Mom's Gone

My Mom died in the early hours of June 29 of complications from pneumonia. She was one month shy of her 67^th birthday. I’ll be processing everything from the morning of her death to the day she was buried for a long time.

I’m so grateful that I was able to talk to my mom just two days before she passed. I had sat down at my computer after rocking Spencer to sleep and it was quiet time in the Porter house. My mind went blank as soon as I sat down and I relaxed, which is abnormal because I usually feel torn between doing ten things at once when I sit down to “get stuff done” during quiet time. So I thought, “Well, what should I do? It’s been a while since I talked to Mom...”

When I asked her how she was she answered, “Well, actually not so good,” and she explained that she had just come home from the doctor’s office where she found out that she had pneumonia.  She filled me in on some details from her appointment and how she had been feeling recently. My mom has had and recovered from pneumonia multiple times before, she knew what she had before the doctor’s diagnosis, but the tone of her voice struck a cord with me and I remember thinking, “Mom is actually really sick. I’m worried about Mom.” We hung up and life carried on. What I wouldn’t give to have lingered just a few minutes longer and shared a few extra words.

On the morning of the 29^th I woke up to “Secret Agent Man” coming from my phone and I knew that Dad was calling. What time is it? I picked up my phone and just barely missed his call. It’s 6:00 a.m. and Dad is trying to call me. I sat up in bed, my mind cleared, and my face dropped. Something is wrong. I listened to a voicemail in which Dad said, “Sarah, this is Dad,” followed by over 10 seconds of silence. I walked downstairs and as I started dialing I had the clear thought, “Dad is calling to tell me that my mom just died.”

I have seen my Dad tear up on particularly spiritual or moving occasions. I can count them on two hands. I wasn’t prepared to hear my dad sob over the phone. Learning about my mom, hearing the pain in my dad’s voice, letting him hear the pain and shock in my voice, it was the kind of phone call that gets logged in your memory bank. I’ll never forget my dad saying, “I’m so sorry I have to call and tell you this, Sarah.”

The hours that followed were a blur of deciding when I should go to Virginia and then getting ready to catch a plane from Atlanta that night. The week and a half that followed was full. Grieving, organizing, crying, processing, laughing, grieving, planning, traveling, joy, anger, and more grieving.

“My mom’s gone,” ran and runs through my head what feels like 100x a day. It’s the shock trying to process what’s happened.

Looking through old pictures that my mom brought down to my house to find ones that could be used in a slide show at her funeral. Mom was supposed to come down here in a few weeks and do this with me. Mom’s gone. She was supposed to be here to tell me the stories behind the pictures, but now she’s gone.

People on the shuttle with me on the way to Atlanta making small talk and asking where everyone was traveling. “Virginia,” came out, but other things filled my head. My mom’s gone. I lost her this morning. I’m going to Virginia because my mom’s gone.

My plane landing and for the first time ever since I left for college realizing that being in Virginia filled me with anxiety and dread instead of eagerness and excitement. I don’t want to be in Virginia anymore because it means that my Mom’s gone. Mom won’t be here to pick me up. This is real, my mom just died.

Talking to helpful people about plans and my mind going hazy as words like “funeral,” “hearse,” “viewing,” and “graveside” made my brain fog up. This is all for my mom. My mom’s  gone.

Going to church in my ward the day after Mom’s funeral and having to leave the Primary room for a breather outside. My mom’s gone. Yesterday I was at her beautiful funeral. My mom was buried yesterday.

Seeing a half eaten dark chocolate bar by her bed that she probably munched on while watching a documentary on Netflix while she was resting. Seeing her purse on the floor of her room, brushing my hands over her clothes in her closet, finding her sunglasses and reading glasses all over the house, her homemade chicken noodle soup in a mason jar on the kitchen counter, and her hair curlers on the floor of her bathroom. How many times have I seen her in those curlers? All the signs that life should have continued on like any other day. Mom’s gone.

