One year ago my mother died.

Anniversaries are often meant to be momentous occasions. A milepost in the march of time when one is supposed to pause and take stock of how far they’ve come over the past year. Progress…decline…stagnation. All best measured against one’s status exactly 365 days prior, or so I’m led to believe.

I’ve never really been one for anniversaries or other annualized events.

Celebrating holidays isn’t my thing. I don’t do anything for my birthday (or most anyone else’s for that matter), and I’m often taken by surprise to realize another wedding anniversary has come and gone. I’m not sure why I’m unmoved by such occasions. I guess they often feel artificial and contrived to me and as such don’t warrant much attention, by my estimation.

But, the death of my mother (May 11, 2017) is by far the most emotionally wrenching experience I’ve ever had. The loss is so profound that I am still unable to really process it. Given this, I decided to push against my ambivalence toward anniversaries and use the occasion as an opportunity to do a deeper assessment of  “what a difference a year makes” for myself.

This year – May 2018: Strangers surrounded me as I ran through the desert in southern Utah.

I had agreed to join a team of friends doing a 120-mile trail relay race without thinking of the significance of the date. Belatedly, I realized what I had done and was filled with guilt because I wouldn’t be around to help my father cope with the anniversary of my mom’s death. I find I am still in “care taker” mode instead of “grieving daughter” mode more often than not.

In the end, I think doing the race was exactly what I needed. I am most content and introspective when I am doing strenuous physical activity in nature and doing the race meant running 15 miles on rugged trails near Zion National Park, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. Although there were over 3,000 runners at the race, it was a surprisingly solitary affair and I had a lot of time to process my thoughts and emotions.

One of my race legs was at night. I was alone on the trail with only the thin cylinder of light from my headlamp to keep me company. The desert was completely quiet except for the crunch of gravel beneath my feet and the rush of air out of my lungs as I climbed the steep hills. I became mesmerized by the sound of my own rhythmic breathing. Inhale…exhale. Inhale…exhale. In the silence of the night it became almost deafening.

It suddenly struck me that at that very moment, exactly one year prior, I was standing beside my mother’s bed as her breathing shifted into a similar rapid and labored manner as my own. Her breaths were bringing her closer to death as her body finished shutting down. In contrast, my breaths were filling me full of life as I crested the top of the ridgeline under the bright starlight. I felt a visceral connection to my mother in that moment, as though she was walking beside me on the trail.

One year ago – May 2017: I was caressing my mother’s cheek as she took her last breath.

I hadn’t re-read the blog post I wrote about the experience of helping my mother die since I wrote it nearly a year ago. I forced myself to read it the other day, however, in honor of the anniversary. Although heart-wrenching for me to relive, I’m so thankful that I captured my thoughts at the time.

I have a habit of insulating myself from emotions – whether they be good or bad. I often do this by: 1) (quite literally) insulating myself behind a layer of excess fat (but that’s a blog post for another day!), or 2) forgetting the details of experiences to muddle my emotions. Reading my blog post again enabled me to reconnect with the feelings and thoughts that were roiling through me a year ago, but from a safer distance.

Two years ago – May 2016: I was sitting with my mother during her first chemotherapy treatment.

This was such an overwhelming time. An advanced cancer diagnosis (in this case, Stage IV pancreatic cancer) instantly puts one on a very fast-moving train. It seemed like only moments had passed between the time my mother got her diagnosis, and the time she was being wheeled into surgery and having her body pumped full of a toxic slurry of chemotherapy drugs. There wasn’t any time to wrap our mind around things, to ponder decisions, or to come to terms with the fact she had only months to live.

I had never been this close to cancer. Although I had lost a grandmother, half-sister and aunt to cancer over the years, I was far removed from those situations. But in my mother’s case I had a front-row seat. I scrambled to put on a façade of strength and confidence so that she felt she could lean on me as we stepped together towards her death sentence. On the inside, I was completely panicked – second-guessing everything I did and everything I said. I built many protective walls to keep my emotions at bay so that I could be strong for her…walls that have only just begun to come down.

Three years ago – May 2015: I was adventuring in Croatia.

