Sometimes I wish it was enough to just say that I was feeling sad, but there’s always been a taboo against that. I’m not the only person who’s felt obligated to say that they were fine when they were anything but, to stitch a smile on my face and pretend to be happy.
Eight years later and I still can’t predict when I’ll get triggered by my mom’s death. Lately, it’s been from my annual rewatch of Midnight Mass, “Lamentations” in particular since it was the last episode I watched. There’s a scene where our two leads Erin and Riley have a discussion on what happens when they die, from their perspectives. One leans more on the reality of it, the death of the body before getting into a spiritual belief of being “scattered across the goddamn cosmos” while the other leans more towards a Catholic belief of the afterlife (which given the nature of the show makes sense), about reuniting with long dead relatives and experiencing a deep, all-encompassing love, because “that’s what we mean when we say Heaven. No mansions, no rivers of diamonds, or fluffy clouds or angel wings. You are loved.”
Sarah O'Connor 