Today, I Turn One

Reflecting on losing my mom, and finding myself

Welcome to the first personal essay under the Living Late(ly) name! This piece will mention hospitals briefly, and death pretty frequently. I mentioned some findings around feeling relief when grieving, and shared some milestones and perspectives around my first time living in this essay.

It’s a long one; I’ll try and do a voiceover (it may be for paid subscribers only) as soon as possible.

Thanks so much for reading. ♥

Mom’s body induced labor and I eventually guided her through the rest. Her doctor towered over me, asking which option I wanted to choose for my mom’s final moments.

There were so many nurses, machines sounding off, yelling, and chaos all around me. Except the doctor, his tiny nurse, and I stood still in time. Grounded into place.

I was calmly yet sternly told to make a decision before things got worse.

I rushed around the room, checking in, and asking for clues of what to choose. Leaving my selfish and illogical desires behind as best I could. 

Eventually, I spun toward the doctor and told him to make her comfortable.

He parroted my words, confirming my choice.

I told him yes, and we all began to move toward the transition of a new chapter.

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I was born December 9th, 2022 at 1:13pm, though I didn’t know it. What newborn ever knows what’s going on?

I sure didn’t. Choosing comfort meant the lights dimmed, and mom’s vital monitor turned into a quiet clock. Mom herself quickly stilled.

It took hours before her final breath and I didn’t even realize when she’d left us despite witnessing it.

Newborns don’t know what’s going on; I refused to. I saw everything but subconsciously did everything in my power to avoid the truth.

The longer we were with her, the less I touched her. Afraid of feeling the stiffening of her body like I did when our bird died in my hands.

I was afraid to move her once she began deeply resting, so dad stepped in and readjusted the pillows behind her head.

I softly talked at her while gently cleaning her face with a warm washcloth, as if she was sleeping. Yeah, she was only sleeping.

But then a few hours later when grandma arrived, she asked me if I had given her a goodbye kiss. I didn’t want to tell her I’d already kissed her, as if mom had a limit to loving she deserved. So when I leaned down and kissed her cheek I felt the hard, frigid sensation of ice touch my lips, and internally screamed.

Ah, baby’s first cry, earthside.

“The first cry of the newborn infant signals that a new and separate life has begun.”¹

The end of my mom’s life signaled the beginning of my own.

My world immediately began to tilt as I took my place in the passenger seat next to my dad. Mom’s supposed to be sitting here, I thought, but I began to realize I was no longer a shadow, a caregiver, or an indefinite child… I was now an assistant, a co-parenting adult, and a scared child.

I pushed these new vague feelings of insecurity down with instant Folgers and a wobbly understanding of adulthood as my dad and I spent the next couple of weeks planning and preparing for the funeral.

And it was lovely. So many familiar, strange, new, and surprising faces showed up for mom and our entire family. And she looked so good! Like she was taking a nap in sharp church clothes and would pop up and say, “Boo!” any minute.

I felt fine, and found myself continuing with my eight-year caregiving hypervigilance–checking in on anyone who seemed anxious or sad about mom passing.

But throughout the service I noticed myself wondering why I ultimately felt so… okay with all of this. Why did I feel neutral about mom passing? Not numb, but neutral?

Was I a monster?

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My search for the answer started early. I came across a Washington Post article² that explained how normal it is to feel relief when a parent you were caregiving for passes.

“She explained that relief is a common part of grieving, especially for those who have been involved in caregiving for the person who died. If someone had mental health problems, like my father did, their death can allow survivors to ‘exhale from that hypervigilance, worrying the worst is always coming.’ She said people may think, ‘God, what does it say about me that I’ve wanted this person to die?’ But in fact, “when we peel it back … if they could have waved a wand and fixed the relationship, the mental illness, the addiction, that’s what they would have wanted.’”

Relief was one of the feelings I felt, but an overall sense of serenity filled me, too. And that felt shameful and uncomfortable.

Later on, during my first year of experiencing life, I started seeing a therapist. And she explained to me that it was indeed normal to feel anything during grief, even a sense of complacency and peace. Feelings of relief included.

Somehow though, finding an article nested in the one about relief after the passing of a parent escaped me at the time, but is so validating to read, even now:

“Death often comes after a period of intense and prolonged pain, anxiety, worry, fear, and suffering.  Although none of you wanted your loved one die, it's only human to feel relief when their pain and suffering come to an end.  It's also human to feel a tinge of relief when the distress you felt as a result of having to watch your loved one struggle has come to an end.”

