May is a complicated month for me. Yes, it carries all of the chaos and busyness it does for all other parents – field day volunteer shifts and final exam study sessions and awards day ceremonies and huge bags of artwork with flaking paint and all the prodigal water bottles and hoodies returning home in triumph. It is a time to reflect on how much my kids have grown – physically and emotionally – throughout the year. There are graduation parties and Jazz Fest crawfish boils and Mother’s Day brunches to attend.
But it’s also the month where I buy memorial candles in bulk.
My mother died five years ago on May 4; my husband’s brother died 35 years ago on May 19; my sister died 16 years ago on May 22; and not quite making the calendar month but still within a 30-day span, my brother died 38 years ago on June 2.
I’ve been through enough loss at this point that I know that death anniversaries are not necessarily any worse than any other day. Yes, I am sad on May 4 – but I’m also sad on a random Tuesday afternoon when I want to reach for the phone and call my mom. She isn’t any more gone on May 4 than she is on any other day.
And in fact, my mom used to say just that: When we couldn’t get our shit together enough to celebrate a holiday or any other milestone, she would laugh and say, “It’s just a day! No big deal!”
Somehow, though, all of those anniversaries coming one right after another – boom, boom, boom, boom – just make it all feel overwhelmingly sad in a cumulative way. By the time the end of the month rolls around, I’m worn out.
But! Not so fast!
Because my beloved younger daughter has her birthday right then, on May 30, injecting some much-needed joy and hope and fun into the bleak stretch of sad days. And I don’t know about your kids, but for my kids, birthdays are meant to be celebrated. For my kids, it’s definitely not “just a day” as my mom said.
And honestly, thank God for Georgia because in a month where we would otherwise be lighting nothing but memorial candles, instead we are also lighting birthday candles. We are visiting gravesites and also discussing cake flavors. We are flipping through old photos and crying and also planning a picnic in the park.
That’s life, I am realizing as I enter more fully into middle age. It’s all of it, all the time, everywhere. Joy and sadness, celebration and loss – they aren’t opposites so much as bickering bedfellows. And along with them comes a heaping helping of the mundane: work meetings and registration forms and grocery store trips and trying to find out if your kid signed you up to bring cookies or chips to the year-end potluck at school. Rarely do I get to be just one thing; you can’t make it this far in life without a mingling of emotions. I am in mourning and buying LaCroix. I am missing my sister and mixing up brownie batter. I am standing at awards day with tears in my eyes, unable to say for sure whether they are about pride for my kid, the inexorable march of time, all of the people who aren’t here to see it, or all of the above.
I am not at peace. I am not in active grief. I am not rending my garments, but I also am never far from the weight of loss. I have folded it into myself and grown around it, and now I am another year deeper into it.
Still sad. Still happy. But most of all – still here.
