Wonderland 2024

B-2. Drowning in Tears

PROMPT ▼

Create a blog entry (or static item) telling about the saddest event of your life. (<1000 words)

The last time I participated in "Wonderland"  was in March 2020, and my response to this particular prompt ("B-2: Drowning in Tears" ) talked about the experience of losing an acquaintance in high school and having to be the journalist on the school paper that interviewed her parents. I ended that entry with the following sentence:

... I don’t think anything will compete with sitting across the dining room table from a pair of grieving, sobbing parents... and wondering why I didn’t make more of an effort to get to know their daughter a little better before she unexpectedly died.

What I didn't know at the time was that, as I was writing that entry, my mom was in the beginning stages of a battle with cancer that would take her life less than eight months later.

In March 2020, like the rest of the world, my family was dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. That summer, my family and I ventured out of lockdown in our tiny apartment in Orange County and made our way up to my parents' house in El Dorado County which was under way fewer restrictions due to the fact that it was a mostly rural county with very low COVID numbers. We spent a couple of weeks there, with a big yard and parks where the kids could run around, and had some quality family time after months of feeling disconnected from everyone. I still look back fondly on those photos, particularly the ones of the kids playing in the sprinklers with their grandmother, as it was the last time they saw each other in person.

The next time we planned to see her was for our anniversary in October. She was going to come down and stay for a few weeks to visit the kids and give my wife and I some time away to celebrate our anniversary. She ended up never making the trip because she was hospitalized with intense stomach pains ... at which point they found the cancer in her stomach (Stage 4) and started aggressive treatment. We talked as often as we could via the phone and FaceTime, but she was gone less than six weeks later.

Three years later, I still acutely feel the loss of my mother. She was the glue that held our family together, and she was the one person in this world that I felt truly "got" me. I'm blessed to have the family that I have, but my mom was "my person;" the one I would call when I needed advice, or someone to understand and support me, or that I could complain to about everyone else in my family when they drove me crazy. Losing her meant losing a big piece of myself, and it still hits me at the strangest times. Most often when I'm driving home from work. I have a long commute, so I'd often use the time to just call and chat with her, and that initial instinct to pick up the phone and call her still hasn't gone away even after three years.

The saddest part of all of this isn't my loss. It's the loss my kids have experienced, and may not even fully be able to ever process. We started fostering our kids in July 2019 and, without getting too much into their personal stories, they've had a hard life. Abandonment, abuse, no real loving family or support to speak of; and my mom instantly accepted them as her own grandkids. My wife and I told ourselves that, if nothing else, we'd be able to provide them with that safe, secure family they'd never had. My mom, who had waited patiently for my brother and to finally start families, would get to be a doting grandmother to four beautiful grandkids (two of mine and two of my brother's). And it turns out she only got to be a grandmother for less than two years.

I often think of the loss of my mom in terms of what my kids no longer have. Yes, my dad is still around (and my wife's dad is still around), but my kids have no maternal grandmother figure. Other kids at school have them show up all the time for things like Grandparents' Day and at sporting events and whatnot, but my kids won't and it breaks my heart to think of every school event, holiday, birthday, and other special occasion where they won't have a fun, doting grandmother to love on them.

Ultimately, we all experience loss sooner or later. The loss of my mom was the first time that I truly felt in my soul what it was like to lose a piece of yourself. It's definitely the saddest event of my life thus far, and I sincerely pray that it will remain the saddest because if there's something more devastating than this, I don't want to know what it is.


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(820 words)