And now, as another motherless Mother’s Day and the 20th anniversary of her death have passed, I find myself wondering: how is it possible that I blinked and 20 years went by? How have I lived for so long with such a gaping hole, such an immense absence?
Pregnancy, however, is all too often treated simply as a gateway—something to get through on the road to the real event, the baby’s birth; not as a momentous, life-altering, and emotionally and physically treacherous event in and of itself. It is rarely something that women are allowed to experience and enact—to speak of—in all its nuanced complexity.
It wasn’t a surprise, of course; the ALS narrative rarely gets an alternative ending. What was a surprise, though, and a sickening one, was the relief I felt when it was over. The gratitude I felt for this one awful lesson: death is not always unwelcome. It is not always the worst thing.
When Betty died, of course, she did not die the way grandmothers are supposed to die. It wasn’t until I was sitting across from an officer at the police station that I finally understood that she didn’t just die. She had been murdered. After over fifteen hours of interrogations and tape recorders and fingerprints while the police searched our house for evidence, it was decided that Mom was the one who killed her with a knife that was never found. A motive was never found, either.
Every so often I become lucid and love my body for what it is and what I’ve made it. But then that feeling disappears, leaving me raw and emotionally uncomfortable. And the saddest part of all…being bald from Alopecia Areata doesn’t even make me feel different, I own that. Now if I could just accept my body.
This list must be yelled. HOW COULD YOU USE OTHER PEOPLE’S PAIN TO MAKE YOURSELF FEEL BETTER? YOU DON’T HAVE A RIGHT TO FEEL AS BAD AS YOU DO BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT PARALYZED OR MISSING LIMBS OR MISSING A FACE! YOU’RE FUCKING STILL ABLE TO WALK! YOUR LIFE ISN’T OVER.
Life does go on - no matter how badly we are hurting or how much we want to change things. There are times when I am totally okay with my dad’s passing. Now there are definitely times when that is not the case.
I wonder if I’m the only one who feels as though my problems are ridiculous, petty, and insignificant. A lot of people don’t have the luxury of being able to dabble in contemplations of spirituality. A lot of people are trying to survive on basic human levels while I’m blessed enough to have the time and space to learn to survive the voice in my own head. But this is the struggle I’ve found, it’s the struggle I know.
