Happy Dead Mom Day #20

Happy Dead Mom Day!

Our dead mom has been dead for 20 years. That means our dead mom has been a dead mom for half as long as she was a living mom. Whoa! Our dead mom is way dead.

So, what did we do this dead mom day? Well, Mele texted me to ask if I knew that Princess Diana's dead mom day is the same as our dead mom day. Of course I know that! I remember because I was at one of my high school dance's thinking, This is totally weird that my dead mom has been dead for 6 years and I'm at a dance and [Fartface v. 1997] won't ask me to slow dance! Then someone said, OMG Princess Diana just died! And then I was sad because I kind of thought of our dead mom as being the same as Princess Diana, and now there were two dead moms, and I didn't have William or Harry's phone number to tell them that my dead mom would look out for their dead mom.

See, when our dead mom was a living mom, she and I talked about Princess Diana a lot. Actually, they looked very similar - dark blond hair, big blue eyes, ability to wear a tiara on Tuesdays, etc. One time, my mom bought me a box of chocolate-covered cherries at the grocery store because she'd read that Princess Diana liked them too. It just so happens that someone had brought me a box of chocolate-covered cherries a few days before our mom died. After my step-dad woke me up to tell me that our mom had died, I remember picking up the box of chocolate-covered cherries and eating a lot of them, and feeling comforted that at least, in my darkest hours, I could stress-eat just like Princess Diana. That is sad and gross, but so is having a dead mom, and I can narrate the E! True Hollywood story of my life as it happens to me however I want to. Anyway, to re-cap, our dead mom looks like Princess Diana, our dead mom gave me Princess Di's favorite candy, and then, a few years later, I met Prince William in a pub and he hit on my best friend, and then Prince William married Kate Middleton just a 2 days before my birthday, and on my birthday I wore a Zac Posen for Target dress, and if my dead mom were a living mom, she would totally wear a knockoff of whatever Zac Posen dress Princess Di was wearing, if Princess Di were a living princess and not a dead princess. And then, on my birthday, Osama Bin Laden became a dead terrorist instead of a living terrorist, and we still don't know who killed Princess Diana, so you see, IT'S ALL RELATED! Kind of.

Anyway, back to how we celebrated our 20th Dead Mom Day. Well, Mele hasn't done anything yet. She's busy finishing work so she can go on vacation and visit me and see my big aerial silks performance, celebrating the end of my one-year challenge to learn aerial silks. What did I do for this Dead Mom Day? Well, you'll never believe it, but Apple gave me a new iPhone! Just for having a dead mom! I know! It's great, right? Just kidding. They didn't give me a new iPhone because I have a dead mom, they gave me a new iPhone because the first one they gave me was a piece of crap and it was broken, and pretty soon I was gonna have a dead iPhone and a dead mom. Phew! Glad we avoided that tragedy!

But in all seriousness, Mele and I keep wondering how we should mark these dead mom days. Should we make a bucket list and cross something off each year? Should we run marathons for breast cancer (ha!)? Should we get a mammogram so we don't become dead moms too? (Too late, I had my mammogram in April.) Or do we dress up really fancy and do fancy things, because our dead mom was way fancy, and our dead grandma was even fancier, and Princess Diana was the absolute fanciest, and their cocktail party in heaven is absolutely hopping today, so maybe we should try to replicate some of that back here on Earth? Or do we just keep on doing our thing, being awesome, loving our dead mom and living large? Just because we've got a dead mom doesn't mean we have to live like we have a dead mom, right? Happiness and sadness are two sides of the same coin, and I like to save all my change and cash it in for mani-pedis and prosecco.

p.s. This weekend I was in a gay wedding. My dead mom would have really liked my glittery bridesmaid shoes. Dead Moms for Marriage Equality!

