When will mine stop?
One of my most favourite people in the world, and someone who has been in my life, cheering me on for what feels like forever now, sent me a link yesterday. It was a link about having a dead mother and deciding to take mother's day back. To stop lamenting the loss of a mother and to rejoice the fact that she existed and created me.
Everyone knows the cross i hang myself on every year: dead mother, hate everyone, complain online and to anyone who will listen.
I've tried to ease up on the usual misery over the past year, only quietly mourning her on her birthday and death day and mother's day. I holed myself up, alone, and missed her silently with pictures and songs and spritzes of her perfume. I posted single photos accompanied by diatribes that modestly expressed my grief in a way that was both socially acceptable, But cathartic for me.
But for some real special reason this year is hitting me in a catastrophic way. I've been crabby as fuck, heart-hurt, and trapped in my own head for weeks. My poor boyfriend has dealt with the brunt of emotions that are so accelerated that I have no means of even understanding how to deal with them, and for that, I am eternally grateful. He's taken my outrageous moodiness with great stride and I love him too the ends of the earth.
So when I decided I was prepared to read this article sent with the best intentions, I was on my boyfriend's bed, watching him happily play his favourite video game, cuddling his cat, and smoking a cigarette. I was still reeling from a real exciting panic attack I had had for the previous twenty-four hours that saw me not leave my bed but to smoke and use the toilet literally for an entire day. But i had composed myself enough to convince my brain that I was strong enough to read it.
I was not.
It opened with so much promise...
"My dear fellow motherless humans of the world, I am here to announce that this year we are taking back Mother’s Day, dammit."
I felt a brief moment of empowerment. I felt, for just a second, that i might finally be able to take this day and make it mine. That i might be able to stop aching, even if for just the one twenty-four hour period. I felt like i might be able to wake up on Sunday and not hate every single human who had an alive mother.
But then it was gone. I lost all hope that tomorrow might be okay with one paragraph that forced huge, fat tears out of my eyes that I let fall silently, because I was humiliated by my sudden spurt of emotion.
"She’d want you to kick Mother’s Day in the ass and then make out with it. She’d want you to have a fucking wonderful day. The best day. One she’d love to hear about on the phone at night while she simultaneously watched Wolf Blitzer, cooked dinner and snapped at you to 'stop cussing so much, jeez.'"
It hurt my heart because I haven't been able to talk to my mother on the phone in thirteen years. That paragraph made me remember that I forgot what my mother's voice sounds like and I'll never, ever hear it again because she's dead and the one voicemail my sister had of her voice was accidentally deleted.
It made me remember the last phone call I had with my mother, in the middle of the British night. A phone call that she was completely incoherent for, desperately shouting over the machines that were keeping her alive, telling me that she loved and missed me. A phone call which ended with her nurse getting on the phone to tell me that she was just a little loopy from her medication and that she'd be fine if I called back in a few hours. A phone call that was followed a couple of hours later by another phone call from my sister, telling me that our mother was dead.
It sounds so stupid and petulant, even as i type this, that I am still clutching onto mourning my mother's death after more than a decade, but it's there. A burning pain in the pit of my stomach, because she's gone. Just gone. and there's nothing that I can do to bring her back.
The article suggested I make the day my own and care for myself like I would have cared for my mother, but I won't have that chance. Partly because I still insist on letting the day destroy me, but also because i have to literally work all day.
There won't be breakfast in bed, flowers, manicures, margaritas, or movie marathons. There will be me, sitting in a liquor store, trying my hardest to ignore the fact that not only is my mother dead, but also that the baby that was going to make me a mother, that was supposed to have been born in the next few weeks, is also dead.
Oh, hey double whammy.
So here I sit, knowing that in a few hours it will be a day rejoiced by so many, but completely dreaded by me. In a few hours I'll have to face the photos and posts of people receiving and giving flowers and presents and love to someone when I have nobody to give to or receive from. A day that is completely ignored as a day of remembrance for people who have lost their mothers or children. A day that makes me want to die more than most days because it feels like everyone is shoving my nose in a mess that i had no hand in creating and would take back in an instant for just five more minutes. For just one more chance to hear her voice. For just one more pregnancy symptom.
So for the love of god, love your mothers tomorrow. Love them for the people that don't have mothers anymore. Love them even if you're angry with them. Love them and be gentle to the ones who have nobody to love.