The moments are numberless. I feel like my family and I are in an emotional marathon with no finish line. I don’t doubt that not a day will go by that Mommers doesn’t pass through our minds. That sounds sad or maybe even dismal, but once I embraced it, I realized it’s a beautiful truth. It’s painful and comforting at the same time. We will cherish Mom with a new depth because we understand what it’s like to be without her too soon. Our hearts will turn to our mother.

I’ve heard it said that an amputee will “feel” their missing limb tingle sometimes because their brain hasn’t adjusted to not having what was once there. I feel like my brain keeps looking for reasons why Mom is still here. My brain wants me to wake up from a long, deep-in-the-REM-cycle dream. I have to constantly shake the feeling that I can just reverse time. Again, insert “Mom’s gone,” on repeat in my mind all day.

It took me a long time to fall asleep that first night after she died. There was something about getting outside of the 24 hour time period since she had been alive that made me want to dig in my heels. I was afraid. My brain and my heart were looking for a way out. Falling asleep meant accepting that there was no reversing what had happened, there was only going forward.

The chorus of the children's “The Bear Hunt Song,” as I refer to it, runs through my head at moments like that. “Can’t go over it, can’t go under it, have to go through it.” It turns out that coping with death is the same as going on a bear hunt or delivering a baby. The only way out is through.

So, Heavenly Father, are you really there? Because I’m counting on you.

As a friend put it, recollecting losing his own mom at an early age, “sometimes you’ll just need to get down and ask, ‘Heavenly Father, this really is true, right? I really need to know that it’s true right now.’”

I’ve had moments like that. It’s so easy to get lost in “why,” “what if,” and “if only.” But then I remember several experiences around my mom’s death, particularly my family’s time in the temple two days after she died, and I know that I’ve been given an anchor in the storm. I have no doubt that Heavenly Father is aware of my family, that he hurts for us because of what we do not yet know, and that he expects us to keep walking forward one step at a time. “…What we know will always trump what we do not know. And remember, in this world, everyone is to walk by faith.” -Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, “Lord, I Believe.”

In the context of this quote from President Uchtdorf, I can even take comfort in the fact that I have had to repeatedly snuff out the hope of reversing Mom’s death, because it’s a sign that my eternal identity is shining through.

“In light of what we know about our eternal destiny, is it any wonder that whenever we face the bitter endings of life, they seem unacceptable to us? There seems to be something inside of us that resists endings. Why is this? Because we are made of the stuff of eternity. We are eternal beings, children of the Almighty God, whose name is Endless and who promises eternal blessings without number. Endings are not our destiny. The more we learn about the gospel of Jesus Christ, the more we realize that endings here in mortality are not endings at all. They are merely interruptions—temporary pauses that one-day will seem small compared to the eternal joy awaiting the faithful. How grateful I am to my Heavenly Father that in His plan there are no true endings, only everlasting beginnings.”

So even though I’m struck with the reality that “mom’s gone” all the time, really she’s just out of sight. Just barely out of reach, but there in her new beginning.

I love my mom. Heavenly Father loves my mom. This was more than a shock to my system, but I’m going to guess that when Mom passed to the other side there would have been every indication that this was planned and that she had been prepared for.

I also can’t help but think that those who are left behind get the short end of the stick. We are left with our limited vision of the future and with a river of grief thinking about all the years we have to now go through without Mom. “We believe all things, we hope all things,” but we have yet to experience all things, namely death. We have to walk by faith, but Mom now knows things by her experience that we won’t learn for a while.

I love the way Jean Valjean’s death is depicted in the newer Les Miserables movie. And my mom would have loved me referencing Les Mis, by the way. She’s the one that played it for me endlessly, who taught me the story, who pointed out the truly beautiful moments and lessons in it and she and my Dad took me to see it in New York City after I had been in love with it for years.

Those who are left are left with the grief of losing someone they love. Those who leave us are received by others that love them and taken to a place we can only imagine. I miss Mom a lot. That won’t go away and I’m glad, because my memories of her will be passed down to those that won't know her in mortality. Beauty rises from the ashes. Love you, Mommers.