thoughts on grief and major life events

I am currently planning my wedding. And by "planning," I mean it is 90% planned. I am very Type A, and if you give me a list, things get done. 

Everything went smoothly until it came time to design the invitations.

There was something morbid about looking up wedding etiquette and realizing I was meant to include “the late Barbara Swindler” as a cohost. My mother died twenty-one years ago today. As much as I would love her to, she is not hosting my wedding.

I was twelve years old when she died. If you are the one left grieving, life does not stop. It cannot stop. You are still alive. And what a gift that is.

Since her death, I have had many major milestones: graduations, international moves, the publishing of two books, job changes, and now an engagement.

If I stop to think about it, I don’t know how it is possible—that her life stopped and mine is still going. That there will be things about me, huge things, that she will never know and experience. This is a sadness that more than twenty years after her death I still feel deeply. I do not want to be unknown to my mother.

As I plan my wedding, I can't help but wonder: would she have opinions on the venue I picked? Would she like the flowers? Would she have preferences about the menu?

If she did, would I even listen or care?

I have had too many friends spend their entire engagement complaining about their mother. Wedding planning brings out a shocking side of people, and why I was the call for these mother complaints, I will never know. Personally, I would love to have my mother meddle with my wedding.

Which is, of course, an easy thing for me to say. 

It is easy to say, “well, if my mother was alive, I would have wanted her opinion on the napkins, and the colors, and the cake topper, and the save the date paper, and, and, and...”

It is easy for me to say I want this, because having her there is impossible. These are empty words. Life is so much easier when dealing in hypotheticals; when I say I long to have something that will never come to pass.

But I do want that. I wish that I were planning my wedding with my mother. And yes, there would be joys and tears and frustrations that always come with planning an event. I didn’t know how deeply I longed for the chance to argue with my mother about tablecloths until now. Until I fully realized that I would never have the chance.

That in itself is a small grief. 

It is a loss to not argue with her about the alcohol budget or what color the centerpieces should be. It is a loss to not go dress shopping or cake tasting with her. These experiences, so normal to so many, will always be foreign to me. Holes in my wedding planning story. Memories that will never come to pass.

This is the thing about grief. It steals experiences. It is selfish, taking center stage at major life events. It demands to be the topic of conversation; the thing on everyone’s mind. 

But of course it is. My mother will always be one of the most important people in my life. There will always be a void where she stood.

And today I can tell you, if my mother were alive, we would be planning my wedding together. We would laugh at how ridiculous the wedding industry has become and sip red wine while working on the seating chart.

Or, we would have argued about things that don’t matter at all.

And that too would be a privilege.