Revealing 25 Surprising & Fun Ways To Grieve After Mom Dies

A post-menopausal orphan's bucket list, of sorts.

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1. Sleep in. I know they’re here to help me, but I feel pressure to look productive when the aides are here, to justify needing the help. Yes, I know I don’t have to justify it to anyone but myself, but myself is being an annoying little bitch about it.

2. Sleep naked. I miss not worrying someone is going to walk in. On the other hand, I don’t miss being the sudden guest appearances of my naked flabby bits in the mirror.

3. Stop eating my feelings. I’ll still eat crap, but now, intentionally.

4. Masturbate loudly and with abandon.

5. Get a doggo. A rescue. A mutt. Someone scruffy I can call Rags. Or a sleek and goofy pittie I will call Karen, or Monkey.

6. Cry. It’s my party….you would cry too if it happened to you.

7. Have a life after 5pm. Who am I kidding? One of the best parts of this caregiving thing is the built in excuse of why I can’t (fill in the blank).

8. Get a car. Because grieving is the best time to get behind the wheel of a two ton gas-powered vehicle. Maybe just a 600 lbs motorcycle, instead.

9. Road trips with my dead Mom (in her silver cocktail shaker cum cremains urn) to places she never got to visit before she was cremains. Like Paris. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Waters. Or a safari.

10. Reclaim ten years via plastic surgery. Shut up you. My face. I’ll do my best to not go the Jocelyn Wildenstein / Kathryn Helmond in Brazil route. Something tasteful and sedate, with a minimal sprinkling of permanent glitter applied to my skin for a natural glow.

11. Relish the quiet.

12. Repo my giant closet.

13. Learn to to fly an LSA or ultralight, flip a straight razor, to scuba, to drive a forklift & a semi.

14. Get certified as an EMT to become a street medic, a vet tech to help with the Sato Project.

15. Stunt driving training because no will be relying on my healthy and safety.

16. Learn a foreign language living in a small town in a foreign country, or starve to death trying.

17. Learn to speak animal living in an animal sanctuary.

18. Wash the sheer grey curtains, who in their youth they were sheer white curtains. Ya get me? Everything ages.

19. Take a bath. Take a mutha fucking bath.

20. Get rid of all the rugs.

21. Create an office space by reclaiming her bedroom which was my bedroom.

22. Move all the books and bookcases into my new office space.

23. Grieve. For as long as I want, as short as I want, in whatever fucking way I want. Expect profanity and abusive language. I don’t drink. I don’t drug. I don’t fuck around. But profanity, rudeness and condescension, yeah, I’ve been keeping those for just this sort of occasion when everyone has to excuse your potty mouth and bad behavior because her mother just died, dammit.

24. Throat punch everyone who say things like “she’s in a better place.” No, she’s not, you fucking idjit, she’s in this here silver cocktail shaker.

25. Fine tune new snarky and clever answers. Because, I’ll have to stop saying: not dead yet, still kicking, totally bonkers, loud, not in any pain and that’s the best I can do for her right now once she is actually dead, not kicking, no longer bonkers but still not in pain. So, to How’s Mom? I’m thinking I might go with: Overall, quieter. Mostly because…Dead, but not crazy anymore so there’s that. I have her here in this silver cocktail shaker, would you like to say hello?

Author Self Portrait OR Still Life with a Silver Cocktail Shaker

But for now, she’s still here & doesn’t show any signs of going anywhere any time soon. Not dead yet, still kicking, totally bonkers, loud, not in any pain and that’s the best I can do for her right now.