Grief has been kicking my butt this week. My mom died on June 11, 1997, and ten years later I find myself utterly transformed by the power that this anniversary has on my ability to function normally.

I didn't even realize what was happening. Monday, the day itself, I drove down to see my mom's sister in Laguna. She's just lost her husband of over 60 years and had to relocate to a more user-friendly senior center, a nice place where sometimes there's not quite enough room in the hallway for everyone to pass by easily with his walker. Driving down there, I reflected upon when my grandmother relocated from Encino to Leisure World in 1977. She was terminally ill with pancreatic cancer, and the move was in order for her to die. Or at least that was my youthful comprehension of the event.

So as I got off the 5 freeway I reminded myself that this was a powerful journey I was making and that I needed to give myself space to feel. I have had to learn to do this, feel that is, because I come from a family and from a culture that tends to do everything else but. Feel, that is. Instead I learned to "use" when I was uncomfortable, whether food, shopping, people, substances, or, when nothing else was available, plain old delusional thinking. "This isn't happening," I can tell myself. "I am not feeling this." "They didn't mean that." "I don't mind this."

How else can assure we are living in the Happiest Place on Earth?

The other day an affable young fellow came over to fix my stove. He and I chatted about cars and houses and, oh stoves, too, of course. When he left, I mentioned to my husband how much I had enjoyed talking with him and how nice he seemed. Wise spouse replied that the man was a classic American, friendly, gregarious, familiar. "The English would hate it," he added.

I felt a stab of shame. Now first of all what's lovely today is that I am actually aware of what I am feeling. I used to plunge through life unconsciously, asking my poor body to take the psychic blows I was too vulnerable--in my fantasized invulnerability--to process. It's not like that today. Instead I noticed the shame, felt it, and then asked myself why it was there. I realized I have always felt inferior to the Brits, who with their "stiff upper lip" have made a virtue of repression.

Why is repression a virtue? I don't have to be ashamed of the American thirst for openness and honesty. What a refreshing realization! I like it this way, not having to feel that shame all the time, the one that keeps us repressed.

And yet, it occurs to me, that the same America which touts openness and honesty is also the same America into which I was socialized not to feel. It is also the same America which has stopped mourning death, eliminating almost every visible aspect of grief from our cultural scene, expects people to "get over it" by the time the funeral draws to a close.

After all, "she's in a better place."

No phrase could be more perfectly designed to force one to stuff her grief. How dare I feel bad that mom's dead if she's tripping the light fantastic somewhere in the sky? What's my problem?

Well first of all, I have absolutely no idea where my mother is, except for the certainty that her corpse lies in Oak Park Cemetery in Claremont. Pop's ashes do too, I might add. As to the rest of the, oh I want to say blarney, about heaven and such, well, suffice to say I just don't know what happens after we die, but I am not strongly compelled to believe any of the accounts that humans have come up with, religious or otherwise.

So I have had to fight for the right to grieve, battling both personal predilection, familial indoctrination, cultural theology and social ideology. Yep, that requires real mettle, taking all of those on. And every bit of it has been worth it, for when I look around at the alternatives, I see compulsive consumption--of food, material goods, relationships, and worry. Don't want to be like that any more. Life is too short and too beautiful.

And I have made progress. While we were sitting in the dining room of her assisted living apartment, Posy asked me when my mother--her sister--died. "1997," I replied. "June 24, 1997." Then I thought to myself, why, no, it was dad who died on May 24th of last year. Mom's death day must be the 21st or..... I dropped it, suddenly unable to recall a date stamped on my soul, the day my mother died, the day my best friend died, the day my biggest champion died, the day one of the coolest people I have ever met died.

After I got home I watched a Doctor Phil about obesity. As usual he was berating someone for being sick, in this case a 500 lb young woman who uses food to medicate her desire for love and acceptance. Of course the bigger she gets, the less acceptance she gets, particularly from her mom, who was sitting there angry as she has been ever since the kid got fat in junior high and came home crying and ashamed. Suck it up, her mom tells her. Harden up. Tough it out.

Man could I relate. I too could not get full that Monday. I too ate things I did not need for their nutritional value or energy contribution both at the Senior dining hall and then when I got home. Cookies, nuts, almond butter, where's the cheese? I could see myself doing it, but did not know why. Instead of remembering that I had been taught to stuff feelings and something was clearly going on, I found myself starting to drown in self-loathing. Why can't I exert control over self? Why can't I be thin and beautiful? Only then will everyone love me and I won't have to feel this pain.

Old tapes.

Fortunately just then my wonderful husband came home from the store. I told him how I was feeling, said I was trapped by food, starving and yet already having heartburn from one macadamia nut too many. Maybe it's because I went and saw Posy, I wondered aloud, knowing that seeing her in her new apartment was also seeing her closer to the end of her life.

Marty said "Well you know today's the day your mother died."

oh.

How amazing that I could not face this fact alone. How gentle is my universal guide, giving me people in my life to help me face things I cannot face alone. How wonderful is my progress which will never be perfect but is good enough today that I can eventually face what I need to face and so don't have to walk around filled with toxic waste! Beautiful.

I'm tearing up writing this, still filled with feelings, I want to say "all these days later," when really it's "all these years later." Monday I got to feel, gave myself permission to still be sad, to still miss mom, even a decade after her demise. Later that night, after communing with lovely friends who cemented my right to grieve rather than telling me to suck it up, I got out the funeral program and obit to put on my altar; seeing these two artifacts opened a stunning floodgate of emotion. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, sitting there on the floor of my bedroom, clutching the little stuffed, er, thing, that I made for my mom when I was a little girl and she kept the entire rest of her life in a drawer right beside her bed.

The tears rolling down my face were so big and hot that I wondered if they came from a different place than usual. My cries were so anguished I wondered if the neighbors could hear. But I didn't care. My mom's dead. I love her. That hurts. It should.

The next day I went to teach my Feminist Theory class feeling like I had run a marathon the day before. In effect I had, getting to the most painful emotional place humans go, full blown acceptance of loss. I knew from previous experience that I would be compromised, so I treated myself gently. I shared what I was going through with my class, told them I was not operating on full steam. No more stiff upper lips for me. I am human, vulnerable, imperfect, emotional.

And I loved my mommy.