The Beginning of Grief

My mom passed away a week and a half ago.

It wasn’t unexpected. She had been sick for a long time. The shock level was low. We had been on high alert for weeks.

This is what I posted on Facebook a couple of days later:

My sweet Mom passed away on Friday. She fought a courageous battle against cancer for 2.5 years and passed away at home with family.

Next Saturday is her funeral and also her birthday! June 14, 2025 at 2 p.m. at St. Barnabas Anglican Church in Dunwoody. Join us or send my family some sweet thoughts.

She was such a constant in my life. This is going to be a huge transition.

One time when I was a kid, I came home from school and discovered that she had sewn an outfit for each of my teddy bears (there were probably 5 or 6). I don’t know if she did it all in one day or had been secretly working on it for weeks, but there they were in their new outfits enjoying a tea party!!

She read to me every morning while I ate breakfast, was late 98.7% of the time when we met up, and drove by a zillion houses with me when we were house hunting as part of the pre-screening process. She loved to hear anything and everything about Emmett and loved to talk to Davis about music. She always encouraged my many, many creative pursuits. While she was staying with me to recuperate from surgery two years ago, we had so much fun rewatching some older movies, of particular note Father of the Bride I & II, and we also watched a lot of Downton Abbey.

I had a dream about 6 weeks ago (as her health started to take an obvious decline), in which I realized I would never get to meet her out for coffee ever again, which was our favorite activity together.

This photo is from Field Day when I was in 6th Grade at Forrest Hills Elementary in DeKalb County.

Victoria (Vicki) Hutcheson Bardis

June 14, 1947-June 6, 2025

My brother and I collaborated on her obituary.

It’s a lot to process, and I fluctuate between grief, sadness, and great relief that she is no longer suffering. It all comes in waves and I’m sure this is just the beginning. I’ve cried a lot and even woke up some days last week thinking I was sick because my throat hurt, but then realized, oh it’s just from crying.

I’ve had moments of not knowing what I’m supposed to do. How does one grieve? Does hibernating on the couch binging Modern Family count? Or listening to songs that I know will make me cry, but have nothing to do with my Mom? I’m re-reading Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking … “You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends" … this is different because we saw it coming for weeks. And yet the same. I’m also about to re-read Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia because I had an unusually strong reaction to this book when I read it in 6th or 7th grade, and I ran into it at a used book store a few weeks ago.

The Facebook post got over 160 comments. I was so surprised by this response and because I feel thankful for knowing so many kind people, I decided to respond to every, single person. During that particular week, responding to everyone was a huge feat, but worth every moment. The funeral was a few days ago, and I still feel tired. The weeks leading up to her death were really difficult. Just sitting feels nice.