one month without mom

the grief is never-ending but let's throw a dinner party, shall we?

There’s a fresh layer of snow outside our Pittsburgh apartment, three days into the new year. The portly fir tree outside our apartment balcony appears to be flaunting a white petticoat. This is not relevant, but it is something I find beautiful and lovely, and these days, that means it matters. My husband and I are tidying up the place for our first dinner party of the year tonight—just our cousins, a couple of pizzas, and guaranteed laughs. George Strait pours from our speakers, lemongrass scented cleaner mingles in the air with a gingerbread candle, and I’m going to be okay.

My mom died one month ago today.

She was only 63. No preexisting health conditions, no medications, always on her feet. But on the morning of December 2, 2024, she had a massive intracerebral hemorrhage—an “unsurvivable” stroke—and was pronounced dead the following day. There was no pain, the neurologist had said, it’s as if she just fell asleep in the ambulance and never woke up. My vibrant, bubbly, Energizer bunny mom: gone in a day’s time.

She wasn’t just my mom, though. She was my lifeline. For years we were inseparable, attached at the hip with matching haircuts and twin smiles, always side-by-side. It likely screamed codependency to the rest of the world, but we were happiest that way: a recognizable pair to all who knew us, Mylene and mini-Mylene.

When I moved to Pennsylvania after getting married this past June, we’d FaceTime multiple times a day. We’d do laundry together virtually, sorting our own lights and darks across 200 miles, leaving nothing unsaid. She’d watch me cook dinner, laugh at my lack of natural housekeeping skills, and give me her tried-and-true tips. She’d coo at the dog, her glorified grandchild—Who’s the most handsome boy? Luigi!!!!!—who’d grin back at her through the screen. She was everyone’s favorite, and then she was gone.

My memories of that first week of December, and December in general, are hazy. I remember it in short, painfully vivid bursts: the unnatural shakiness in my dad’s voice on the early morning phone call that woke Andrew and me up, buying an expensive last-minute plane ticket on the way to the airport, stumbling through TSA and crying to every security officer, I’m sorry I forgot to take off my shoes. I’m sorry I forgot to dump out my water bottle. My mom is dying. She had a stroke. I need to get there. I need to make it before she goes.

I remember feeling absolutely nothing the whole flight to D.C., formerly unheard of for me, as someone who usually has rolling panic attacks in the sky. This time: nothing. Just, Mommy, I’m coming. Hold on for just a bit longer. I remember my cousin driving me to the hospital, the same one where my grandmother died just two years prior, how we both sobbed the whole way there. And when we got to the ICU ward, seeing my relatives and everyone my mother worked with at our church filing out of her room to make room for me. Locking eyes with each visitor, pulling my hair out in fistfuls, screaming my own incantation: THIS ISN’T REAL. THIS ISN’T REAL. THIS ISN’T REAL.

But it was real. I spent the whole month of December pinching myself, waiting for the moment I’d finally wake up and call her in cold sweat like I usually did when I had a particularly gruesome nightmare. Anak, try not to nap for so long, she’d tell me. Set an alarm next time.

Even during her viewing and funeral Mass, nearly one thousand people paying their respects to the woman who never met a stranger she couldn’t love, I was still waiting to wake up. I waited to wake up through our dog’s tragic death just three weeks after hers. I waited to wake up through Christmas and New Year’s, both Dad and I finding it near impossible to celebrate in the oppressive clutches of grief. And I’m here now, writing this, still waiting to wake up even though I’ve accepted I probably won’t.

I miss my mom. I miss her tiny hands and girlish laughter and orthopedic sneakers. I miss drinking jasmine green tea with her after every meal and thrifting—our favorite pastime!—for hours. I miss knowing she was a phone call away. I miss everything about her that when I muster up enough courage to look at photos of her, I feel everything: rage, envy, confusion, denial, and fierce love.

As I wait for our guests to arrive, I am thinking of the last time she and I were here in my cramped apartment dining room. It was my 25th birthday, November 10, less than a month before she died. Andrew and Dad were in the kitchen while she took photos of me with my digital camera for her Instagram post later that night. Her birthday posts were the sweetest. We had grocery store chocolate cake, my favorite cheap pinot grigio, Andrew’s famous brown sugar-coated salmon. She made sure to frame the shots with my Lego flower bouquets and giant IKEA teddy bear. She knew what I loved, what made me glow, exactly how to capture me.

This kind of grief is not survivable, but for her, I will.

I’m going to be okay.

My giggly photographer, setting up the shot.

Myself, through her eyes.

In loving memory of my mother, Mylene Soriano Garcia, 07.04.1961 - 12.03.2024

https://www.millerfuneralhome.net/obituaries/Mylene-Mhy-Garcia-2/#!/Obituary