Zibby Mag

By Erin Joy Henry

I’m never going to get over the loss of my mom, but glimmers of light still shine through.

Iwas sobbing, driving my mom’s car down an Oregon country road just before Thanksgiving when red lights flashed in my rearview mirror.

Oh, God — of course, I was getting pulled over. My hands shook as they clenched the steering wheel, my heart racing with panic as tears stung my puffy eyes. I may as well have had drugs in the backseat instead of my fifteen-month-old sleeping baby.

In the side mirror, I watched the officer swagger towards my window.

“You’re going awfully fast in a school zone.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about; I barely knew where I was.

“I’m sorry. I’m not from the area.”

“Where are you from?”

“I live in Massachusetts.”

He took my driver’s license. My daughter woke up and started to scream. I tried with little success to keep my sobs under control; he probably thought I was crying because of him. He peered in my backseat and frowned. My daughter wailed louder.

“Why do you have a California driver’s license if you live in Massachusetts?”

“Our neighborhood burned down last year. So we left and went to Nantucket.”

“Where?”

“Nantucket. It’s an island. Off Massachusetts.”

He raised an eyebrow and asked for the registration. I fumbled through the glove box, hoping my stepdad had renewed it.

“Whose car is this?”

He looked at the metal box of Altoids and blue Blistex in the cup holder, the notes in my mom’s impeccable handwriting stuck to the dashboard.

“My mom’s. She lived here. But she died.”

The word “died” soured the end of my tongue as the floodgates opened again. The officer stared at me, searching for some truth in my eyes. I thought about the last year of chaos, disaster, and sorrow. It wouldn’t even have been a surprise if I was hauled off to jail with my baby.

Just do it, I thought, gazing at the wheel. The officer handed back my license, shook his head, and walked away.

++

I was thirty-two weeks pregnant when I got off a plane in Portland, Oregon and waddled into my mom’s house. We looked with disbelief at the piece of paper in her lap confirming she had glioblastoma, a brain cancer they tell you not to Google because you will quickly find it is a death sentence.

I remember how I felt: devastation stabbed my gut, my heart clenched as I struggled to take in air. My leg was swollen and blue due to a vascular condition, and it was difficult for me to walk. My mom was also barely able to walk — or talk.

Over the next four weeks, which would be the last we’d spend together, we sat outside on her patio or lay weeping on her bed as I searched for the faint beat of her heart through her shirt. The sorrow burned my insides.

I went back home to Los Angeles at thirty-six weeks pregnant, and my mother died a few days later. It felt like the tendon that had kept me tethered to the earth was severed. I couldn’t orient myself without my mother. I was still in shock six days later when I gave birth to my daughter. Becoming a mother to three children under five years old was a role that sucked the last bits of strength out of me.

Weeks later, just when the grief parted enough that I could at least get to the grocery store without breaking down, my new baby started growing a tumor on the side of her head. And then our neighborhood burned down in a California wildfire. Desperate for support, we fled across the country and thirty miles out to sea, to the island of Nantucket where my husband’s family resides.

I didn’t sleep for months. Each time my head hit the pillow, I heard my mother’s cry in the last moments we had together; she hadn’t been ready to leave.

Anxiety hit me with a vengeance I had never felt before. I regularly ditched full carts of groceries or pulled over on the side of the road and called my husband for help, my heart pounding like a drum and convincing me that I was dying, too.

I shrunk to a weight I hadn’t seen on the scale since adolescence and went to the ER when my body wouldn’t stop purging blood. I developed a stomach ulcer that still hasn’t fully healed. With each incident, after the doctor reported I had too much stress in my life, I would reach for my phone to call my mom.

++

After a year of trying to regroup and give our children the nurturing they needed, my yearning to return to the Pacific Northwest where I had grown up pulled me home for Thanksgiving. The second I walked into my mom and stepdad’s house, I so longed for her embrace that I shoved my nose into her shirts and put on the socks that were still in her drawer.

I took her car out for a drive to see the house they moved out of right before she died. The home they had lived in for almost twenty years had an enchanted yard only a Master Gardener could bring to life.

I pulled up to the house, trying desperately to soothe my longing for her. I gasped when I saw the new owners were letting her plants die. I turned the car around in a rage and hit the gas. That’s when I was pulled over by the policeman.

I told my sister the story later that day through tears and sick laughter. We were standing in my mom’s kitchen planning out the Thanksgiving menu by ourselves. Our stepdad strolled in with a long face and a jar that said Heinz on it.

“Well, I took care of the gravy,” he muttered.

My mom used to do the whole dinner herself, including gravy that was not from a jar.

My mom’s absence lingered over our Thanksgiving table. She would have been on the carpet after serving pie, embracing all three of my children. Instead, my daughter cried and my boys ran circles around the living room terrorizing each other. Everything I looked at reminded me of those last, heart-wrenching days I had spent with her.

++

When my mother was dying, I remember asking Amy, the nurse in the oncology center, when I would ever see the light again. Amy stopped her pink Nikes in their tracks, confidently said, “You will,” and pushed a box of tissues in my lap. I hated her for that.

What’s surprised me most about grief is how long it persists.

It’s been close to three years since my mom died. I didn’t see the light after our Thanksgiving trip, or during the next year as the world sheltered in place.

After celebrating my fortieth birthday, I opened our mailbox, hoping there was a yellow or pink envelope from my mom with my name on it. There wasn’t, but there was a birthday card from my stepdad and from an old friend I’ve reconnected with since losing my mom — glimmers of light.

The T-shirt in my closet still smells faintly of her, and there are old voicemails I listen to when I need a hit of my mom’s love. What’s helped me most in my grief is speaking with other women who have also become motherless daughters. We commiserate and cry, and sometimes we even laugh because the pain is so great there is nothing left to do.

My comrades have helped me learn I’m never going to get over the loss of my mom, but all the little lights will get me through.

Weeks after my mom’s death, I was in a gift shop with my infant daughter strapped to my chest. A green card caught my eye. It read:

“Find What Brings You Joy, and Go There”

— Jan Phillips

My mom’s name was Jan Phillips, and my middle name is Joy. The coincidence was almost too much to bear.

It was the last piece of advice she gave me — a gift, steering me towards the light.

++

Erin Joy Henry is a mother of three who lives thirty miles out to sea on the island of Nantucket. Her favorite things include her Thursday night writer’s workshop, cold-water swimming, and exploring the ecology of her tiny island with her kids and husband. She is currently at work on her first memoir.