Every year on October 12th, I wake up and the first thing that pops into my mind is the speech FDR gave after Pearl Harbor Day (which is ironic in it’s own right because December 7th happens to be my birthday).
However, there is seemingly nothing wrong with the 12th of October: the leaves are starting to change, it’s perfect sweater weather and football season is well into swing. Each year though, even without thinking about it, I will wake up and think, “a date which will live in infamy.”
The reasoning for this atypical thought is because tomorrow is the calendrical evidence that you are not here anymore. I despise that day.
Each year it never gets painless, although I do tend to process my emotions differently.
This year I am especially struggling with it because I haven’t visited you in awhile. The small collection of rocks accumulating on my dresser to put on your headstone serve as a constant reminder that I am missing you.
This summer, Dad told me of a conversation he had with one of his good friends about death. His friend’s father had just died and so he was pondering what happens when one dies; where does the soul go? When his friend looked at his dead father he realized that his body was simply a husk, and the soul — the emotional aspects which made him human and alive — were no longer there.
My dad told his friend that he doesn’t necessarily think that the soul goes anywhere — not necessarily up or down or around — but is rather remembered and carried on by individuals who have been touched by that person. I found this thought remarkable and it has brought a new light to the way I think about you being gone — not just today, but everyday.
Your soul is a part of me and I take it with me everywhere. I don’t need to think hard to remember you because you are here.
Daily, I find more of you. My sister told me at the beginning of the summer: “you are always trying to be like Mom.” Yes, I do admit that some of that is true. Nursing was for you, Mom. Most people don’t understand my reasoning for becoming a nurse if when I graduate I don’t want to practice. They don’t understand my need to complete nursing school as a way to find myself and find you within myself.
I go to clinical with your stethoscope engraved in your handwriting, “Shelly Kurren.” Whether it is doing similar jobs that you had done years ago, or seeing patients who were fighting cancer, there were days that I felt too much of you around: a much too visceral feeling that was equally terrible and relieving all at once.
Growing up I never fully understood why all of your passwords were your father’s initials or the stories you told of him. It never dawned on me that because you lost him when you were sixteen (the same age I lost you) that this was your way of keeping him alive and carrying him with you. Now I realize the genuine necessity of doing so.
Sometimes when I grow tired of signing my name on receipts, I’ll sign yours just to feel my hands outlining your name.
I listen to James Taylor just to hear you sing along. I bought a pair of shoes from the brand Born not just because they were cute but also because you had eight different pairs of shoes from them.
At the same time though, there are times that I do not intentionally try to be like you, rather it happens subconsciously. The times that I am called “Shelly” because my mannerisms are like yours. Once, your sister told me that when I was younger she joked to you that she was afraid I was going to hit her because I was so much like you.
We look identical in pictures — from candids to ones with one arm wrapped around a friend. Just like you, I mix up idioms all the time and just as you perfected ordering from a catalogue, I have perfected online shopping. When I wear your watch and your ring on the same hand and look down, I can see your hands. I find solace in Pittsburgh and places you once loved: driving through the tunnel onto the bridge into the city, I feel you around me. Dad often comments on things I say with, “You know who else loved that? Your mother.”
I try more and more to emulate you, especially in your stubborn and opinionated disposition.
The last time I was with family and we discussed something, we all agreed: you would have had an opinion and you would have made it clear — whether or not everyone else liked it or not.
You inspire me each day to decide what I want and figure out a way to get it. You called people on their bullshit and you were confident in yourself. I constantly think of the story of you quasi-stalking dad and telling him that he was “full of shit” when he contemplated breaking up with you. When I am worried about something or uncertain what I should do in a situation I breath in and think, “What would mom do?”
Perhaps tomorrow I will be trying a bit harder to be like you, but so what? You are fucking awesome. I love who I am and for the large portion of that I attribute to being like you, I couldn’t be happier.
People always say: “when I grow up I want to be just like my mom,” but I am learning that being you isn’t a destination, it’s a daily adventure. Tomorrow, even if it may be hard, I will find more of you. I will find pieces and like pennies on the ground I will pick them up and collect them in a little pile on my dresser, and for that mom, I feel incredibly, incredibly blessed.
