By: Kathleen Glasgow
I lost my mom unexpectedly 4 years ago. Every unspoken thought, every emotion I couldn’t name or couldn’t face, every fear and anxiety unvoiced all came floating to the surface for me in this book. I can’t remember a time when I’ve highlighted or annotated so much. In fact, I’ve never annotated any book I’ve ever read outside of for a class.
It was for these very reasons I found myself unable to turn the page yet I couldn’t stop myself from reading on. Kathleen Glasgow reached into my heart, took all my grief and allowed it to manifest in this story. Oddly enough, and without planning it, I read this just around the time of the anniversary of losing my mother.
A few highlights resonated with me:
“I don’t understand how things keep going when she has just stopped.”
The weirdest thing in the world to me was driving home from the hospital and not really understanding how no one else was affected by this but my family. For everyone else, it was just a regular, every day Friday and they were doing what they’d always done. For me, however, my whole world just shut down.
“I want to hurt everyone right now. I want to break things so the world looks like how I feel inside…”
I remember going to Kohl’s to buy a blouse for Mom to wear to her funeral. The lovely cashier told me to have a wonderful day. I remember fighting the urge to punch her in the face. My mother just died. And she wasn’t supposed to so I wasn’t sure how I was going to have a good day, good week, good month, good year, good life. Of course, I gave a weak smile, took my bag and left.
“I need my mother to come get me, to save me from the fast that my mother is dead.”
This is one of those gold nuggets I knew I felt in the earliest stages of grief but didn’t have words until I read this book. I prayed for this many times. It’s the only prayer that was never answered.
And then there’s….
“I miss my mother so much right now it’s loud inside me, like the worst thunder, the kind the shakes the windows, shoves the side of your house, makes you feel unsafe.”
It took two solid years and moving closer to family before I finally felt safe again. It’s a new experience for me. Only when I felt safe was I able to begin to heal.
I almost feel like this should be required reading for anyone who has lost something, especially unexpectedly. Grief is long and terrible and deep and painful and has its own timeline. You cannot rush it, push it, skip over it or wish it away. It is inevitable. It will let you know when it’s done with you. And those who’ve never lost someone cannot and will not ever understand this.
This book is deep and so very personal. And I’m so thankful to Ms. Glasgow for sharing it with the world and with me.
My rating: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star:
Faith Love n Joy 