prixmium | Grief

CW: Death mention, some other unrelated mentions of sexuality

Today is my first Mother's Day without my mom. For some reason this is hitting me harder than anything has so far. Maybe the shock has just worn off. All yesterday all I could do was fade in and out of sleep and feel like there was an enormous weight on my chest.

Too much sleep also made me have two vaguely connected dreams that were both seemingly about almost finding someone who was mutually attracted to me and having a partner only to have something make it abruptly slip through my fingers. One was fairly weird and almost involved a bizarre dreamlike age regression thing that made me feel gross but which was also about the relative maturity of the individual I was interested in. Then the other one was basically someone rejecting me in spite of everything because I did not want to immediately jump into a sexual relationship. The dream sort of ended with some kind of meta thing about how women who were having trouble like me should just have a baby with a financially stable person before they got ugly and bitter. Thanks, brain! As if I didn't already have something weighing on me.

Anyway, my family has never really made a big deal out of holidays, but all my adult life I have always at least tried to do something to acknowledge my mom. I'm so bad at keeping up with things, and one year I basically forgot Mother's Day existed and my mom was a little hurt, and I never forgot again. But I have seemingly just always never been able to do much for her due to money or distance or time. In 2019, I was going to be in Japan over Mother's Day, so I bought her several gift cards and wrote her a note to do things with her sister and stuff if she could and buy things she liked since I couldn't be there. That was, strangely, the nicest thing I was probably ever able to do for her for Mother's Day.

I miss her a lot, and more and more I notice the emptiness in my life where she used to be, particularly with my joblessness being more and more on my mind as my dad finds things to do, work-wise and exercise-wise and socially, because he has to.

Recently my dad gently mentioned that he would like not to be single for the rest of his life if he has very long. I think that it has come up around this time in great part because he doesn't want to dishonor my mom or for me to feel like he is. I don't think he has anyone in particular in mind by a long-shot, but I think he's self-conscious at the thought that maybe because he's in his 60s that even women around his age wouldn't find him attractive or something.

The sad truth is, he probably will have a much easier time finding someone than I ever will.

My mom said that she didn't want him to remain single or expect him to. She said that the biggest concern for her was that he didn't spring it on me out of nowhere and that he have some kind of will or pre-nup such that anything he does leave behind won't by default go entirely to his new wife if he has one. He seems to be aware of that, and it's not like he'll have a ton to leave anyone. Maybe the house.

Anyway, I don't begrudge him it at all. It's just that there's an irrational part of me that feels like I don't belong anywhere anymore. And I know that's the furthest thing from his intention, but I just really have not had much will or ability to grieve until now. I know it troubled him to even mention it to me, and I know he's trying to be a good father and a good man.

I really don't know if I want to go to church tomorrow. People treat holidays like this as though they're part of the thing, and I don't blame them, but I'm just worried I'd sit there and cry and feel sick anyway.