Mourning the Mamalith

Abstract

Mourning the Mamalith: A Graphic Response to GriefOn February 17, 2021, my mother, Ingrid Margarethe Phyllis Gertrud von Reitzenstein Claussner, falls and breaks her neck while doing what she loves most: going to church. "Jesus is the most important person in my life," she once told me. Always subordinate to her divine love affair, my mortal relationship with her was complicated. At key moments throughout my life, starting in infancy when I needed her care and protection most, she was absent. Due to my mother's early childhood trauma, she was unable to get too close to anyone, even to me, her only child. Jesus was her answer to every question, no matter what the question. This level of devotion to an invisible entity was incomprehensible to me, but I loved my mother with every ounce of my being. On February 18, 2021, Gracie is born on a ranch in Nebraska. Her mother dies shortly after giving birth—not from complications of having puppies, but from eating part of a towel. On February 19, 2021, my mother dies in the hospital in Tucson, Arizona.On May 1, 2021, my wife and I drive to Nebraska to pick up Gracie the boxer puppy. She is ten weeks old but still just a teeny five-pound runt. She grows very quickly and continues to thrive. Nevertheless, I have recurring panic attacks at night in response to dreams and spontaneous mental images of Gracie's tiny, vulnerable body. I can't shake the feeling that something might happen to her, and that I may not be able to protect her.In early June, the morning after another night of anxiety and insomnia, I tearfully call my wise therapist friend, Leslie. She tells me that when one's mother dies, part of the grieving process requires that one re-experience every fraught moment and emotion: "You are healing not just your own relationship with your mother, but you are healing your entire maternal lineage. You must relive everything on a deeper level now, even if you've already worked through these feelings before." I realize that my nightly anxiety attacks aren't really about Gracie, but about my own vulnerability when I was an infant. I am re-experiencing those early moments through my visceral connection with this tiny mammal who depends on me. This short comic looks at the mysterious connection between processing childhood vulnerability and trauma, more-than-human and human interdependence, and psychosomatic healing. As I've done in some of my previous work, by materializing thoughts as drawn and written sequential vignettes, I hope to gain and share insight about the mysterious dynamics of embodied cognition.