In 2015, on the Wednesday after Mother’s Day, I watched my mom die. It was traumatic, and I hate that this will always be my last memory of her.
I’ve shared pieces of that day before, but today I’m reminded again that depression is very real. It held onto my mother so tightly that she simply could not move forward. The best word I can find for her over the years is being stuck.
When she was deep in a depression, I would beg her to just move forward in some small way. One step. One tiny change. But she couldn’t. That same paralysis kept her from seeking treatment, just as it has with other members of my family. Intellectually, I understood that you cannot force another adult to change. But living alongside someone who would not (or perhaps could not) take steps toward help was incredibly painful and frustrating.
She drifted in and out of her grandchildren’s lives. Toward the end, I stopped telling the kids when she planned to visit because I never knew if she would actually come. I didn’t want them disappointed or wondering if Nana loved them.
Because she did love them. Fiercely.
Two memories came rushing back to me today.
The first was Aidan’s eighth birthday. My mom always wanted her gift to be the best one, and that year, she absolutely succeeded. She bought Amtrak tickets, and train-loving Aidan and I rode the train to Greensboro. We had lunch at the best Indian restaurant in Greensboro, then we all headed to Kernersville for a private tour of a local train museum. Aidan later described it as “the best day of my life.”
The second memory made me laugh through my tears today. One afternoon, she picked my daughter up after school while I was tied up in meetings. As the afternoon went on, I started calling to check in. No answer. Again and again…nothing. For three hours, I tried to figure out where they were.
Eventually I learned they had gotten completely lost in the wonder of Pope’s Hardware, a legendary old North Chatham store packed floor to ceiling with dusty shelves holding absolutely everything imaginable. After that, they wandered through Dollar General, where Nana handed my daughter a crisp twenty-dollar bill to spend. To a little girl, it felt like winning the lottery.
Hours later, they casually strolled in after dinner, ice cream in hand, completely unaware that I had progressed from a worried mother to nearly filing a missing person report. My mom had turned her phone off and left it in the car.
There could have been so many more memories like those.
That is what I grieve most on anniversary days like this one … not only what depression took from my mother, but all the moments it stole from the people who loved her.