Homegrown Grief

On moving into somewhere new and moving forward with big life things after loss.

Big thanks to COROS for supporting Trail Mix. I turned into a big COROS fan when I had to get a watch for my PCT run and needed something with a battery that could hang for such long, long, long days on trail. And holy moly, COROS batteries can hang. I have the APEX and dig it and its battery life very, very much.

When we walked into the house in the southeast hills with our first load of furniture, it was easy to imagine turning it into a home we’ll love.

Dilly immediately ran over to the window that swallows an entire wall of the living room and popped his paws up on the white sill. His tail wagged like a chaotic wiffle bat as he scanned the field across the street and looked out at the dogs and people romping around outside.

“He might spend 25 percent of the rest of his life looking out that thing,” Ian joked-but-not-joked.

I laughed at Dilly and pictured our overstuffed chair on one side of the window and our big green couch on the other – surrounded by my jungle of houseplants. The room is bright and airy and has plenty of space to cozy up with a cup of coffee and bask in the light that floods the room as the sun rises over the fir trees outside.

The house is far from a picture-perfect home – it was built in 1963 and has retained many flavors of the ‘70s – a gold plated fireplace, two-prong outlets, wood-paneling on one single wall in the living room. The dryer has to be opened with a knife and the handle falls off the oven whenever you touch it.

But it’s so good for us in so many of the ways that make us happy – it has a huge backyard full of berries and rose bushes and one very rowdy bamboo tree, it has a fireplace for cold, rainy days and that feels more important than how dated its plating might be, and it’s within a mile of multiple trailheads – the running options from the front door are overwhelming in the most exciting way. And Dilly is obsessed with that window. It’s like HBO for pickle puppies.

We can’t stop running and bounding from room-to-room from berry-bush-to-bamboo-tree, squealing about how excited we are to be moving into our new house.

And I can’t stop thinking about how my mom will never see it.

One of the hardest parts of loss has been living through the new things that my mom will never know. The big milestones and huge life changes. The hard stuff where all I want is to feel her comfort and love, and the amazing and exciting things that I just want to share with her. The things that my mom would be integrally connected to before cancer ripped her away.

I’ve felt the sting of my mom’s absence through so much since she passed away last January. Adopting Dilly. Losing my sister-in-law. Losing Brutus. Publishing new writing. Working on a book proposal. Making new friends. Enduring the pandemic. Running the Oregon PCT.

Those last steps across the Bridge of the Gods were full of so much joy and beautiful support – and so much cutting pain because all I wanted to do was to call my mom and tell her all about it.

If my mom had been around for the process of finding and buying this house, she would have been the first person I texted after every showing. The first person I called to celebrate after our offer was accepted. The person I could count on caring about silly little things like where Dilly would take snuggly naps or where I could run from the front door – because if I cared about them, she cared about them. We were only able to get this house with the assistance of a familial loan and I know she would’ve wanted to help, too – and then immediately come out to Eugene to see it for herself.

“Will I like walking around the neighborhood?” she would ask, after she was done churning through all of the motherly questions, like “How much is your monthly payment? Have you figured out insurance? Do you have enough saved up for emergencies?”

“There’s a bagel place just five blocks away!” I would squeal into the phone, much more eager to discuss things like baked goods than lawn maintenance. And I would be able to sense her on the other side of the line, planning a morning stroll to fetch a poppy seed bagel that she would eat on the deck while reading her book-of-the-day.

My mom loved to visit me in Eugene. It was not an easy trip to make from a small town in Vermont to a small city in Oregon. It usually entailed at least three different planes and 16.5 hours of travel. But my mom would excitedly do it anyway. And fill the time with frequent facebook updates about how much closer she was getting to Eugene – and to me.

“Four hours until I see my girl!” she’d type, beneath a blurry photo of an airport gate and with many exclamation points punctuating her travelogue. And I just know that going to see her girl in her new house would’ve earned some extra excited punctuation.

When the pandemic hit, my therapist asked me what my mom would think about all of the various elements of the covid chaos: the shutdowns, the closing of schools, the fear of the virus.

I would stare at the screen after each question and stutter through some fumbling barebones response. I didn’t know how my mom would feel about all of it. The pandemic has been such a huge departure from any reality we’ve ever known and it feels impossible to predict how my mom would have experienced so much of it.  And it tortured me that I felt a little lost trying to guess. It was an extra gut punch of grief.

And it made me appreciate the ways I can still feel my mom through all of the big life stuff that makes me miss her so much.

When I publish a new piece of writing, I can imagine her plastering her pride all over facebook – bombarding the internet with her motherly love. When I was running the PCT, I could feel her anxiously refreshing my tracker every five minutes and bursting with giddiness when I finished. When I lost Brutus, I could feel her hurting alongside me and when I adopted Dilly, I knew she would call him my “sweetheart” and request puppy pictures every day. And when I decided to write a book proposal, I knew that no one would have more faith in my ability to publish that book than my mother.

My mom left me with such a deep legacy of love and memories that it’s easy to imagine the ways she would be there through so much. It doesn’t erase the pain of her absence, but there’s some comfort in being able to feel her with me as life keeps moving forward without her. To be able to keep her close as I embrace new things that she’ll never know – new people, new goals, new puppies, new places.

When I walked into the house after my run yesterday, I looked out at the back deck and I thought about how much my mom would love that deck. I can’t stop thinking about how much she would love everything here. And how much it hurts that she will never get to see my house in the hills. It bowls me over with longing. All I want is to have her fly out and be here with me.

As I looked out at the deck, it was easy to imagine her there – in Keen sandals and loose capris. A book folded across her lap. A poppy seed bagel propped up on the arm of the bright blue adirondak chair. Her shoulders relaxed with the contentment of being at my home in Eugene and her steps around the yard a little extra bouncy with her excitement to be together.

When my mother got really excited, she would tell you all about it. Her quiet smile would stretch into dimples and her hugs got a little giddier. When I looked out at the deck, I could picture her getting up and bouncing around the yard with a silly grin. I could hear her say, “I just love it here, Emily. I’m so happy for you!” Her words a little faster and punctuated with as much excitement as an airport update. She would bounce over to me next and slide her arm around my shoulder to pull me in for a giddy hug. I could close my eyes and see her excitement. I could feel it.

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