Today Is My Mother’s Birthday and I Forgot About It
Today is my mother’s birthday. If she were alive, she’d be… wait… how old would she be?
How could you forget your dead mother’s birthday, you ask? That’s a damn good question, and you know what, I don’t really have a damn good answer for it.
Last year, on the ten-year anniversary of her passing, I wrote this really weepy emotional post on Tumblr about it.
I cried writing it, then shared it on social media, where it got a lot of likes, which sent a dopamine rush to my brain — “They like it, they really really like it,” I told myself — and I felt better about life.
Read it here: “Ten Years.”
Since you probably won’t click that link, because nobody clicks links anymore, because nobody needs to read more than they’re already reading, I can summarize it for you.
In May of 2002, my mother — previously in decent health — was unexpectedly diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. A year later, she died.
What I realized in the decade after she passed was that as time wore on, it got harder and harder for me to remember what life was like when she was around.
My parents got divorced in the early nineties, and my last memory of living with my mom was when I was 9. That’s a fairly young age.
Though we spent time together after she left the household, it was hard to have a close relationship with someone— a parent, no less— who I only saw once or twice a week.
We shared some good memories, but sometimes I think we didn’t really connect. In retrospect, that might have been as much my fault as hers. But I was a kid, what do you want from me?
When you compound that with the fact that ten years had passed, you really find yourself — or rather, I found myself — in this place where the memories of what it felt like to have a mother weren’t that fresh.
A year has passed since then, and while I do think of my mother almost every day, I can’t say that today, on her birthday, I gave her any special thought.
In fact, I even woke up and put a little #tbt photo on Instagram of my brother and I — his birthday was yesterday — and before I did, I considered posting one of my mother.
I don’t think I even gave it a second thought that it was her birthday. It just didn’t come to me.
Does that make me a piece of shit? I don’t know.
Because my brother and mother share birthdays on back-to-back days, I know I had thought about it being her birthday in the days leading up to it, but as far as on the day itself, it couldn’t have been any further from my mind.
That’s when my aunt sent me a message on Facebook, saying it was my mom’s birthday, and asking how I was doing. I told her I didn’t think about that much, that as the years pass by, it means less and less. She said she hoped I thought about her sometimes. And I replied:
I do, but I don’t wait for birthdays, holidays and death anniversaries to do it. Hence, if it doesn’t come to mind today, it’ll be tomorrow. People who pass are always with you, not only when it’s convenient. I’m sure you know this though.
It was kind of a curt reply, maybe impolite — I guess I’m a brash impolite dickheaded person, or something — but at the same time it was true.
I had an old photo of my brother ready for Instagram because days earlier I’d taken a box of pictures off a shelf high up in my closet, removed its dusty cover and took a trip down memory lane.
I don’t know the specific psychological reason why I did it, I just know I was listening to a beautiful piece of music, and as all good art should, it engendered some type of emotional reaction in me.
It made me think about my family, who I’m not particularly close with, and how I miss them. Sometimes I spend so much time around other people’s families that I forget what my own feels like. Or felt like.
Hours later, I went to see my father, whom I hadn’t seen in a few weeks. I missed the warmth of his face, the comfort I’ve always found in his words, and the sheer joy I get from being around him. I missed what it felt like to be his son.
We sat and talked about music and books and life— the things we always talked about— and for a second, every worry I had dissipated. I knew that everything would be okay. I didn’t feel this heavy weight on my shoulders, this pressure to get rich or die trying.
When I left I wondered what my life would have been like if both my parents had been completely present growing up. How would I have turned out? It’s something I think about a lot. But not too much, because you can’t get caught up dwelling on what could have or should have happened.
So yeah, today, I forgot my mother’s birthday. Not because she’s gone from my mind. Just because, well, shit happens.
