Rowing Upstream

I moved to Toronto in early April 2004. I was so nervous about moving away to a city I’d only visited as a kid, let alone an entirely different province. My Mom was my biggest supporter, excited for me to start my new job and life. I’d been unhappy in Montreal, and when the opportunity arose to move to the Big Smoke, I couldn’t say no. And frankly, when I tried to say no and balked at the challenge of doing everything on my own and alone, she pushed me harder. She said “I will miss you so much, but I want this for you more than I want to keep you here for myself.”

And exactly 7 months and 20 days after I moved, she was diagnosed with terminal Cancer.

And I bet you, like a lot of people, are wondering why I didn’t just move back to Montreal to be with my Mom and my family.

I don’t mind if you wonder.

I would, however, mind if you judged my choice to stay in Toronto. Or any part of my journey and the choices I made the moment my Mom was diagnosed with Cancer. Not one decision was easily made. Not one decision was made alone.

When the Cancer was discovered in November 2004, I took the train home to be with my family and met with the Doctor overseeing my Mom’s file. After the Doctor left us to digest what we’d been told, I went over to my mother and put my head in her lap, crying as quietly as I could. After having cracked a few jokes, she stroked my hair and played with my curls the way she always did, picking out the springy ones she liked best. I choked out a whisper, telling her that I would move back, and she said “No, you won’t.  I love you, but I don’t want you to move home. You can love me and support me from Toronto, and you will come home when you can.”

I had a very hard time with this. I know she did too. I called her once I’d gotten back to Toronto, and told her I didn’t want to be so far from her. She said it would make her sad for me to give everything up to come back, and she wanted me to be happy. Still, the conversations continued for months. And every time I called her she pushed back, telling me she did not want me to move home. She was proud that I’d taken the steps towards independence, and didn’t want to hold me back. She sent me funny Hoops & Yoyo Hallmark eCards every week, telling me she loved me and how proud she was of me.

From November 2004 until March 2006, I went home to Montreal every other weekend. Any vacation I had earned was used to go home to my Mom. We would lie in her bed and watch Smack The Pony and laugh our heads off. We would nap together. We’d go to Tim Horton’s and share a cinnamon roll, each of our napkins piled high with raisins because we hated them.  When I couldn’t go home to visit because I was sick, I sent her care packages with cute shoes, coffee mugs, chocolate, etc…all the stuff she loved. And when her health took a drastic turn for the worse in March 2006, I left my job on compassionate care leave and went back to Montreal.

Recently, my Dad and I were talking about people not understanding what our loss felt like, or why we made the choices we made. In his gentle way, he let me know that he was surprised that some of the friends and family we were close with thought I should have moved back home and that I had made the wrong choice to stay in Toronto.  Clearly I didn’t love her if I lived 5 hours away.  

When I turned inward after my loss and suffered deeply in my grief, family members and friends of my mother would call me to instruct me how to be. I was often told in a roundabout way that I was being selfish and not taking care of my Dad and brother the way I should be. In the eyes of friends and family, nothing I did was right. Because it’s not how they would have done it.

In an earlier post, I wrote “Grief is like a fingerprint.” If you take anything from today’s post, let it be this: Nobody has the right to tell you how to mourn. There is no documented “right way”. There is the way that makes sense to you.

Whether you blog through the bereavement process like I do, write about it on Facebook, or document it on Twitter, you have to do what makes you feel whole again. Just because someone else wouldn’t have done it that way doesn’t mean it is the wrong way. Being judged by people who’ve never experienced loss or big trauma is almost forgivable because they come from a place of unawareness. When we don’t know, we judge. It is sadly a way of life. Walk my path, and then tell me what you would have done.

What angers me to the point of tears are those that have suffered loss and think that it is acceptable to judge others in the same boat because of how they choose to mourn their loss.

To those people I say this:

You, too, have lost someone.

You’ve lost your Mom or your Dad. Perhaps you’ve lost a sibling or a spouse. You’ve felt sadness, pain, confusion, frustration. You’ve cried real tears. Maybe you’ve become unable to sleep like a lot of us. Maybe you don’t like to talk about your loss. Maybe you’ve never actually dealt with it. But PLEASE, for the love of God, stop judging the ones that ARE dealing with it every single day.

If what we say bothers you, try this: Don’t read our blogs. Don’t read our Twitter posts. Don’t read our notes on Facebook. If you can’t handle it, then you can choose not to read it.

It is beyond unfair to judge someone who is in the exact same boat as you, just because they’re holding the oar differently. The boat is the same. The direction is the same: We are moving towards healing. Being uncomfortable with your own personal grief is not an acceptable reason to make someone feel like less of a person with less worth because of how they deal with theirs. And if you ever want to talk about your loss, we are all ears. You might be surprised to learn that even though you’ve judged us, we are here to support you. Because we get it.

To those of you reading this who have suffered loss and been judged for how you chose/are choosing to get through your grief:

Please never stop sharing. Your stories are not meant to be locked away. You can’t heal if you hide. The path to healing is a bumpy one, please be easy with yourself.

This post was inspired by my tea-time confidante, Lauren. The path you choose is yours to walk, and the journey is yours to share as you wish. Namasté.