...but then, you already knew that. She died on November 23, 2003.
I am preparing to move by trying to get rid of things. It's slow going, particularly since I've been nursing a wounded heart. However, I just found something I thought was lost forever. It is a notebook containing my thoughts on my mother's death, written on 12/05/03. I would like to share them with you. Thank you for your indulgence.
This is the notebook I bought for my mother the second week she was in the hospital. That was in October. She told me several months before that she had always dreamed of being a writer. I never knew. I urged her to buy a notebook and a pen. She never did. I bought her a book on writing. She said she loved the title; something about freeing the writer within. I imagine she held it in her hands while she sat in her worn, brown recliner as the light from her hand-picked and long-coveted circus glass lamp bounced distractingly off the book's laminated cover. I imagine she looked at it absently with bemused warmth in her heart toward me, then let it drop as her thoughts skittered elsewhere and her hand eased back onto her wine glass or clutched at the remote control.
She never read it, that's certain.
She was already gone from herself, and gone from me, too, by then. When she was rushed to the hospital soon after, though, I perceived a grand opportunity to stake out a piece of my mother for my own. I bought this notebook. I located the discarded guide on writing. I wrote an earnest letter professing my desire for her to write while recovering. I offered to read the book to her.
She wasn't interested in hearing it.
I told her I needed her to fight. I told her I needed her. She cupped my face kindly, looked at me affectionately, and told me a truth.
I do not live my life for you.
The gaze, though, was more than affectionate. It was certain and self-assured. I can't remember ever seeing that particular blend of characteristics on her face before. It was profound. I do not live my life for you.
Later in her hospital stay, she acquiesced a bit, as many do under the often infuriating focus of my will. She said she would fight for me. She said she would take a piece of my liver for her birthday. She would spend 30 years being my friend. She said she was eating well. I bought stacks of vegetarian cookbooks to comfort her grizzled liver for when she went home. She thought it would be soon. She was fine.
One day, though, she was not fine. She was "hanging in there." The next morning her heart stopped and was restarted.
She was now living, but not quite alive.
I was told to hurry home from Houston, but I would likely not make it in time.
I blindly navigated the worst floods, tornadoes, and thick sheets of rain Houston had seen that year to make it to the airport. To beat the clock. I did.
I arrived to wide-open, mossy-colored and yellow-rimmed eyes and two strong hands grasping mine. The breathing machine precluded speech, so I imposed my own interpretations of the vivid expression on her face.
I'm so happy you're here
I love you.
I'm fighting.
I'm fine.
...but here's the thing. The wide eyes and clinging hands could just as easily have been saying, "You're here. Please help me! I'm hurting. I'm afraid. Make this stop."
How can I know?
Next is a haze of days and tubes and machines and sleeping in the visitors' lounge and praying and needing...something. Needing my mommy.
My mom was fading. I would read to her. At first she seemed comforted by this. Then it didn't seem to matter. I became an expert in reading her machines, and I read to myself, aloud. If she knew anything, maybe she knew we were there and we loved her
Before her once-revived heart rested, she no longer belonged with us. With the breathing machine forcing her to stay, she was a beautiful, delicate-finned fish on land, straining for home. That merciless machine would not let her go until we said so.
First the final sucking sound, then terrible silence, then peace. For her. Not me.
We emerged into a stunning lemon yellow day. Where was Houston's meteorological tumult? That would have been appropriate. We had let her go.
We didn't have a choice.
She didn't live her life for us.
When I was married, I would write words on things. All kinds of things. Everywhere. Like other people doodle. Faith. Fidelity. Kindness. Grace. Friendship. Words like that. Words that meant love to me. Things I craved. Rare things. Rare for me, anyway.
My husband liked to date. He liked to hit. He dated when we were dating. He hit when we were dating. Marriage and a baby did not discourage all of that. Can you guess which one hurt me? Sure you can. The dating.
Betrayal.
Betrayal, to me, is breaching faith. Lying. Cheating.
