It is early 2020, a year with a lot of quiet time. Two years have passed since my mothers death, and the healing isn’t really improving. Peace is slow to come and painfully selective in sifting through memories. Sometimes I relive wrong decisions, embarrassments of my past self. My mother taught me to feel shame early in life and at times it is an olympic sport if I don’t stop it. I accept why, since I know her childhood. Its like a train chasing me faster and faster as I run down the track and I imagine the relief of just laying down to let it crush me. It’s been hard not to connect my mother with ‘the bad stuff’ even though there is good stuff also. In these moments, I feel all the things I mistakenly chose to do and the things I should have done but didn’t in a final rush of giving in and becoming nothing. Nothingness. Peace from nothingness must have been my mother’s primary thought when she gave up. Why couldn’t she be strong for herself?
The story of her last few months disturbs me in quiet moments. I remember the years it seemed like she could never be gone. It couldn’t really happen. How could she not be around. There would always be time for her to get better. Turn around her weak spirit. Time for me to call her every day and to be a better daughter who cared more. Then I got the call. Hopes and wishes to become better shattered. No more chances to give more, listen more. The last few exchanges I had with my mother quickly went from jury to sentencing in my mind. What we accuse ourselves of becomes part of our identity, without us even knowing it. The guilt just finds a space inside and gets stronger as it claws for more and more breath. My guilt needs to get out. I’m nearly out of breath.
Part of me is compelled to relive wrong choices as a flogging for the ways I failed her. Another part hopes it will help me let it go. I think of how my mother felt. Alone. Abandoned. As though no-one in this world understood her. Her daily existence was loss; loss of will, loss of strength, physical and mental. Loss of connection with people as she struggled with a cloud of sadness. She didn’t want to tell anyone her real feelings because she would be embarrassed. Too much pride. The strong face she put on was for others. As I realize I knew this, it hurts that I did not acknowledge it to her then. Find a way to let the small issues go and just embrace her more deeply.
Her body wanted to give out and always attacked her, punishment for not respecting its needs. She watched as her husband was fading from his former self, unable to support her with his slow succumb to Alzheimers. Who would be her best friend now? The house she knew and loved for three decades was taken in a natural disaster. Her children treated her with respect, but did not look upon her with respect, mostly clueless to her inner demons, and focused on their own lives. I sometimes go through this checklist, trying to come to terms.
Did you ever feel so much regret for your behavior that the pain hits in the stomach and causes you to gasp aloud? You lower your head without even recognizing you are doing it. I do this thinking of my mothers pain. How I seem to care more about it now, when I should have cared then. In the most critical of moments, it was my own comfort and convenience I sought. And now, still replaying the loneliness she must have endured for so long, I envision that unpacking the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of her pain may somehow provide answers and reasons. But I will never have answers. Never understand why she couldn’t be stronger for herself and advocate her own life. Even as I write this, I find myself blaming her that I am blaming myself.
I inventory all the ‘what-ifs’ and ‘why didn’t I’s’. Too many to recall. I should have spent the night when she asked me too, that opportunity to have our last slumber party. Why didn’t I see her earnestness and how much she needed me? We could have talked all night. It may have encouraged her. Why didn’t I fly to Houston and sit with her in the rehabilitation center and be a friend? We could have read books together and talked about our favorite movies. She would have laughed. We would have shared our joys about all the small and funny things like we used to. And, maybe, she would have realized a lighter place. That she could leave rehab and be stronger. That I cared and was there for her. That she could get better. What if she had improved for a few more years and she could meet her great grandchildren. What if I was less selfish. What if my mother was not so weak for so many years that she damaged her body to the point of no return. Can I ever stop being mad at her for being gone.
She tried, you know. She needed me at her lowest point and told me all her heartbroken feelings. It was during my last trip to Houston to visit her. I didn’t listen; I fixed. When she ordered me around her apartment in the condescending tone she used with daddy, I got offended and called her on it. She was just acting out in fear. I was too. Two women in shame not being real enough to reach out for love they both needed in that moment.
The relationship with my mother was always complicated. Mothers who have complicated and painful relationships with their mothers must try really hard not to pass down the same dynamic to their own daughters. And it was hard for my mother to try hard.
We Are Always Blooming 