N.K. Murray

I had this whole thing written out in my head. Talking about how 24 days ago, I was finishing up a 7-day bike ride across New York State. Talking about 7 years ago today, I was saying good-bye to my mom.

But I’ve said this all before. I’ve screamed it. I’ve cried it. Nothing and everything has changed in these past 7 years. I wanted to write it again and again how I lost her, how I lost everything including myself, but I’ve said it all before. I keep thinking if I say it again, that something will be different. Not that it’ll go away, but that it’ll change what happened somehow. My head knows that it won’t. Even my heart knows it won’t change it, but somewhere deep inside me, I think I write what I do because I’m trying to convince myself that it’s real.

I didn’t think it was possible to feel orphaned as an adult.

I didn’t think it was possible to feel as pissed as I did.

I know better now.

A couple of weeks ago, I watched Anderson Cooper interview Stephen Colbert, and Colbert said something that I’ve heard before, but never listened to. He referenced Tolkien, saying “What punishment of God are not gifts? It’s a gift to exist and with that existence comes suffering. I don’t want it to have happened. I want it not to have happened. But if you’re grateful for your life – and I’m not always – then you have to be grateful for all of it.”

Let that sink in a minute.

You have to be grateful for all of it. Not just the good, but the bad.

I’ve talked before about how we humans suffer, and how my parents’ deaths inextricably means they are no longer suffering. Their suffering, their pain was then transferred to those they left behind, and in essence, we are, and will always be, in an endless circle of suffering.

We love. We suffer. We lose. We suffer. We love. We suffer. We lose. We suffer.

The suffering and loss are because we love, and we can’t separate the two from love just because we don’t wish to deal with the grief and anger and abject vacancy left by those we love.

I’ve struggled for years, unable to find the gifts in my losses. After my dad’s death, I was in a black hole of grief. I lost whole swaths of time and life because I couldn’t comprehend the absence I was faced with. My grief fueled a forest fire of anger that I was unable to bank, and unable to release. My anger was internalized – it ate a hole in my stomach, caused me not to be able to eat or sleep for more than a month, and gave me blinding migraines and insane anxiety/depression. I was sad, and that was blatantly apparent when someone would say something innocuous, and I would turn away for fear of them seeing tears in my eyes and the start of a panic attack at the realization nothing was the way it used to be.

After my mother’s death, it was different.

Unlike the death of my father, the loss of my mother caused a much greater erosion of who I was and would be moving forward. When I lost my dad, I lost the person most like me. But when my mom died, I felt as though my history, my past had gone with her. I lost a sense of family. I felt like I was the glue that had to hold things together and I was failing miserably at it. My grief became Grief.

I hated that I couldn’t be the person my mom wanted me to be. I hated that I couldn’t have prevented her suffering. I hated that I was ANGRY, and this time, my anger was it’s own creature that crawled like a spider across my skin. My anger became Anger. I tried to keep him banked inside, where he couldn’t hurt anyone which was colossally unsuccessful. I lashed out constantly. The littlest things would send me into a rage and I spent a year of my life roiling like a pot of water over a flame on high. I spent much of my time alone in the hopes that I could just burn the rage out of myself until I could re-enter my life.

In the fury I felt after Mom’s death, I knew nothing of what my plan would be, other than that I would figure it out as I went. I blindly chose the first thing that popped into my head – The Ride for Roswell. I asked for a bike, I got a bike and I rode the bike. Was it enough? Nope. Not even a little bit. Did I do well? Hell no. Before I signed up for my first Ride, I hadn’t ridden over 20 miles at one time. Hell, after I signed up for the metric, I hadn’t done a training ride over 20 miles. And during the Ride, I was so so so slow, and didn’t know how to shift my hybrid to save my life. My friend and I crossed the finish line dead last, BUT I got on the damn bike and I rode the 65 miles because I said I would to the people who donated money to the cause.

I believed once would be enough.

