Purple Pedicure

Grief works in mysterious and non-linear ways.

 

Mary McCarthy

 

Adjusting to life without a mom is different for everyone- no matter how old you are when it happens. It’s an experience as unique as our fingerprints; the relationships we have with our moms and the circumstances of when or how they depart our lives aren’t the same for a single one of us, so they can’t be compared. Maybe that’s why it’s a markedly lonely experience. 

 

When Mom died (with less than a month between her brain cancer diagnosis and her death) in January, I was in executive function mode as the oldest daughter. For December through February, there were hospital visits, planning for dad to move to a home since she’d been his caretaker, cleaning out the home with their 60+ years of belongings. I ran like a hamster on a wheel (literally breaking my ankle doing it) between my home in Maryland and my native Pennsylvania, and I didn’t think or feel much, I just did. 

 

I hadn’t really spent much time crying in those three months. I did occasionally, but it was usually when I saw someone in my family hurting or grieving. There’s a type of compartmentalization when you’re in the driver’s seat: your brain is so busy doing the necessary things: writing the obituary, communicating with the funeral home, the landlady and the doctors.. emotion is not a luxury to indulge, even as your mother lay dying. In the good moments which were about ten percent of her time that wasn’t ravaged by the tumors so rapidly taking over her brain and consciousness, I was sure to do FaceTimes with my brothers or my dad so that they’d have those precious moments with her. In the meantime, I saw the often-terrifying other 90% of the time, when she was incoherent and restrained to the bed because she was a danger to herself or others, once attacking another patient. 

 

With those three months of doing and loss behind me, March arrived. My heart would apparently now like a word. I can’t stop crying. As a miniaturist, my club’s annual show is this weekend. Each year we prepare themed diorama-style pieces for a “people’s choice” contest at the show.  Last year I wrote about completing a miniature Hooper’s Store from Sesame Street. This year… well, I’ll write about my project next week. But as I’ve neared completing it in recent weeks, I wondered why it was making me sad. 

Then I realized: it’s because this is the first time I’m completing a project without being able to send a photo of it to my mom. At Christmas, I finished a miniature veterinary clinic for my veterinarian daughter and sent a photo of the project to my mom. In my life, she never really used the words “I’m proud of you.” I think in life we all need to hear this and I’ve always made an effort to say these words to my kids and even to friends. But I knew my mom, as an artist and fan of miniatures herself who decorated my first dollhouse with my grandmother, had an appreciation for the details in my work. In fact, usually she would make “suggestions for improvement” that I would hear as criticism, and that internal voice is one reason my work is as detailed as it is- I try to produce work that is highly detailed sufficient for the viewer to hopefully not say “this is so good, if only it had…..”

 

I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, an emotional regulation form of depression years ago as a result of my chaotic, dysfunctional and often abusive childhood. I’m working on a memoir to unpack my journey of healing: I began therapy the day I found out I was pregnant more than thirty years ago. There are so many touchpoints in my life, patterns, lessons, things along the way that have made it easier or harder for me simply to exist. 1 in 10 people with BPD take their lives and over 75% attempt. I’ve lost two siblings for a reason. BPD is not an easy path; it’s lonely by design— isolation is comfort and protection. There are very few people who are safe; most people are just opportunities to be hurt. Completing the memoir (along with a collection of essays I’m working on) is not a story of victimhood but of survival for me. 

 

I’m wearing worn purple nail polish from a pedicure that was too long ago, sometime when my mom was still alive. I need a pedicure. I never get purple, it’s not even a color I like. She never knew, will never know. But at the time I picked it for her. 

 

—Follow Mary McCarthy on Substack, Instagram & Bluesky.