For the journey, however long, wherever it might take you.
My closest friend and greatest mentor died three weeks before I gave birth to my daughter on February 1st, 2021.
Every January, I play a strange and rather morbid mental game with myself where I countdown the days until her death. For example, on January 1st, I might say to myself, “Three years ago today, you were alive and we were planning to meet for tea despite the pandemic lockdowns.” On January 31st, I will say, “Three years ago today, your daughter will text me around noon to let me know your surgery didn’t go as planned and that they’ll have to let you go.” And on February 1st, around 4am, I will be wide awake and say to myself, “Three years ago today, right now, you will be taking your last breath.”
The days after Jan’s death were the closest I have felt to the possibility that there exists some place other than the current plane in which I live – as though a veil that separates the world of the living and a world beyond was lifted. Some friends I cherish called that moment an awakening, and I think it was. Although it wasn’t until I was giving birth to my daughter three weeks later when the thought occurred to me that somewhere in that liminal space, where time does not yet exist, Jan must have seen my daughter, Freya, entering the world. And Freya must have felt her spirit passing through. I have no way of explaining this thought. I am not religious, in the traditional sense but I am…seeking. A loss of that magnitude followed by 23 hours in labour will do that to you, I guess.
Jan’s death propelled me into a new kind of quest. There is the period of my life before Jan’s death – and there is now. And they are markedly different. For one, I am now a mother and I became a mother mourning her loss. But I am also no longer interested in what I now see as the self-centered pursuits that consumed me from adolescence right up until the moment Jan died: the quest for the elusive self has ceased, for my part. I am deeply concerned now with all of the things I cannot see or touch but somehow know to be true. Motherhood has drastically altered the way I see myself as a woman, and my role in this world, yes. But it was Jan’s death that compelled me to look deep into the unknown and find solace in the vanishing point on the horizon.
I look for you every time I turn off the lights.
In a broken world, my mentor, my friend – my anam cara – offered so much. Which is why her permanent departure from my world, as she helped me to build it, felt – feels – like part of me left with her to cross over. And then, out of nowhere, my daughter reaches out and gives that part back to me – in a carefree moment when she grabs my face when she thinks I’m not paying attention to her, looks at me in the eyes, holding my face in her tiny hands, and tells me about how much she loves chocolate. Or when we’re awake at night in my bed and she starts whisper-singing Take Me Home, Country Roads into my ear. These moments summon me back from the depths of my grief into an undying present that feels like nothing can ever truly be lost. Everything is right here, right now, in this moment, evaporating all sorrow.
Meanwhile mate - how are you? Can you see the life you want and talk about it clearly ... see it out there waiting for you ... can you talk about the steps that will take you there and feel the excitement? Where are you now?
I gave birth to my son three weeks after Jan’s birthday on December 27th, 2023. His name is Mads, mostly because we liked the name and how it sounds with my husband’s last name, but I recently learned that it actually means “Gift of God” – a Scandinavian derivative from the biblical name Matthew. If I wasn’t fully embracing my new role as a mother before, I am now firmly planted here, in this realm between maiden and matriarch, feeling more and more grounded in the life I have chosen. I always wanted to have a daughter and a son – it is what I know, having grown up with a brother, and what feels most like home to me.
I can’t say for sure where I am now, or what the next steps are. Being a mother to Freya, and now Mads, and providing all that I can for them, occupies every waking hour. Even now, as I write, half-dazed from sleep deprivation and long days with a newborn, I wonder if anything I’ve written is coherent – but the longing to share today was too great not to sit down and try to talk about the loss of my friend on the anniversary of her death.
This series, if I can even call it that, is not a deeply intellectual exploration of the culture wars, or the death of religion or how we are not producing enough children. I leave the major topics to my far more talented sibling. Instead, I’m going to try to show up here more often to write about Jan – to tell the story of our friendship, to trace the peaks and valleys of grief and its mysteries, and to attempt to describe what it means to me, now, to look for the light.
Love this and lost my Z on Feb 13 last year...I too countdown the days
..have as long as I can remember..wow..she was my mentor and close friend and I appreciate the words that tell my story