Dear Mom 2.0

30 days after your death, I have questions, a dogwood tree weeps, and a scientist ancestor over-delivers.

Dear Mom—

In your last hours, you were comforted by a prayer of atonement.

I would have thought you’d prefer to lay your head to rest on a warm H&H bagel. To wash bygone mistakes down with a bitter swig of coffee, rather than away with a Lord you’d never even small-talked with. But your spirit had surprises up its capacious sleeves.

In the Jewish tradition, during these first 30 days of bereavement, we’re not supposed to cut our hair (check!), buy new clothes (check!) or attend social events (check!). My customary split ends and secondhand sweatpants did great. And paperless post invites to kid birthday parties just sat there, in-boxing, forgive me my RSVP sins.

Mourners are also encouraged to incant specific poems, our vitamin P. Stanzas that give shape to our pain, never daring diminish it. So the baby chanted mamamammama, a plagiarist taking the words right out of my mouth.

Mom, I lit all the Candles too, those beads of light in the aisle of a crashing airplane leading lucky passengers out. Though good luck to us remembering how many rows to the nearest exit when the cabin goes black! I’d be too busy cursing.

None of us had any idea your exit was so near.

Now we’ve supposedly rounded some bend in a prescribed mourning period. But instead, I feel worse. Also, it’s almost Mother’s Day, when mixed feelings come home to roost.

I’m getting barraged by emails assuring me this emotional potpourri is fine, fine, and would I like to buy some cookies, or opt out of these tender chocolate-chip moments? Mother’s Day can be hard. (And whoa to us stepmoms!)

Here’s what you can’t opt out of— loss.

Would that I could unsubscribe. But ever the teacher, you are now teaching me its bounty. 30 days is but an eighth of a teaspoon.

I remember you crying every Mother’s Day in my childhood. I both could and couldn’t understand. Was my card not awesome enough? Too awesome? Did the backyard dogwood tree in fat bloom make you feel less than, rather than more?

Or did you just miss your mom, decades later? She died on Mother’s Day in 1958, when you were 13, of a fast moving (now curable! Now!) cancer. Mean!

“Why are you crying, mama?” I would ask tentatively. Not understanding exactly how hard that question can be to answer.

Now I do.

Yesterday, Aria, 6, turned to me in her carseat on the highway. “Why are you crying?” She asked.

I shrugged.

“Are we in New York?” She asked.

Yes.

“What IS New York?”

Um.

“I never wanted Ema to die.”

Word.

“I wanted us to die at the same time!”

Girl, there are operas about that.

Ro, my 9 year-old, leaned forward to hear the podcast better. “Are you crying?”

I shrugged. Is the sky blue-ish?

“Why are they cutting funds to science? That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”

Yes.

“When people realise science is essential, they’ll have a lot of money to use!”

Um.

“When I’m your age—” hi, 45—“I’ll have known Ema only one-fifth of my life.”

Word.

“When you know someone your whole life, you just don’t believe they are not here. You can’t accept it.”

Boy, there are operas about that!

The podcast reported that pure science research into freak organisms, which could survive at unfathomably hot temperatures, led us to discover the sequencing required for PCR tests. (Remember covid?)

So scientific curiosity (for curiosity’s sake) brought about something not only deeply useful, but life-saving on a population level, a powerful public health tool.

Cuts to curiosity means not just misguided bragging rights to “efficiency,” but cuts to our life-spans. To our children’s. Maybe to their children’s— if we don’t turn this around. Yuck. Pancreatic cancer research? Bye!!!

Guillotine knowledge, and watch its head roll, wheeeeee, a hole in one in Mar-a-Lago’s splayed fake green. Mom, you would be disgusted, if you weren’t already returned to the stars. I caught myself starting to text you about it, the modern mourner’s cliche.

Your bottomless curiosity made you such a good friend, the perfect confidante. My high school friends called you “20-questions” because you always asked them about themselves- and listened.

I have way more than 20 questions about what it means to be a soul floating free in the universe, about what love and parenting feels like now.

Have you crossed paths with that trash we shot up beyond our atmosphere, just to see? Are humans the first space litterbugs? What did you possibly atone for? Is that like clearing your inner trash? Do I need to follow suit?

On Mother’s Day, I’m focusing on holding my children’s hands. Hearing what they are saying, and the question under their questions. I wish we could all be more free — and, sure, especially moms?— before death gives us no choice.

As a kid, terrified I’d share your past of losing a mother too young, I had a vision of your mom, my grandma, floating in a fat cloud outside my bedroom window. She was a smart, science-minded, trained pharmacist wish-granting genie of sorts. “Don’t let my mom die,” I prayed to the Cloud Gramma. “I’ll do anything!!!” (Hadn’t quite figured out the Terms & Conditions of anything).

And you know what? She stuck by me. She did not opt-out.

with heart,

SARA