By Rita Calvert

My mom used to make an awful lot of noise in the kitchen around the holidays, banging and yelling as she wrestled with pie crust. I never really understood her frustration until the first time I attempted to bake a pie on my own. I was 19 years old, and it was my first Christmas without her. We lost her to cancer in January of that year, and almost 12 months later, my heart still throbbed with the ache of her loss.

C.S. Lewis once compared losing a loved one to having a limb amputated-a perfect analogy, really. When someone loses a leg, she doesn’t die. She might want to, but she doesn’t. When someone loses one of the most important people in her life, she doesn’t die. She might want to, but she doesn’t. What she does is learn to live without. Eventually, she gets used to getting by on just one leg. Eventually, I got used to not hearing her voice, seeing her smile. But one leg is not two, and life without her is not life with her. No matter how well adjusted I become, nothing will ever be the same again. I will never go back to having two legs, never go back to having my mom alive. And like an amputee, the phantom pains continue, without warning, for years. Anything may set them off, sparking memories that stir up the ache. A billboard. A song on the radio. An old shirt. Making piecrust.

I imagine the first few moments as an amputee, when she feels only emptiness where her leg used to be, must be a great deal like the hours and days immediately following my mother’s death. I couldn’t believe it; it didn’t seem real. All the things I’d learned, the habits I’d formed, the routines I followed, included her. Without her, what did they amount to? Without her, who was I? Her absence was a black hole, and I felt it keenly. Learning to walk with just one leg, even on crutches, is awkward and difficult. Learning to live without my mom was equally challenging.

I tried to fight against the phantom pains. I wanted to be strong, and I feared allowing even the tiniest crack in my facade of togetherness. As the oldest of four children and the only girl in my family, I took on many of my mom’s responsibilities. I moved home from my freshman year of college and buried my grief in the busyness and work of caring for my family. I tried to forget that my life would never be the same.

It’s not a coping method I would recommend.

Imagine missing one leg and stubbornly refusing any sort of assistance. Falling would be inevitable, unnecessary pain probable. It wasn’t long before I could no longer sustain my denial of the facts. I had to learn to walk again. Gradually I formed new routines, created new habits, and forged new memories that did not include her.  Slowly, I made my way through the bleak landscape of sorrow, forging my own path as I went. Slipping and stumbling, I finally learned to live without my mom. I was an expert at grief. I had survived the wilderness and was ready to face whatever else life had to offer. Or so I thought.

Three years after my mom died, I met Philip at a friend’s wedding. The maid of honor and best man, we walked the aisle together, not realizing we were stepping into our own grand adventure. Our long-distance romance flourished on the fast track, with e-mails and phone calls flying across the miles. When we discovered a shared affinity for crumbled Butterfinger candy bars in homemade vanilla ice cream, we knew-this was IT. My mom would have loved him. I wished she were there to share in my joy, but I knew I had reached a place of healing when her absence didn’t cast a shadow on my love for Philip. Full of hope for our future as the all-American family - a police officer, a teacher, four kids and a chocolate lab - we began making wedding plans. The joy we found in apartment hunting and furniture buying was proof of our giddy intoxication.

On a rainy April morning, with just a few months standing between us and wedded bliss, I received a phone call that changed my life forever-again. Philip had been shot in the line of duty. He was dead. My world went into a tailspin for the second time, and I reentered the strange territory of grief.

Having been there before, I thought I knew what to expect, but different loves give way to different griefs. This time, there was no role for me to take on, no busyness to hide in. And this time, I wasn’t sure I wanted to ever walk again. If life without my mom was difficult, life without Philip was unthinkable. Losing my mom was losing a part of my past; losing Philip was losing my entire future. I dwelt in grief, wallowed in it. I let grief become my identity - I would always be the woman who had lost her fiancé. I didn’t plan on moving on.