The phenomenology of losing a mother

Some people are so integral to your life, their passing feels like a shift in the ground itself. When my mom passed away last year, I remember feeling like I was walking on a different surface, sometimes like I was walking in a different place.

I don't mean this metaphorically. At least, not merely metaphorically. I'm describing the actual state of my phenomenology (the state of my conscious experience of the world). In the interior, it quite literally felt like something in the foundation of the world changed. 

To contrast this with a related experience, I've often heard the bereaved talk about shedding an old self. When their loved one dies, they die too. Do they mean this metaphorically? Ish. Phenomenologically, they mean it quite literally. 

It makes sense. Loved ones don't merely occupy the space on the border of our personal identity. Often, they are inside it. Their presence, love, and relationship is integral to our self-conception. Philosopher's and theologian's are only answering one dimension of the question, "who are you?"––kicking up answers such as, "you are a soul," "you are an animal," "you are a bundle of properties." What we're asking here is slightly different: "who are you?" The passing of a loved one can illuminate the answer: "I am Cindy's beloved son." "I am the person she admires and champions." "I am a person who admires and champions her." "I am one who finds comfort in her." You realize how integral those features are to your self-conception once the beloved is gone. 

To be honest, though, the death-to-self experience hasn't really been my experience in the wake of my mom's passing (yet). I bring it up to highlight how profoundly death reshapes reality––including our interior experience of reality––and to contrast it with my own experience.

For me, the death of a beloved parent has quite literally felt like a make-over of the environment around me. It's the same space, I guess, but something in the ground is profoundly different. It's like spending 30+ years walking down a cobblestone path and suddenly it is concrete. Like walking into a once-cherished bookstore that is now a hardware store. Like visiting the old wooded area you played in as a child only to find a golf course or, worse, a parking lot. Like driving to the neighborhood you grew up in only to find the old house gone, an apartment building standing in its place. Like stepping foot on your go-to beach only to land on a board walk, the sand having been eroded. For me, that's how my mom's passing felt. The environment feels different, even the ground itself. 

Sometimes, it feels like moving to a new place altogether. Like stepping out of your house into a foreign city. Like all the buildings, people, and stuff you interact with on a regular basis have suddenly been teleported to a new place––even a new place in the universe. Especially in the first few months after her passing, I kept thinking to myself: "this doesn't feel like the same place." I would be walking around campus for the 1000th time, but the ground wasn't the same. Something was unfamiliar and foreign about the world. 

If people can be integral to one's self-conception, it would seem that they can also be integral to one's conception of the world itself. It's still me traversing the world, but the world's terrain has been transformed by the seismic shift of her death. She wasn't merely in the world. Her presence, love, and friendship partially constituted its very ground. Hence, I dont merely mourn her departure. I mourn my departure from the world as it used to be...a departure from a mom-saturated world. 

I'm not sure what this implies for healing. I guess I'll say this: it is immensely comforting to traverse a new world with others who knew the previous one. Also, some spaces, like the beach, feel closer to the old terrain, as though she is still present in that space. I recommend going to such spaces regularly. Finally, it's interesting to think that, on some views of the cosmos, there is a day coming when some of the old space, some of the old environment, will be restored...but richer and enduring. In the eschaton, the ground will feel familiar and right again––like returning to that cherished beach at the beginning of summer, walking through the doors of that beloved home, meandering through those enchanted childhood woods, sitting comfortably in that bookstore again. Space will feel familiar and right because we will be restored to the beloved...and they to us. Once again, we will traverse the glorious ground built out of their love.