My Dead Mother Story
In the May of 2011 it had been nearly a year since my dad, mom, younger sister, and I had begun squatting in the family home we had lost in the sublime, subprime, mortgage crisis that bankrupted my parents. June was fast approaching and the time had finally come for us to hit the bricks, we were down to our final month but still hadn’t found a place to go. My dad’s occupation as a police officer required us to remain within the city, so our options were extremely limited until the dog died and then they were just limited. Why did she wait so long to kick it, did she even love us?
To top it all off, my mother's aunt was losing her years long battle with cancer and had arrived at death’s door, so my mother drove north to neighbor state New Hampshire for goodbyes. One week passed, then two, and my mother still hadn’t come back. Her aunt had passed shortly after she got up there, mom was really taking her time with this grief thing but considering the state of our lives it felt reasonable to conclude she needed the space. When she did come home it wasn’t for long and I didn’t get to see her before she went back to New Hampshire. She did see my dad though and he was able to give me the 411; Mother had fallen in love with her uncle and would be moving in with him in New Hampshire. This solved the riddle of where we were going to put the contents of her art studio, but it presented us with an entirely new riddle, what ‘s up with mom? When she came home again to get some of her things I was able to confront her, but all she really had to say was that she was finally happy and I should support her. I didn’t fight her about it because there was nothing to fight about, her true happiness superseded my sadness the way paper covers rock, the rock is still there but what is out of sight is out of mind. So, she moved away and I put that physical distance to work in putting her out of my mind. We would go months without speaking, and I could go much of that time without even thinking of her. I’d visit on her birthday if she wasn’t away with her uncle-lover in Cancun, we were on okay enough terms but it was difficult finding the motivation to speak with her when she thrived as our family died. Well, she told us she was thriving, but she had developed a heavy Jameson habit, and then there was that time she jumped out the bathroom window to escape a fight and broke her hip in three places. She wasn’t well, this wasn’t the mother I had known but there wasn’t anything to do about it, she claimed to be just fine. Now when I reflect back I refer to their place in New Hampshire as the elephant graveyard, a location she had run away to so she could die. After a life battling trauma and depression she was ready to let go, unfortunately I wasn’t able to conclude this until after she died.
The last time I spoke to her was on my 24th birthday, she called to wish me well and chat but I wasn’t in the mood. I blew her off to study for a physics exam that was ultimately blown off for a Louis CK show. I’d prefer to blame it all on Louis but the truth is that I told her I would call her back and didn’t, 5 months passed, then she died of an aneurysm. When your time comes, consider an aneurysm, it’s probably one of the best ways to die if the point of death is to escape human suffering, it was very, how should I say, quick. But, it doesn’t give you any time for goodbyes.
The grieving process has been complicated. At the time she died I still held the paper-covered rock that was my sadness from before she died and after that rock grew to fit the cavity where my heart once lived and replace it. I was depressed. Depression is a real bitch and everyone’s depression has a different flavor, mine was the flavor of disassociation. It was easier to feel nothing and smoke weed when I wanted to feel anything. My circuit board was fried, I broke up with my boyfriend, pulled away from friends, dropped out of school, quit my job as a waitress and supplemented my income by selling weed so I could smoke it for free, and honestly… it’s working out.