The Reason I Never Say Never Anymore.

We laid on our sides on her bed. Me, curled in a ball with him curled around, enfolding me.  We laid on her bed while she lay in another bed, dying in a hospital 8 miles away.  I heaved body-racking sobs while he held me, his strong, steady support the only thing keeping me tethered to the Earth, or so it seemed. It felt like gravity had given up on me. 

I remember saying over and over, 'I don't want to do this. I just don't want to do this.' I meant, of course, that I didn't want to go through what was coming. I wanted, in the most desperate way, to go around it. To wish it away. To wake up and find it had all been a dream. You know, a bad dream. One that leaves you feeling weird, even over your morning tea. Any bad dream would be better than waking up, again, to find your reality altering itself so horribly. To find that a new normal is unfolding and there's no way to stop it.  A new normal that's not going to include your mother.

I didn't want to watch my mother die. I didn't want to sit at the funeral home and hear people's condolences. I didn't want to go to her funeral.

There are a lot of things that I thought I knew about myself before my mom got sick.  Before accompanying her to the precipice, knowing that she was going to go sailing off into the abyss and that I would be left alone on the edge, little rocks crumbling at my feet.  Crumbling and falling in along with her, while I stood watch.  While I witnessed and wavered there. Swaying a little. Woozy from the loss.

I knew, for instance, that I would never, ever be able to touch a dead person.  Having attended countless funeral home viewings, watching people lovingly caress their dead, I was certain that the small beads of cold revulsion in my belly would prevent me from making physical contact with a corpse.  No matter who it was.

Responding to my sister's 11:30pm The-End-Is-Near summons, I rounded the corner on my way to the hospital room and the nurse said, 'I'm sorry.' I knew my mother was gone.  But there she was, right on the bed.  Her body was cool. Not cold.  Cool in an unnatural way.  The way that passes heart-collapsing information right through your fingertips, up your spine and into the back door of your brain.  I touched her again in the casket.  I stroked her hair, her hands.  I gave not one moment of thought to any onlookers' cold beads of revulsion.  Because she was my mother. I knew her. Knew her. The way that her cheek felt against mine when we hugged, the way her hands looked when they were covered with flour from baking, the sound of her laugh, the vaccination scar on her arm and the birthmark under her eye.

I simply didn't think about it until later.  About how I surprised myself.

I surprised myself over and over and over. 

Knowing yourself, not just *thinking* you know yourself, but really knowing yourself requires examination and insight and observation of your life, of your behaviors.  I've lived an examined life, to be sure (the therapy bills say so, anyway) and being that it's a priority for me, I know myself pretty well. I have to say, though, that it was interesting, refreshing, even, to surprise myself.  To see what behaviors, what responses, what experiences expressed themselves, without my full awareness.  And thinking about that, talking about that, gave me a comfortable place in my head to process the overwhelming and sometimes terrible reality.

In a weird way, it's not so much different from ushering a baby into the world, this ushering a loved one out.  At least that's how it felt to me.  When I walked into the room, despite my mom's physical body lying on the bed, it was incredibly obvious that she was gone.  'Where the fuck did she go?' The Little Sister and I asked each other.

Two years later, when I watched The Nephew come into the world, a brand new person, materializing out of nowhere, we asked each other, 'Who is that?  Where did he come from?'

And The Little Sister would, every so often, look at him and ask him this:

'Are you my mother?'

Comments

[Rutilated Quartz Beads]

When you look around and your world is crumbling, and when you think no one loves you, your best friend is the one to run to.

[jordan retro]

You couldn't refuse touching your mother. That primal love wasn't going away. I tell my children that the shell stays, and the soul goes.

[robin]

speechless here too. wow - so powerful! I am very sorry for your loss.

[Kate of the North]

While my mom was dying, it was a comfort somehow to know that she and I and our family were not the only people who experience this. We all do, eventually; there's something natural about it, even though it feels like such a tragedy, like it just can't be happening and there is a wall you keep hitting your head against and can't get beyond. You've put it so beautifully into words.

[Heather, Queen of Shake Shake]

So much beauty in this. I am in awe.

[Kelly]

I'll add another one to the choruses of 'beautiful.' While I was closer to my grandmother, it was my grandfather I got a chance to help usher out of this world and into the next. And honestly, I'm not sure if I could have stood near my grandmother and helped her depart. Such a giant, gone.

You couldn't refuse touching your mother. That primal love wasn't going away. I tell my children that the shell stays, and the soul goes. But man, to stand and ponder that shell, the body of the person we loved, still love, how can you not lay your hands on them?

You're so lovely, T. Hope to see you soon.

[amanda]

So good. As someone else who has lost a parent, it sometimes feels like you're in my head..

[jonniker]

I've read this so many times and still, I really have nothing to say, because it's perfect.

[Deb]

Really, really hard and simultaneously good to read. Not good. Satisfying. It makes so much sense even while there's this inexplicable element. (Anyone who hasn't experienced, for instance, childbirth firsthand would - probably - not comprehend the mystical aspect of the comparison bw saying hello and saying goodbye.)

Oh man. I feel like I just ran for a really long time in a forest. You just made me feel stuff I haven't wanted to think about in a while.

[amanda]

Fuck. Between Kristen's post and this I am a puddle. You are amazing. So damn amazing. You surprised me here, but at the same time you didn't. You are just so much, does that make sense or sound like and incomplete sentence? Gah, you are!

[Issa]

I've read this three times now. I still don't know if I have any words. Except, this was beautifully written.

[RuthWells]

"In a weird way, it's not so much different from ushering a baby into the world, this ushering a loved one out."

YES.

I was with my grandmother when she passed -- had spent days by her bedside with a rotating group of relatives in and out -- and she was in pain and wanted to go. We sat and spoke with her when she emerged from the morphine and told stories amongst ourselves when she was under the morphine, and let her know in every way that it was okay to let go now.

In the week that followed, I described the experience as being very much like labor, in that it took focused concentration and emotional energy that I didn't know I had. Yes. Ushering in and ushering out.

[Carolyn]

I'm teary. That was incredibly touching. Bravo to your ability to put emotion into words that effortlessly translate back to emotion.

[Carmen]

Wow. Beautiful.

[mythoughtsonthat]

This is really beautiful- it touched me. Peace.

[The Last Girl Standing]

This is beautiful. Heart-wrenching. Hopeful. Amazing.

[Swistle]

Sweetheart.

[Miss Britt]

Wow. This was amazing.

[jodifur]

This post is haunting and sad and beautiful all at the same time.

[inannasstar]

Beautiful. Dark. Love. Sadness. Happiness. Grief.

Thank you for writing this.

[Lori]

speechless. love you T.

[stephanie]

Thank you for that.