Space, time, and the things in between

I always get the sads this time of year

I turned 36 two weeks ago, on August 12. I also have two more significant anniversaries coming up in the next few weeks: September 4th will mark five years since we moved from Chicago to Iowa. September 8th, five years since my mom died.

I love the life I've built over these 5 five years – no kids, beloved aunt, able to travel. Still empathetic, sensitive, inquisitive, and curious. Constantly thinking and asking questions. Always searching for purpose and meaning, but maybe more content to not find an answer now.

I credit my time in Iowa for much of that.

When we first moved here, coinciding with the initial weeks and months following my mom's death, I had the space and solitude to wallow. Being in a new and unfamiliar place helped. Even having the pandemic as an excuse to not go anywhere helped. Sleeping and wallowing was all I was capable of.

I could tend to the awful matters of closing accounts and looking for wills, then go nap.

I could unpack moving boxes, get sidetracked by where to put things that reminded me of my mom, then do some retail therapy by online shopping for things we needed for the house. Then take a nap.

I could do some day job work, then nap.

I could play spider solitaire on my phone, then nap.

I could read, then nap.

In hindsight, I can see how beneficial that time was for me. Iowa has afforded me a much more relaxed pace of life than I'd ever experienced living on the east coast or in Chicago. After the first year, I noticed that my nervous system had calmed significantly. It actually felt like more years had been added to my life.

In working on my graphic memoir over the past few months, the main themes have morphed a few times.

At first, it was about growing up a secret. Then it was about my mom's death. Then both.

Then it was about her death, complicated by our past traumas, and my need to find her soul in the afterlife.

Then it was more focused on mine and my mom's relationship.

Now it feels like it's about me...or me learning to disentangle myself from who I thought I was.

In those early fall months five years ago, when I'd walk the dog each night before bed, I'd inevitably cry at the beauty of the huge star-filled sky overhead, wondering which star was my mom, and why I couldn't feel her with me.

I felt so empty, like my soul had left with hers. The thought of searching for her soul in the afterlife made some sort of sense to me at the time (a time when literally nothing else was making sense).

In truth, my soul hadn't left, but it was tied up in hers.

We had been so intertwined my whole life. We were always trying to protect each other. Unconsciously, I thought I needed to protect her in the afterlife, too, while still needing her here to protect me.

I think the mental protection we try to provide for others isn't real, and is actually where a lot of unintended harm arises.

We can only really provide mental protection for ourselves – protecting our personal space and peace of mind – as we get older and become aware of our breaking points.

We can work to protect others, namely our children and loved ones, from physical harm, but mentally, all we can do is be honest with them, and stick around for questions.

My soul had to learn to navigate without my mom’s physical presence or advice. (I wasn’t prepared for that to be the case. I really thought I was more independent than that!) The emptiness I felt was shocking to my system.

But Iowa gave me the space I didn't know I would so desperately need to find myself, out from under my past as only a half-truth.

Admitting that I had been living only a half-life, half alive, half visible, to “protect” her, was, and still is, a hard pill to swallow. We don’t like admitting when people we love are wrong.

But time and space – to grieve, to think, to walk in nature and reflect on how fallible humans are, to be okay with that – has been the antidote.

Which is kind of ironic, since time and space was the constant obstacle I came up against in the search for my mom’s soul in the afterlife.

There is a song, written and originally recorded by Leon Russell in 1970 and covered by many artists since, called “A Song For You.” It is a beautifully haunting song, a ballad for a lover who is also a friend. There is a line in the song that stopped me in my tracks when I heard it for the first time, earlier this year.

“I love you in a place where there’s no space and time”

I’ve reflected on this line a lot. I’ve incorporated it into poems. I may incorporate it into my memoir. I don’t have a succinct answer or ending for this post, to be honest. I just have a love song in my heart for my mom, for Iowa, for the healing I’ve managed to do over the past five years, and I want to share it with you.

// I love you to pluto

I love you to the moon and back
I love you more than all of the stars in the sky
I love you every idiom ever uttered

I love you up, I love you down
I love you happy or sad
I love you literally and figuratively
I love you every hyperbole in every language

I love you in a place where there’s no space or time
I love you infinity
I love you 'til I'm empty
I love you 'til I'm full

I love you, teary, watching a stranger's proposal in the park
I love you, head thrown back in laughter
I love you in the photos of you as a young girl
I love the you I know, the you I knew, and any you in between

I love you whole or broken
I love you hot or cold
I love you awake and asleep
I love you, heart and soul

I love you more
I love you more
I love you more
I love you more

// My mother appears in the doorway with tea, saying

I love you, too, in a place where there’s no space or time

I am every Christmas song you hear playing outside of December
I am every robin you see, and Aunt Kathy is every cardinal

I understand now – how you are in a Holy place 
     any time you step outside
That we both liked to go to church on Sundays
     me in a pew, and you in a meadow
We can learn from anything that knows mortality

Don’t worry about not wanting children of your own, 
it’s not as imperative as we’ve made it out to be
Keep planting your love in the world and see what grows

In the meantime, 
we are together, just us 
     laughing on the beach in Cape May
     dancing in the kitchen on Willow Grove
You are always my baby, and I hold you in my arms