On a bit of a lark, Glenn and I signed up to run a half-marathon in Dubrovnik, Croatia — a definite “sure, why not?” situation. After the race we spent a couple of weeks hiking and biking through the beautiful Croatian countryside.

I recall feeling conflicted about our carefree adventure because just weeks before my beloved friend Julia discovered that her very young daughter Zinnia had a brain tumor. Glenn and I ended up sending our best wishes from atop a mountain in Croatia via posting a picture on Facebook. It felt like such a shallow gesture. Julia’s entire world was crashing down around her ears…meanwhile, I was agonizing over which locally made prosciutto to bring home as a souvenir.

Atop a mountain in Croatia, sending love to Julia and her family as her precious daughter started treatment for brain cancer.

Four years ago – April 2014: I was strapped into a dogsled with my mother.

I always wanted to try dogsledding. When I had looked into it several years before, however, I was informed that I exceeded the maximum weight limit. After I lost ~100 pounds I decided to try again and found a place on Mt. Bachelor (Oregon) to give it a whirl. I thought it would be fun to take my mom with me, given her love of dogs. I didn’t tell her what we were doing ahead of time, I just invited her to join me on an adventure that would take all day and for which she should dress warmly. My mother wasn’t one for trying spontaneous or unexpected activities. She was dubious, but decided to trust me. She had a blast. In hindsight, I’m so grateful that we created this unique and cherished memory together.

Five years ago – May 2013: I was zip-lining with Glenn in Whistler, British Columbia.

I had joined Weight Watchers about a year prior and this was the first international trip we had taken where I had lost enough weight to enable me to be physically active and adventurous. Similar to dogsledding, I had previously exceeded the maximum weight limit for most zip-lining places due to speed concerns (ya know, sort of an E = MC2 situation…and I’ve always carried a lot of extra “M”!), not limits on how much the harness/lines can actually hold. At this point in my life I was very focused on exploring the world with my “new body.” My bucket list consisted of several activities that had previously been inaccessible to me because I wasn’t (or at least perceived that I wasn’t) physically able to do them.

Trying new adventures like zip-lining in my “new body.”

Six years ago – May 2012: I was giving my friend Kim a gift that changed her life.

Kim and her husband Brian had spent years preparing to quit their jobs, sell everything they owned and set out to travel indefinitely. Before they left, Glenn and I gave them a gift to share with others they encountered on their travels (read about that on Kim’s blog here). Kim had dreams of becoming a published author and our gift provided some of the fodder to make that dream a reality.

Her book, The Yellow Envelope, is amazing and you should totally read it! I’ll be forever grateful to Kim for giving my mother a copy of The Yellow Envelope before it was widely published so that she could read it before she died. One of the last things my mother ever said to me on her deathbed was that she wanted me to buy a copy of Kim’s book for her hospice nurse, as she thought her nurse would really enjoy it.

At that very same moment in time, Kim was the catalyst for the epiphany that I believe saved my life. I refer to it as my “Aha! moment” (read about it here). It was at Kim’s going away party, watching her set out to make her dreams come true, when I realized I needed to take control of my health so that I too could lead the life I had always dreamed of. Kim and I often marvel about how deeply intertwined our lives are, each of us helping to shape the other in profound and unexpected ways.

A few days ago I got an unexpected package in the mail from Kim. It contained a coffee mug with a red Volkswagen bus and a pair of brightly colored rainbow shoelaces. In the card she said those items reminded her of my mother and that she wanted to send them to let me know she was thinking of me in the days leading up to the day I lost my mother.

Her gesture shook me to my core, particularly the shoelaces. My mother loved brightly colored things…hats, bags, watch bands, phone cases and most especially shoes. It was so powerful to have someone other than a direct family member not only acknowledge the anniversary of my mother’s death, but to do so with a gesture that was so intimately familiar with things my mother loved.

As I held Kim’s gifts in my hands I felt little pieces of the protective walls I had built to insulate myself from my sorrow begin to crack. I began to shed the tears I’d been holding back since she died. Kim showed me the power of commemorating an anniversary. The importance of taking the time and making the space to acknowledge what has passed and take stock of what has changed in the past year.

I don’t know what my next trip around the sun will hold. Looking back on just the past six years has shown me that I should expect the unexpected, and make the most of every moment.