This same article also covered some common scenarios to help debunk myths around feelings of relief when grieving, and two stood out for me:

“Scenario One: The person was physically ill and suffering.  Caring for the person was mentally and physically exhausting and it was terrifying to watch the person lose their physical and/or cognitive faculties.

Myth: Feeling relief in this situation means you wanted the person to die.

Fact: Feeling relief in this situation means you are glad their suffering (and/or your suffering as a caretaker) has ended.  You did not want them to leave you, you would give anything for them to have been cured and to have lived pain free.  However, given the existence of ongoing pain, you wanted their suffering to end.

And …

“Scenario Two: The person was an abusive person or you and the person were in a problematic/unhealthy relationship. These relationships are often marital or parent/child relationships, but can be true of any type of relationship where a person feels constantly trapped and controlled by another person.

Myth:  Your relief mean you hated the person and wanted them to die.

Reality:  You wanted to escape the relationship.  In many cases, an outside observer may think you could have ended the relationship at any time, but you may have felt it was not possible for a number of reasons.  When the person dies, the death can cause relief because the painful and problematic relationship has ended, even though you may have wished it would have ended in another way.

This does get a little tricky when trauma or abuse is so severe that you may truly be glad they died because it brings a sense of justice, or because no matter what you would have felt fear and anxiety knowing the person was still in the world.  Such experiences, thoughts, and emotions can be extremely complex, so if you are struggling with guilt in these situations you may want to think about talking to a counselor.”

The last paragraph is more for anyone who needs to read it; I’d imagine Jennette McCurdy may have needed to hear something like that when she was freshly processing the abuse of her mom.³ But personally, that wasn’t my reality.

Still, my relationship with my mom wasn’t the healthiest. Reading, “You wanted to escape the relationship.” was a glaring sentence that made my heart tap against my chest like a finger on a storefront window, telling me, “That’s it. That’s the one.”

I’ve had two therapists in my life–both while I was an adult–and both mentioned escape plans when it came to my mom and I’s dynamic.

My current therapist is also a nurse, and based on the stories I’ve told her so far, she’s told me she’s never in all her years of practice heard of someone as anxious as my mom.

The exact info sheet my current therapist gave me earlier this year to help explain rigid boundaries.

It may have caused her to create rigid boundaries around everything; I theorize that she wanted a sense of control over her life when disease riddled her body more and more.

I also recently realized and remembered that she was born over a decade before the time when 26 children were kidnapped at gunpoint before being buried alive. And after their escape, they were simply taken to Disneyland to cope.

Communicating or mending any kind of harm you couldn’t point out on your body wasn’t a thing back then. And by the time my mom was growing up, mental health was still stigmatized, or not even talked about at all.

Ultimately, I received the space away from mom I’d always wanted and needed–though obviously not in the way I anticipated–but not without carrying some of the remnants from her intense anxiety with me. I had marinated in it for over three decades, yet it still caught me by surprise.

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I started the first few months of my new life going from constantly finding ways to work on anything to get a business going, to having absolutely no interest in doing anything at all. Or having anything to do! Except writing. My need to write never left me.  

My new anxieties were subtle. Even though I now knew death and napping didn’t look the same, I’d check for the rise and fall of my dad’s chest whenever he’d sleep.

I became a skittery and unsure driver, and my dad was baffled by it. Just a few months earlier, I was driving so well!

I didn’t have the words to explain it back then, but I do now. When mom died, it felt like my foundational security was shattered. I used to have two parents available to be my safety net when the day finally came when I’d escape and be on my own.

But being on my own never came, and having two parents to help guide me with learning life skills abruptly became one.

Life suddenly felt like driving on a highway covered with broken glass hundreds of thousands of miles away from home, with only one spare tire left in the trunk of your car, and no car services available to reach out to.

What if something happened to dad? What would happen to me? How would I be able to take care of my little brother?

Despair and anxiety took over my life during the first third of my year. Gradually losing grandpa until he was gone in April didn’t help.

But even during those first four months, I’d look for a silver lining. I took note of things I learned about myself, like how I no longer liked long walks like I used to, but I loved hearing and seeing nature. Especially the ocean.

Over six years, I’d learned so many tools, techniques, and modalities to help ground and recenter myself, and only one stuck months later. It took me nearly the entire year to truly allow myself to be witnessed resting, and to learn to slow down and feel safe in my body. There’s no finish line, but I’m much better than I was at the start of the year.

I won’t go into everything I did my first year of life⁴, but there’s one moment I wanted to recall.

