When people talk about severely traumatic events, they often refer to "The Before Times". I heard this during Covid, when we could look back at carefree parties and hugs with our grandparents. I felt this when my father died, and his half of my family crumbled, and I remembered all the beautiful times we'd spent together, not knowing they were our last.
The Before Times are always somehow fanciful. All the negativity disappears and we pine for those Before Times like unrequited dreams. We long for and resent our lost innocence. Before I had Long Covid, I could just walk around on the streets and up the mountains and down into the valleys. In the After Times of Long Covid, I sat in my car and watched people walk by on the sidewalk, wondering how they did it. Walking seems miraculous, now. Those times when I could just call my Dad up to tell him about my day seem like magical memories. Those times when our children played together in the blissful company of grandparents who are now gone seem miraculous, now--now that we're in the After Times, where we are jaded and distrustful and fearful. We're in the After Times, where we are wiser. Supposedly. Wisdom, too, is not what we thought it was, when we were innocent.
I'm still waiting to feel wiser about my mother's death. I know I'm in the After Times, now, but I've just stepped over the threshold and I'm totally lost. People keep offering me pieces of wisdom, and every time I think, "Ah-ha! That's something that can help me on my journey!" And I stick the wisdom into my little threadbare bag of emotional tricks to pull out when it will inevitably be required on my Big Adventure Into the After Times. Like: "It's OK to cry; that means you're connecting with your mother," and "Mourning is a sickness. Like Long Covid. You've learned to integrate and adapt to that sickness; you can do it again." And every time these words feel like they came directly from the Deep Dark Mystical Universe of the After Times, where people are wiser and all the ones who've lost their mothers were apparently waiting around to catch my fall, and pull me into their embrace. Thank you.
One of the things I couldn't have known in the Before Times is the value of tears. I remember my mother's tears hitting this bag, inconceivably, as she reached in to get her lipstick, because they sometimes fell when nothing seemed to be the matter at all. And I remember them hitting this little bag; how it darkened with the damp, and how my mother swore at her own tears. Now I see the tears in the eyes of these Wise Ones; the weight and vulnerability and frankness of being The Ones Who Held Everything Together in the Before Times, but then the tether broke.
Now we're floating. Lost. Nothing is together and we are free like we never wanted to be. We have tears falling when nothing seemed to be the matter at all, but their dampness leaves stains that are inconceivable to those who haven't yet arrived in the After Times. Now I'm one of these Wise Ones and these tears are my welcome mat. And my wisdom-offerers are crying, because even after all the years of living in the After Times, the sorrow is not less. It's just integrated. And it's good to know someone understands. Accepts my tears. Our mothers are gone.
The sorrow doesn't get less. It just gets integrated. That was one of the mystical advices offered to me in the Before Times, but I didn't understand it. I just added it my little threadbare bag of advices, where it sat unused on my mother's shelf, in the times when I didn't know what that bag was for; nor how to use it or what it meant, or even how it was possible at all. People gave me this advice and I couldn't see it, because I was in the Before Times. We can't fathom what we have never seen. So my bag sat on a shelf in my mother's house, quietly, being hers.
But now I'm here in the After Times. My beautiful Mama was wiped off the earth so that everything that was so real and tangible before feels now like a cruel slap in the face; a memory of wonder and longing: her arms around me; her little red purse and strange assortment of French lipsticks; her mystical explanation that soon it will be my turn to understand; her tears telling me goodbye; her voice and her song and her love. Now I'm the wise one because I live in the After Times, with my sisters and my aunties and even my dead mother. Now I'm the wise one because I have the experience none of us ever wanted to have.
Now I meet the people whose mothers are aging; dying maybe slowly or imminently or in some far-off unknown and terrifying future, and suddenly they look to me like I'm a keeper of this horrible wisdom. But I look away from their searching gaze and into my Little Threadbare Bag of Advices From the Wise Ones of the After Times, and I wonder if I'm supposed to dispense these now, or wait. The answer is wait. These people who have not yet lost their mothers are still living in that blissful and mystical Before Time, and none of the Advices will help them because they don't yet know the horror.
This Bag of After Times Advices is like a set of unlabelled keys to a house of horrors. You can't know which keys fit which doors because you can't yet see the doors. We can't fathom what we've never seen.
Don't think you need to be prepared. You can't look over the threshold. You will have to reach the After Times, eventually. But not now.
Right now, you still live in the Before Times. Do that, instead. Live those Before Times like they are your last. Because they are; all of them are. Live them with your children and your parents and your friends and the lost ones and the found ones. Because one day you will look back and say "Why did I waste those Before Times not knowing how magical and mystically beautiful they were?!" And you'll put that too into your own Little Bag of After Times Advices, and you will look at those who haven't crossed over yet, and understand that nobody can give advice to the uninitiated, because we can't fathom what we've never seen.
Anyway, it doesn't matter how much you treasure your Before Times, it will never be enough. The more you love, the more you lose, but the losing is a kind of sublime sorrow that means you loved. So love. Just love.
I went out to see the auroras last night, and I cried. And it was beautiful, and I cried. I had to force myself to leave the house, because my grief feels like a prison, sometimes, but I went anyway. It was the first time ever I saw the aurora dance, and I was heartbroken not to be sharing it with my mother, so I told myself she was everywhere. In the auroras. That's one of the Advices From My Little Bag. Then I met another person on this horrible beautiful threshold of the After Times, and I did not open my Little Bag of Advices. We just cried. And in the dancing lights, I saw her tears.