her vegetables.
Now I find myself doing the same thing (without the announcement) going out to watch the garden grow.
And I find myself breathing in through my mouth, as though inhaling her cigarette, filling my lungs from the bottom, and breathing out through my mouth and nose, wondering if people start smoking to have an excuse to breathe so deeply.
August arrives. This is my month of sorrow, where most of my sadness sits, reminding me of its presence in a way that doesn't express itself the rest of the year. This is the month that has not lost its psychic hold, and all the sadness gathers in a light ring of wetness around eyes and sorrow presses inside my chest. My sense memory is mixed with the heat of the summer, the smell of the air. My frantic drive to Ohio on my own, hoping to be able to talk to my mom one last time before she left comes back to me with an immediacy that takes my breath away.
I did get to talk to her. And she went so soon after. It was all so, so fast. The shock still resonates.
But resonance transitions from sound to echo. It's still there. I know it's there. But it's easier to not hear it all the time.