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One day, I walked into my room and noticed I didn’t I like the first things you’d see on my bookshelf: coaching certification books, coding books, and a handful of books from college classes I’d decided to keep.

It felt like I was trying to prove something not only to myself, but to anyone who came into my room. Like it was some desperate attempt to show how hard I was working toward some version of success that could be tangibly seen.

So I spent an afternoon taking all my books out from my shelf to reorganize them.

Now, I’m so much happier with what’s seen by everyone first: my Japanese and Korean language learning books, my manga, and I left an open space for my Nanoblock builds of sakura treehouses, otters, planets, and more. And also for my Pokemon figurines, and acrylic standees of characters from my favorite demon-casted show.

For once in my life, I wanted my interests to shine.

Because for most of the year I’ve had to ask myself a lot: Who am I? What do I even like?

And slowly who I truly am has been emerging.

What my mom probably saw the only time she ever sat in the car while I drove.

Reflecting on this first year of life since mom’s been gone feels like I’m taking my own milestone photo for Instagram. Next to the swaddled me on a black felted board would say…

Cierra turned 1 today!!

After too intimate a relationship with despair, we’re so proud of our little girl for not cringing when calling herself a woman!⁵

She loves visiting the city, but doesn’t think she’d like living there.

She enjoys studying Japanese, nature, and feels like a badass when she enters tech stores, arcades, and when playing any Pokémon game.

She’s graduated from carrying backpack purses to typical ones because she no longer carries items for two people when going out, and she admits the transition was initially weird.

Our little girl went from sitting a good ten minutes with her food, waiting for someone to call her before she dug in, to eating as soon as she got her meals—yay!

She ended therapy this summer on a good note and plans to return in 2024.

And speaking of therapists… her’s challenged her to walk to the mailbox by herself and Cierra went from irrationally upset, nervous, and tearful at the thought, to walking to and from the complex pool while her dad was out of state, and feeling quite at home while doing so!

She now has her driver’s license, she’s just started to drive solo. Sometimes she lets the wheel glide beneath her hand as the car turns.

She’s shaved her head and for the first time in a long long time, felt like “herself.”

And she’s created unforgettable memories with so many loved ones she’ll never let go of. ♥️

I’m so proud of her.

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Turning 32 didn’t change me as a person, losing my mom did.

But I’d like to congratulate mom on her freedom as well. I’m so happy about my own, and ecstatic for her’s as well.

Of course, I didn’t expect us to get space from each other in this way. Instead, I dreamt of the day when I’d moved away to live my own life, and our relationship would eventually become estranged because the life I’d lead would just be too uncomfortably “different” for her. But eventually, she’d come around because she’d see me living. Safe, and competent with the choices I’d make for my life. And maybe seeing that would make her curious enough to want to dive into my world, too.

I won’t get that chance anymore, but I can still run with some theories that make me feel better.

A few months after her death, mom was still being mom. A strong gust of wind (aka - mom) blew all of her decorative wreaths outside of our patio, and onto the public lawn when we didn’t take them down the day before like we said we would. She hated procrastinating!

She also ran the exhaust fan above the oven once while dad and I both were cooking. I assume it was because the food smells were getting too strong. She’d make me light wax lighters multiple times a week.

She quieted down a bit after her dad died. But both of them checked in on me right outside my window. Within the same week after grandpa died, two hummingbirds hovered at eye level in front of my window before flittering away. I’ve only seen hummingbirds once in my life, and it was on campus around a giant bowl of flowers. But there’s not a single flower anywhere near my window.

I looked it up and it’s said that hummingbirds are your loved ones visiting, and I love that enough to believe it.

Since then, I think God and mom have created little miracles in my life (mom can’t help herself). Like when I have patient drivers behind me as I make mistakes, or allowing me huge gaps when I need to cross three or more lanes.

I have no confidence in knowing what happens after we die, but I know mom’s no longer in her body worrying and suffering mentally, and physically. After everything I witnessed 24/7 with her, I’m genuinely glad of that.

Here’s to a second year of our freedom; let’s see how far it’ll take us both.

1. Source:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27753631/#:~:text=Vociferous%2C%20shrill%2C%20and%20piercing%2D,care%2C%20support%2C%20and%20protectio

2. This article on feeling relief when caregiving for a parent is over was published four days before mom passed!

3. The link to that book is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org. I’ll explain in another post, but it’ll probably be the only place I’ll have affiliate links for.

4. You can see nearly all the ups and downs of this past year in my old Friday Reflections series.

5. Not a queer thing, but a feeling like a child thing.