Hitting it what people do. I can take a punch. Lying. Cheating. I'm a little girl who doesn't belong, who is not welcome. Who is alone, scorned, unwanted, betrayed.
Violence, in the upside down world of the abused, is a connection. All that rage is focused on you. An explosion that's about you. You matter enough to hit.
Fucked up, right? I know.
Lying. Cheating. They sever connection. They are abandonment. They emptiness. They are disintegration. They always happen. I will never be safe from them.
Betrayal.
My new therapist is a cool customer. I nattered on about the twisting impact infidelity has on a spirit for awhile. The psychic hemorrhaging it causes. The emotional gangrene. She listened, then tentatively suggested that hitting is a betrayal, too.
It did not resonate. I looked at her like a Labrador struck by the sound of a a dog whistle. I cocked my head. It was a new concept. I don't feel it. My brain says of course it is the truth. My heart doesn't hear it.
Hitting is hitting. Infidelity is betrayal.
I have to work on this. I have to let my hearing brain have a chat with my hardened heart. Hitting is betrayal, too.
Hitting is betrayal. Hitting is betrayal. Hitting is betrayal, too.
Please don't hit me anymore.
I look at this picture and see a powerful wall of killing weather, which it is, kind of, if only symbolically. It is a a picture of my arm after an attack perpetrated by a man who loved me; a man I loved. How does a girl grow into a woman who loves and loves and loves a man who hurts and hurts and hurts her.
Habit.
I am going to transcribe a series of text messages I received from my baby brother this week. He and his wife (referred to as A) moved to my tiny, isolated hometown with no other aim than to help my ill and aging father. My father is a mean old bastard. He was a mean young bastard. I am grieving for the brother to whom I am in many ways a mother. I should not have let him go. Here is our conversation. Enjoy.
Bro: Just letting you know, Dad left the house after asking A and me to look for his wallet. He went to the (store) and bought a 750 ml bottle of LTD whiskey. He drank 3/4 of a bottle through the night, threatened to kill me and A various times, went outside and peed in the yard a couple of times and peed his pants. We stayed away from him and A found him naked sleeping on a bare mattress. We can't stop him and when I told him about how he was he said we could kiss his balls. I am really upset, Boo, Dad was never like this. Grandma, Grandpa and mom would be very upset if they saw him like this. He told me last night that if mom had ever spoken to him the way A talks to him, (mom) would be "bleeding in a corner crying."
Me: He's always been like this, just not to you. It's worse because he's been alone for years. But it's just him, magnified by age and loneliness. Call (cousin) and tell her what's going on. Or (cousin). (Cousin) can help. Be honest with her.
Bro: I've have already been in contact with (cousin) through (cousin). They say remove all of the guns while he is sleeping and I'm doing it tonight. He talks to himself when he's drunk and he refuses to bathe.
Me: He has knives, too.
Bro: All I found was the big knife.
Me: Please be safe. Lock your door at night. Why do you think I slept with a knife under my pillow in high school? He threatened to kill me and/or himself many times.
Bro: I didn't think it would affect me like it has.
Me: He's probably schizophrenic and so was gram. He deserves our pity, but not much else. Don't engage him.
Bro: I won't. I stay away from him and I have not have one drink with him. I try to discourage him. He's so mean to me. I'm remembering so much of his cruelty.
Me: That's actually good, baby. It doesn't feel good, but it is good.
So that's my dad.
The fact the he is probably a schizophrenic gives me pause. He needs help. Mental illness is sucking quicksand, and it's not his fault. However, he refuses help and has brutalized everyone who has tried to love him for decades.
I spent every waking moment from the time I was aware there was a person on Earth who wasn't my mother trying to win this man's love. I spent untold sleepless nights trying to understand him so I could forgive him for his most recent cruelty. Why? So I could love him again. So I could get back on the full-time job of trying to get his attention; struggling to get him to love me like a father should.
I learned to accept the unacceptable, tolerate the intolerable, and see beauty in people who abuse.
That's how girl grows into a woman who loves and loves and loves men who hurt and hurt and hurt her.
Thanks, dad.
I don't love you anymore.
