2003-07-13 - 11:58 p.m.
'"in my life i loved you more"'
And it always seems like times like these, where every cell in my entire body sings with the deepest need to write and when I've got stories sticking thickly in my mouth, that I have the hardest time writing. It's when everything in me just gets far too overloaded and wants to shut the fuck down that I have the strongest urge to be on. So here I sit pushing through the muddling. Hoping to get past it so I can say ...
Two years ago today my mom died.
And I know that some people will read those words and wince at my choosing them, but I hate euphemisms. I deplore them. They put this tilt on death. Like if a person says it in just the right way, it'll erase the sting and every subsequent pain that bumping that hurt place is bound to bring. And they make death seem much more poetic and oddly beautiful than the reality of my mom's was. The death that took her heartbeat, but left her body gasping. It's horrific. And scarring. And something that no matter how long ago i saw it, has never ever gone away. It's never even faded. Not even the slightest bit.
And somehow I hoped that there would be some healing in the time that's gone by. Wrapped in the time that storms me at every turn. But that's not what's happened. Instead the pain has intensified. It has the ability to come in jolts or in waves or in tiny little pin pricks. Some days it takes me over. And some days it just sits in the empty places in me. Like behind my knees or in my teeth. But it's always there. Always present. The pain just throbs and reminds me. It taps me on the shoulder. And tells me it's name when I try to forget it. And today it's been all around me. Pain piled high on top of memories of older pain. Of staler pain. Because I'm here in this place. The place.
And today as I drove home from dinner with JeffVanPatten I flashed back.
And suddenly, it's the day I turned twenty-one. And as I'm driving the stretch of highway from my apartment to where my mom is living, I burst into tears. And I cried rivers of the purest tears of happiness. All because my mom was alive. She was alive. And I remember thinking how unfair it was that I should have to be so happy about something that once seemed so small and that most people take so for granted.
My mom was alive and that was reason enough to cry fat tears, because I was a year older and she had survived another month to see it. To hug me. She'd survived through all of the tests. And needles. And chemo. And radiation. She'd survived through her hair falling out and her weight dropping off. She'd survived another month with this terrible thing inside of her. And while I was never happy while she suffered, never really happy throughout that entire year, I was happy for this. For this moment pinned behind glass, suspended in time.
And I am wounded, cut too deep, to open my eyes in the now. Because I'm on that same stretch of road. I am. But somehow I'm different. Somehow now is not then, and I'm driving to a home in which my mom never lived. And somehow I know that for the rest of my living days, no familiar road will never be the same. And either will I.
I'll never be able to drive that stretch, though, without thinking of those tears. Or the times we went rushing it to get her to the hospital. Or driving home this night two years ago, having seen her die. These roads are tainted. They're all spoiled. Just like this place. It's wilted, browned beyond saving.
And yet there's still a part of me that marvels at the way that they've continued to exist without her. That the roads didn't crumble somehow. Or that my heart didn't stop when hers did. I miss her. And know that they must, too. Every single sidewalk and interstate. Every raindrop and prism of light. Every person. Everything.
And I just wish. I wish that wishing did any good.
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