My mother died when she was 40 years old. I turned 40 three months ago.
This one hits different, but for none of the reasons I would have expected.
I mean, none of us expected this pandemic, right? So that's a whole flavor to this in and of itself.
I actually grieved this anniversary harder around my birthday. I kept making the joke that it was so kind of the whole world to join me in my midlife existential crisis. Except, I wasn't having an existential crisis about being middle-aged. I was having a midlife crisis about living far longer than my mother ever got to.
Earlier in the year, when we were all young and innocent and under the illuison that plans were ours to make and that we had any control over the future, I was seriously stressing about how to celebrate my 40th birthday. I felt a lot of pressure to make it splashy in my usual way - get a villa in Italy, Southern France. I had so many friends also turning 40 this summer that I was actually anxious about my travel calendar (hahahahahahaha). And at the same time, I didn't want to celebrate it at all.
Living further than my mother felt almost tragic. I used to be very afraid that I would also die by age 40. But also I really wanted to live past 40. Living further than my mother felt both like liberation and a wrenching. It's painful to differentiate from your family, and in this case, if I also died young, there was a perverted logic that made me think, "Well, at least I'd be just like her."
But also, I didn't want to die. But also, I didn't know how to celebrate this milestone, for myself.
Luckily for me, the pandemic made things stark and clear. I posted up in my apartment during the grim months of March and April in New York. Travel was impossible. So in May, I held a huge party over Zoom, where people shared their favorite memories of times with me. I ate a really pink cake and drank expensive champagne and decorated my apartment in huge balloons. The next day, it looked like 20 people had partied in my home, but it had been just me, hosting a Zoom rager. I think part of what I liked about it is that it felt like a wedding or a funeral. It had been 8 hours of walking down memory lane.
It also felt a little like a superpower, to live further than my mother, and survive in the epicenter of a pandemic at the same time. My superpower is that I followed public health guidelines from Big Daddy Cuomo and was happy to wear a nightgown and read Ice Planet Barbarians for weeks on end. These are not the survival skils the books told me I would need, but they worked.
So here we are at Dead Mom Day. I have officially outlived my mother.
It doesn't feel as traumatizing as I worried it might. In another year, if America's democracy weren't on fire and we hadn't lost over 180,000 American lives, and people weren't marching in the streets for their right to live, maybe I'd have more emotional energy to spend on my own personal tragedy. Except I don't have the luxury of only paying attention to my feelings for only one day a year. If I want to live, I have to pay attention to them all of the time.
That's another lesson of the pandemic. We cannot abandon ourselves. It became very clear to me that, as a woman who lived alone while 20,000 people died in her city, my only responsibility is to survive. To keep myself healthy, as best as I can, in mind, body and spirit. This has meant some hard choices, like staying away from my family in Hawai'i, missing the birth of my nephew. It's also meant seeking various forms of help for my anxiety, setting and communicating boundaries, watching my salt, sugar, and booze intake, paying attention to the people and things that make me feel nourished.
This Dead Mom Day, social media is filled with tributes to Princess Diana. But I am thinking of Prince Harry. I know Harry and Meghan's departure from being working royals was controversial. I think it's brilliant. I think for all that Princess Diana struggled with her mental health, she raised children who take their mental health seriously. I love that Harry and Meghan were in a situation that was untenable, and they said, "No more." Boundaries are hot. Most of all, I love that they have a more expansive vision for their role in the world.
That's my wish for myself, for the next 40 years. A more expansive vision for my role in the world. I mean, I'm not dying of cancer at age 40, I am surviving a pandemic and I swam in the Hudson River and did not require antibiotics after it. WHAT CAN'T I DO NOW????
This Dead Mom Day I started a new tradition. Mele and I made our mom's French roll-up pancakes together over Facetime. They were delicious, just like we remembered. I wanted to feel "together" with my sister, and we made it happen.
I couldn't find any photos of my mom when she turned 40. I don't think we took any, because she was so sick. But here is a photo of me, Mele and my mom. My mom is 39 and sending us to summer camp. I'm standing in front of her so the camera doesn't catch the cane she's leaning on. I am 10 years old. The next year I will turn 11 and my mom will turn 40. The year after that, I'll turn 12, and 13, and 14, and so on until now, when I turn 40 and wear a sparkly jumpsuit and keep on living, and keep on living, and keep on living.
And my 41st birthday party will be a real rager.