How utterly naive I was – to believe I could purge the anger and my sadness and hatred for myself by merely riding my bike in one Ride for Roswell. After I finished, I literally threw my bike at hubby saying ‘Never again!’ through sobs and wincing in pain, and thinking to myself what a fucking idiot I was. Yet, the physical pain faded quickly, even if the anger and the sadness remained.

So I signed up for another Ride. 30 miles this time.

And another. Peloton and 44 miles to and from Canada.

And another. Peloton and 44 miles to and from Canada.

And another. Peloton and 44 miles to and from Canada.

And another. Peloton and 20 miles.

And another. Peloton and the dreaded 65 again.

And then, we know what happened next.

Who said insanity was doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results?

In this life without my parents, I’ve spent a lot of time doing a lot of nothing because I physically couldn’t move forward without them. These past 7 years since I lost my mom have been a rollercoaster. Or, as it were, a series of hills on a long ride across New York State. I realized that I’m pretty good at flying down them, because my tears could be explained away by the wind in my face, instead of my Grief. Despite the speed I carried from the rocket ride down, I had no momentum and was stuck in the wrong gear at the bottom, looking up at an Everest of grief. There have been many times that even Anger couldn’t force me up the side of that mountain.

But, as though inevitable, I’ve gotten better. I’ve talked about how I muscle through things quite a bit, and honestly, I’m a little shocked I’ve muscled my way out of my black hole of grief for the most part. Perhaps it’s my buddy Delusion playing a small role in that, but at this point of my journey with Grief and Anger, I’ll take what I can get. I’ve made it up some of those hills, slowly and methodically telling myself the crest is right there. I’ve learned how to shift my focus and shift my fears and my gears to allow me the best chance to deal with the struggle. Or, as my friend Lou taught me, I’ve begun to challenge the hills in front of me. And sometimes, I’ve had to get off the bike and walk because I’d fall flat on my face otherwise. Those walks were worse than the rides, for the failure that permeated every fiber of my being because I wasn’t strong enough to stay on the bike. I know now what’s important, and my greatest and hardest lesson to learn was to keep moving forward until I could ride again – both on the bike and in my life in general.

Now, the hatred of myself is gone. I’m not quite sure where that particular demon went, and while I’m hoping he’s left permanently, there’s an incessant fear (something my buddy Doubt whispers in my ear) that he’s just hibernating until the next time I fuck something up badly. I’m not sure if I’ve learned more about myself; accepting my inadequacies in such a way to know that I simply wasn’t capable of being the daughter to my mom that I could have (because I was too much my father’s daughter). Or more likely, it’s just that so much time has passed that I’m again forgetting the pain of feeling like I was a constant disappointment to her in some way. Much like getting off the bike that first year, the pain and anger and sadness were so raw after her death and now, seem more like the plethora of bruises that crossed my body during the Empire State Ride. They didn’t look great at the time, but they’ve faded. They still hurt when I poked at them, and I remember how I got them, but now they’re gone now and I’m left with the memory of that time when I (insert minor injury here).

In some ways, Grief and Anger were/are my security blankets and losing the weight of one of them most of the time (because come on, it’s not like I’m not going to be angry anymore) is discomforting, to say the least. I’m not sure how to move forward without the constant clutch to my heart, and without the feelings I’ve hated to feel. There are moments still when I have to tell myself it’s all real and that they’re gone. A song I hear. A picture I see. A place I visit. Words that I write. Things remind me and it’s just like yesterday all over again but, those moments aren’t as frequent as they used to be.

I don’t know if I’ve made it to this point because of my bike. Or because of what my bike allows me to do. Or, perhaps because what my bike represents to me – a means to the end of cancer by raising money for research geared towards curing that fucking bastard who stole my parents from me. Every day, I’m closer to riding because I want to, instead of just because I’m compelled to. I’m hopeful this next year’s ride training will get me there.

And for that hope, on the 7th anniversary of this life without her, I have my mom to thank. Hopefully she’s up there/out there looking down with my dad saying, “That’s my kid.”