How to Have an Adult Relationship with Your Dead Mom

I don't know how old you were when your mom died, but I was eleven. Here are some of the things I have experienced (directly or indirectly) since she passed: flat irons, chocolate croissants, menstruation, eternal bridesmaid-hood, abortion, Kentucky Derby hats, voting, happy hours, iPhones, watching someone you love marry another, vomiting into a plastic bag in the back of a cab, pot brownies, attempted suicide, war, George Bush, 9/11, phone calls from boot camp, opening nights, first kisses, helicopters, glitter eyeliner, the Internet, personal trainers, Barack Obama's presidential campaign, birthday parades, sex changes, college diplomas, miscarriages, scrunchies, BumpIts, strapless bras, Spanx, Paris, France and Iowa City, Sarah Kane and Stephen King, sex in all kinds of forms I wasn't supposed to ever know about, bosses with multiple personality disorders, Prince William, houses sold, houses bought, companies started, companies lost, gay boyfriends, brunch, 1000-thread count sheets, hangovers, coffee, Forever 21, godchildren, W-2's, fame, glory, disappointment, transcendence, heartbreak and a three-day juice cleanse. Point being, there's been some things we could have talked about in the past 20 years. That's the thing about being an adult with a dead mother - no matter how many times you program a random 1-800 number into your phone and name the entry "Mom," you'll never reach her. But it's Mother's Day, and rather than pump a bunch of narcotics into your veins or whine into your bourbon, you could just be a grown up about it. From me to you - because we all sometimes feel like a motherless child but only some of us can claim the honor - here are a few tips on acting like a grown up around your dead mom.

1) Get Over Yourself. You're still alive, aren't you? Chances are, quite a few people made sure you stayed that way. Don't be a whiny nincompoop and throw away the good efforts of other good people. You probably have a step-mother, a godmother, an aunt, some lesbians you met in college, or just a very earnest father looking out for you. If these people want to be your mother, let them. You can never have enough people waiting up for you with hot chili, or making sure you cut the price tag off of your dress. Whining would just make you ungrateful. Go tell one of your living mothers that you love them. Just because they didn't breastfeed you doesn't mean they wouldn't bail you out of jail or a steep bar tab. Get over yourself, and go love the one you're with.

2) Deal With It. Write a letter, start a secret blog with your sister, invade a southern country. Just do what you have to do to honor your feelings. It sucks having a dead mom. Sometimes you will miss her. Sometimes you will miss feeling like you missed her. Sometimes listening to your friends complaining about their meddling moms will make you want to slap them in the face. Sometimes going to work with a mean hangover and being thankful that you don't have a mom to call you and ask about it makes you want to slap yourself in the face. Sometimes you will want to wear her perfume and hope strangers accidentally call you by her name. This is all okay. Just do what you have to do to get through it, and don't hurt anyone else in the process. Remember, it's no one's fault that you have a dead mom, but it's everyone's fault that someone else bought the last individual Haagen Dazs Dulce de Leche. What were people thinking??? Don't they know you have a dead mom????!!!! People can be so insensitive.

3) Forgive Her. She was only human, you know, and all of us have to go sometime. No one meant to leave you, and no one sets out to have a child just to leave them alone. You think you've made some mistakes - try dying on your kid! That's not something you would write in a time capsule for yourself: "Have kid, then die on them." Shit happened, and it just so happened to your mom. Have a little compassion for your mother. She loves you, no matter if it's from really, really, metaphysically afar.

Okay, that's all I got. Took me twenty years to learn this stuff, too. The only other thing I can offer is that, just because it sucks that your mom died, doesn't mean the rest of your life has to suck too. May there be more glitter eyeliner than hangovers in your future. May you have deep, existential conversations with one of your living mothers. May the brim of your Kentucky Derby hat grow wide and the distance between your heartbreaks grow long. May you live so far in time that having a dead mom becomes not about having a relationship with an absence, but having a relationship with all the ways you grew into that empty space. If all else fails, have some ice cream. None of those fuckers with moms can judge you for it.