April is never a happy month for me. The Anniversary looms overhead, and I carry the weight of memories around my body like ropes which can never be unknotted. Even on the most beautiful days, the days when the weather is cool and the sky is crisp, where everything feels possible in the glint of the spring light, I carry those ropes. They tangle around my legs and weigh down my limbs and trap me in the shade.

Some years, I wrangle with the ropes, hoisting them on my shoulders and finding a path forward. Last year, I rechristened the blog’s anniversary to celebrate my mom’s life rather than the tragic way it ended. There was a triumph in that, a victory against the ropes. Then there are years like this where the heft of what I carry squeezes and suffocates me.

This year may not have been so burdensome had I not spent over half the month nursing Lord Rayden all while believing he may pass soon. He and his now departed brother Einstein bounded into my life six months after my mom’s death fourteen years ago. They filled in the gaping, bloody holes of my heart, punctured by the loss of her and my grandmother, with chunks of their own. Maybe I was supposed to heal those wounds without them. Maybe that would make losing them less painful.

While I ran errands, Rayden injured his lower back and hips. I don’t know how, but he couldn’t manipulate his back legs and had to be carried everywhere, something he usually treats with disdain. There was a weekend where I curled around him in bed and stroked his head and told him how much I loved him. It reminded me of April 21, 2009. The last words I know my mother heard me say were “Have a good night’s sleep mom. I love you.”

Fortunately, he recovered from his injury although he has arthritis and hip dysplasia setting into his old bones. He is not as spry as his puppy days, but he is still my lovable, goofball. The stress of his injury taxed my immune system, and shortly after he recovered, I contracted the latest Covid variant. The worst of the illness coincided with The Anniversary.

In the dark hours on the morning of the 22nd, I awoke burning with fever. I boiled from the inside, my fever so high I was disoriented and uncoordinated. My legs were unsteady when I walked, and I clutched the walls for balance. The color of ripe tomatoes flushed across my cheeks, and the skin burned as if I spent too long in the sun.

Anxiety and depression swarmed my mind as I lay prone in bed, a cold rag over my face with wave after wave of nausea crashing into me. I made the mistake of checking Facebook. In my feed, I saw a post “Things you like about your ex,” a surefire troll super magnet question designed to illicit the worst in people. My biological father responded publicly. The thing he liked best about my mom? “She’s dead.” I’m sure he thought it was witty and clever and hilarious and all the things my mother was and he isn’t.

It bothered me more than I expected. Over time, my emotions and I became neighbors with good fences. I see them and nod, but I maintain the fence and wave from a safe distance. Years of blow after blow, of finding space to carry another rope now knotted into the others, of exhaustion, and of devastation, sundered my tears and replaced them with heavy silence. I manage the errant lip quiver when watching Call the Midwife, but I’ve lived next to those negative feelings so long with fences so tall that I could not connect with my neighbor anymore.

This Anniversary, however, I crept into the bathroom, turned on the faucet, and bawled.

I sobbed in that breathless way where you’re less crying and more shrieking at the pain, where you rock back and forth, grinding your palms into your eyes. Why wasn’t she here? How come I couldn’t I crawl into her arms and let her rub my head and reassure me that things would get better? Where was her infuriating list of practical solutions when all I wanted was to vent?   

When I calmed down, I walked outside and sat in the cold iron chairs, watching as the sun crested over the tree line, mocking me with its warmth and brightness. My face was covered in blotches, and my eyes were red and burning like the fever under my skin. In the bathroom, I missed her for the ways she made me feel better, the ways she comforted me and soothed me when I was at my worst.

Outside in the early morning when she would already be on her second cup of coffee, I missed her for all the ways she was a part of my life—the way she never allowed my brother or me to say we were bored without producing a list of things to do, like she had been waiting for days to force us to weed her sunflowers or clean the car. I missed how every morning I woke up she would be gratingly cheerful to antagonize me, knowing how much I hated it. “Good morning, sunshine. It’s time for your perky lessons,” she said in a sing-song voice laced with deviousness.

I missed how she’d walk by the couch when I was working and scratch my head to “stimulate my scalp.” Or how we’d camp out on her bed and watch HGTV marathons, which led to hours long shopping expeditions in JoAnn’s fabrics or an explosion of Behr paint swatches across the house. We must have repainted the rooms every three years. We’d go thrift shopping and refinish furniture. One Christmas, we made pillows and chair covers and fabric Christmas trees in terracotta pots.

But the thing I missed the most was how happy I thought she would be here, how much I thought she’d love the way people greeted each other and built a sense of a community. I missed that she couldn’t see the store, or better yet, been a part of it. She was the personification of warmth, a glowing light that drew people in with her kindness and openness. I missed being able to share the shop with her, to grow it together. I missed that she couldn’t go to the lake during the summer or fish in the nearby park. I missed that she missed a chance to be happy, to start fresh and build a new life here.

That’s the thing about how I miss my mom. I miss her presence. There’s always a shadow where she should be standing, and I miss the life she could have had, the life we could have had as a family. That loss, the loss of her future and our future, wrapped those ropes around me so tight I couldn’t breathe. The knots swallowed me and rubbed the nerves raw, and I felt more alone than I ever have. I wanted to scream if only so someone knew I was still here.

Then I remembered. I remembered what she always told me: I’ll always be there, three steps behind and a little to the left. My chest relaxed, and I took the first deep inhale since the tears started. I smiled. I smiled because I could almost feel her then, her hand on my left shoulder, reminding me where she was and always would be. I felt the grip of the ropes loosen and a few fall away. Finally, I could feel the sun on my face in April.

That is why I was absent for the month. I didn’t feel like celebrating a year of working on the blog when I was crippled by sorrow. But I am proud of my accomplishment. I am proud of what I hope to achieve here, and I know she would be too. No one was as proud of her kids as my mom, and that’s one of the many things about her I cling to and cherish. Happy anniversary to us! We’re still here. We’re still standing. We’re in the light.