Gut Punches and Deep Breaths

I was in Homegoods one Friday afternoon, just trying to keep my mind occupied. I had
forced myself to take a bereavement day after too many near breakdowns at work the
day before. I was in the cashier line when I saw them: a mother and daughter of petite
stature who would’ve been my mother and grandmother’s ages. Just days earlier, I held
my Mammaw’s hand in her hospital room, and through tears and short breaths, thanked
her for the legacy she left for me as I said goodbye. She passed away in the early hours
of the next morning, and just like that, my last grandparent, my closest grandparent,
was gone. She hadn’t really been the same since her stroke eight years ago, slowly
slipping away from us, but at least she was still here. Sometimes, if I close my eyes and
sit in the silence, I can still hear her thick, Costa Rican accent.

Determined to keep moving, I went over to another store to make a return and when I
got to the front, I could see my cashier’s name-tag read “Maria”; the same name as my
grandmother, my mother’s middle name, and where my middle name of “Marie” derives
from. It took everything in me not to fall apart.

When I finally made it back to the safety and solitude of my car, holding back the tears, I
texted one of my best friend’s moms who had lost her mom the previous year. I
recounted what had just happened, labeling the events as “things I was not prepared
for.”

“I call them gut punches because they come out of nowhere,” she reassured me.

“And that’s what I will now call them,” I replied. “I’m realizing this is really my first time
dealing with grief like this as an adult.”

“I was just thinking that same thing,” she said. “A lot more memories to remember.”

There was a comfort in her words, because you see, this mom was one of the village of
moms, of my friends and their parents, who surrounded me when I lost my mom to
breast cancer at just eight years old. This was someone who not only knew grief from
personal experience, but she knew my grief, and she knew my mom. In fact, they were
just as good of friends as their daughters were. I can only imagine what that must have
been like. As if it isn’t bad enough watching your friend die of cancer at 40 years old, but
having to watch her husband and two young children face life without her.

But she did, they all did; all of the people who have consistently been in my life and
cheered me on since my mother took her last breath that Thursday afternoon, just days
before Mother’s Day and weeks before my ninth birthday. I like to think that this is why
I’m such a big believer in the power of community, connection and relationships,
because if it weren’t for my village of friends, their parents and my faith, I don’t know
where I’d be.

In these almost 21 years without my mom, grief has been a distant friend. When I was
young and coming of age, it was waves of the weight of my situation, fighting to let
myself feel the emotions and not to stuff them down trying to stay positive. I am
generally an optimistic person, but I believe there’s a difference between keeping your
faith and suppressing your feelings, one my friends April and Ally thankfully recognized
well before I could. I remember many conversations where they constantly reminded me
it was okay to cry, to let it out, at least as far as they were concerned. Sometimes they
still have to remind me. I thank God for them every single day.

In my early and mid-twenties, grief was smiling in the moments that I felt my mom
present, especially as I saw the evidence of God’s faithfulness in the details of my adult
life. I can recall one instance where I was making the familiar trek from my current
residence in Tulsa, Oklahoma back to my hometown of Fort Worth, Texas. I was flipping
through my massive binder of CD’s when I decided to pop in my mom’s old Sara Evans
album, Born To Fly. I had always remembered it fondly, so I didn’t think anything of it.
But when I got to the title track, I couldn’t stop the tears from coming as I drove down I-35.

It was in that moment that I can’t quite explain, but it was almost as if I could feel my
mom in the passenger seat with me, smiling, laughing, and holding out her hand for me
to grab. So I did. I drove for a few minutes, imagining I was holding her hand, and
hearing her tell me it was all going to be okay. I haven’t had another moment like that
since, but every time I get to live out my dream of working in the Broadway industry,
every time I get asked about how I got into this field, about how a position was created
for me not just once but twice in two different companies, I just smile and tell them of the
faithfulness of God in the details. Almost always, I talk about my mom, because the day
I started in the Broadway industry in 2017 was the day she went into heaven in 2003.
Some people would think of that as morbid or an omen, but I knew it was confirmation
that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

And now? Well, I’m 29, about to be 30, and I can say this last year has been all about
the gut punches and the deep breaths. It’s yes, and; holding both the pain and the gift of
grief. As I am finally starting to feel like an adult, I’m reflecting on why I am the way that
I am, asking myself the hard questions of what I want in love and in life, exploring the
rich histories and hurts of my family of origin. The pain of grief is seeing mothers and
daughters and accepting the fact that the memories I have of my mom are distant, that
I’ll never know her as a woman. I’ll never call her just to ask for her advice. I’ll never be
able to spend the day with her just because. She won’t answer my questions of why she
chose Dad, why she wasn’t afraid to risk rejection. She’ll never go with me to pick out
my wedding dress. The gut punches are realizing I was robbed of one of the richest and
most important relationships in a girl’s life. But the gift of grief is leaning into my
relationship with my dad, having honest, heartfelt conversations with him, truly soaking
up every moment I have with him; it’s made me ask questions of how people fell in love,
how my great aunt makes her famous recipes and if she can show me; it’s reconnecting
with second and third cousins on my dad’s side who unfortunately share my pain in
losing someone they love far too early.

If I could pick one verse that describes my experience with grief, it would be Romans
8:28.

“And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who
have been called according to his purpose.”

I’ve lost track of the amount of times that I have been able to minister to others with my
story, or even offer a comforting word to someone in passing. I would never have
chosen this road for myself, but my greatest comfort is knowing that I’ll never walk
alone. Will we always understand our trials? No. But we can trust that if we continue to
walk with God and stay close to Him, nothing is wasted.