The Body Holds May
A post for the motherless amongst us.
It is Mother’s Day and I am not a mother. I also no longer have one. Nor is there a surrogate to be found, although I wish. I am of an age where I should be the wise one, the caregiving one, the one cloaked in Teflon who knows all the secrets. And maybe I am. Maybe that is the secret I have yet to unlock, but on most days it does not feel like this.
We live in a society where grief is limited to a certain time period before it’s categorized as pathological, before it’s no longer acceptable. Where people turn away. or have pity at worst, or suggest a pill, at best. I am weary of this.
[Astute readers may notice a pattern, a certain word/feeling that pops up frequently of late in these posts, which are not really “posts” as much as they are diaristic notes that carry me through the week. A record of feelings.1 If I feel lucky, they are grammatically incorrect and rough-hewn. It will be evident I am grasping for straws.
Mother’s Day, surprisingly, isn’t the trigger. It is May, the whole lot, all 31 of it. I will spare everyone the vicarious trauma of long-distance caregiving, cataclysmic floods, divorce, relocation, and dying dogs, but this is one version of May—the Mother of all versions, if you will. May is endings with a bang, not a whimper.
A few years later, May also became beginnings, fresh starts, both physically and emotionally. And like all seasons and cycles, May once again ushered in the beginnings of endings. The path starts feeling worn and familiar. Still, I understand it is a cycle.
May is the bait-and-switch of months. May is The Floor Is Lava.
📚🎧Current reads: Life in Progress by Hans Ulrich Obrist
Ta-da! The word of the day is tired or weary, fatigued and spent.
I wanted a real Dad today. Some days it would just be nice.
I wrote my blog post and referred to your last post with a link. Hope that’s okay. 😍