Eden for Eve

What cannot be said, will be wept

"The relationship I had with you somehow makes it easier to speak to you now than it ever did when you were here. Maybe it’s because love has nowhere else to go once someone is gone. Your absence still feels unreal to me, untouched by reality, like something my mind refuses to fully accept. Death was never something I imagined happening to you. Maybe that sounds naive, but I truly believed there would always be more time.

As you probably would have guessed, Mom, I’ve been keeping myself busy to survive your passing. I chose avoidance instead of surrendering completely to grief, and part of me hates myself for that, because why can't I just, be?

I want to be in bed for days, crying, watching bad movies, in quiet memory. However, I fear that kind of stillness. I'm scared that if I fully immerse myself in missing you, I won't want to emerge from it. I'm worried it would feel too close to you in that space between memory and sorrow, and I would want to linger there.

The life I’ve built around me still needs me here. Even on the days when I feel like pieces of me left with you.

Sometimes I look in the mirror and see you looking back at me. In my smile. In my expressions. In the parts of myself I never noticed before you were gone. I realize now that I carry pieces of you everywhere I go. I think that’s why I’ve started leaning into those parts of myself more lately, because it makes me feel closer to you somehow.

I miss you every single day. And I promise you this: I will accomplish every dream we shared together. I will carry both of us forward.

I'm no longer someone's child, so the strength I once disliked relying on is something I actually need. And now that you're there too, it feels even heavier. The weight is different. It's distributed. More dense, more consistent. But don't worry, Ill carry you."

Speaking generally, I just always wanted better for her. In every way. Every version of her deserved more than what life handed her. But when I look at it deeper now, I realize my mom was really just a woman who wanted what most people do; to feel accepted, loved fully, chosen without hesitation.

I think I was around seven years old when I first started noticing the quiet ache inside of her. A longing for reciprocity that never seemed to come back to her the way she gave it away. Most of the time, it came from her husband’s family. I hated watching it happen. They made her feel small in ways that were subtle enough to deny but heavy enough to change a person over time. And the worst part was watching her believe them. Watching someone so intelligent, beautiful, funny, and deeply human slowly shrink themselves to fit into spaces that never deserved them in the first place.

She had this softness to her that made her vulnerable to people who mistook kindness for weakness. She carried herself like someone always trying to earn belonging instead of realizing she was already worthy of taking up space. Over time, I watched alienation settle into her spirit. It stole simple joys from her. It made togetherness feel conditional. It changed the way she loved herself.

And still, to me, she was extraordinary. Not in the exaggerated way grief makes saints out of people, but in a real way. She was layered, emotionally intelligent, naturally funny, thoughtful, beautiful without trying. She felt too deep for the life she ended up trapped inside of. I truly believe she married into her greatest heartbreak. A man who was never emotionally equipped to hold the weight of who she really was. She was a goddess trying to survive among people committed to misunderstanding her.

I knew her beneath all of it, though. Beneath the self-doubt, beneath the survival, beneath the exhausting cycle of chasing love that only arrived in fragments. She kept holding onto the “when it’s good, it’s good” moments, even when the bad was slowly consuming her. And maybe that’s the part that hurts me most now; knowing how much of her life was spent begging to be deeply loved by people who should have offered it freely.

Sometimes it feels like she died carrying a lifetime of heartbreak, never truly receiving the kind of love she deserved. And maybe that’s what stays with me the most.

There’s something devastating about holding someone in your arms at the end of their life when affection between you was never easy growing up. When love existed, but softness didn’t always know how to. To finally hold each other with that kind of closeness only when death is standing in the room feels cruel in a way I can’t fully explain. It’s heartbreaking realizing that some forms of tenderness arrived at the same moment I was about to lose her forever.

She was so afraid of dying. She was terrified. I used to sit on the phone listening to my mother beg for her life with a desperation. Crying to doctors, nurses, God, anyone who would listen. There was panic in her voice that no amount of comfort could soften. You could hear her fighting against something much bigger than herself. You could hear a person realizing their body was becoming a place they no longer understood.

The hardest conversations were never about death itself. They were about everything she knew she was going to miss. I can still hear her crying over the thought of never seeing my daughters grow up. Never seeing graduations, first dates, birthdays, womanhood. There is something unspeakably cruel about hearing someone grieve their own absence before they’re even gone.

I still have recordings of her from those final months. Her voice fragile and exhausted, trying to make sense of what was happening to her body, her life, her mind. Telling me she wasn’t trying to leave us. Telling me she couldn’t control what was happening anymore. And I think that’s the part that breaks me most; knowing she wanted to stay. She wanted more time. More life. More love. More of us.

And now, somehow, you have done the impossible thing. You left your body behind here on earth and carried your soul somewhere I cannot follow yet. I hope it was peaceful when it finally happened. I hope the fear loosened its grip on you the moment you crossed over. I hope all the sickness, sadness, exhaustion, and heaviness you carried your entire life fell away from you at once.

I imagine you lighter now. Free in a way this world never allowed you to be. Maybe for the first time, you are existing without pain attached to you.

I know you can’t physically be here with us anymore, but I wonder what it’s like watching us now from wherever you are. I know you’d laugh seeing me back on night shift after all this time. The girls are growing so fast. It’s their last week of school. Summer is starting again. Life keeps moving in ways that feel almost offensive sometimes. Your son misses you. Your daughters miss you. We all do.

But I know your mind is finally quiet now, a serene silence that envelops you like a warm embrace. Your body was so tired. So riddled with sickness, fear, disappointment, and grief. You do not have to carry any of it anymore. Maybe this loss shattered us, but maybe your release was mercy. Heaven, peace, paradise; these are the realms that now cradle you, offering the softness that this world never fully provided, a sanctuary where pain holds no dominion.

You are no longer trapped inside pain, no longer bound by the chains of your earthly existence. You are light now, pure light, radiating a brilliance that transcends the darkness you once navigated. And maybe, somehow, this is the gentlest version of existence you have ever known, a state of being where love and tranquility reign supreme. In this new realm, you are free to explore the depths of joy and serenity, unencumbered by the trials that once plagued you. The burdens that once pressed heavily upon your shoulders have been lifted, and in their place, you have found a profound sense of peace that resonates through every part of your being.

Evelyn Always <3

2/28/72- 3/10/26