The Thread

The Thread


41 years ago tomorrow my mom died. There is always a thread of that loss that weaves its way through me. It isn’t the fabric of my life’s apparel. It was for a time. No more.

But January 20 remains a marker of survival: a mother who couldn’t, a family who could.

Today the strangest thing happened. My precious Halpert and I decided to make a swing by the cemetery and say “hideedo” to our people (I drove), and just as I turned in, one of my dearest friends texted to tell me her mom has just died. I stopped the car. And I began to survey the losses sustained by the people I love: in the last few years, two of my soulmates have lost their dads, one a mom, another friend a dad, and one friend has lost both parents, and now this. “We aren’t going to weddings any more,” Beth said, as we went on our (near) daily walk through her neighborhood after I stood over Mom’s grave and cried the tears that flow without provocation. It just happens.

As a child, I was the only one with a dead parent. I wasn’t proud of it. Don’t get me wrong. But it made me different. I knew that.

Now my friends are joining the club to which no one wants a membership. Their pain is different than mine: they knew these parents, and these parents raised them. Pain is pain. And it is acute and fades not slowly. We need each other when there is pain, and when there isn’t.

Loss is wretched. Anticipating it, experiencing it, regretting it, and mourning it are not for the faint of heart. Nor is this blog post, I suppose. To my people, though, who suffer loss (and that is us one and all), the congruent truth is just as Mr. Rogers described when horror strikes: “look for the helpers.”

I have been surrounded by the void-filling, giving helpers every day since January 20, 1979. That’s the anniversary: 41 years of life’s fabric woven by the helpers.

Many, many thanks to you all. In the vast hereafter, Grace Ann Rowe thanks you, too. Of that, I am sure.