Dianne
March 20, 2007
I m preparing for April.
The beginning of spring is always a lead in to a month I fear and hate. The melting, the temperature fluctuations-they always remind me of a year when my mother went from remission to death in a matter of months, they remind me of a winter when we held our collective breath, and waited, walked on thin glass with the knowledge that she was not long for this world.
There s a look about the dying. A grey, sparse listening, eyes focused on something just outside of vision, an ash to the skin, a weary knowledge and safety about the eyes. Some call it peace. It looked more like bravery to me, and satisfaction. My mother was about to meet her maker, and had comes to terms with her leaving. Her body was falling from her as she heaved up what little was in her stomach. The world was falling from her.
I don t see spring. I don t see my wedding anniversary, or birthdays. I don t see newness in the April air. I see death. I see the ending of a childhood, the shattered pieces of a family, the useless and volatile sympathies of neighbours and not friends. I see one day where she was, and another where she wasn t. Bloated legs twitching on a hospital bed, our front room ruined, her last week spent lying, leaving. The chaos of that last day, the ache of my father s footsteps, running towards my Aunt s crying scream as my mother finally left us.
The stairs held me that day, where I shouldn t have been. Her body seized, and jumped on her bed. Her gown flew up, and I saw my mother as I had never seen my mother, she who never wore shorts, let alone walked around naked. And I knew. If my mother was alive, her hands would be gripping the edges of that gown for dear life, covering her privates . My mother in life was never immodest.
April shows me panic, and fear and sadness and anger. Surrounded by relatives I didn t know, shellshocked by life SHE S GONE! I wandered, and accepted their poor words, their moist hands and casseroles. I sat in our house, waiting for her to come home.
My father threw out her clothes.
April is transition, a day, a month, a year, a life I cannot escape. I became that day, I became within April a creature I wasn t, a thing that should not be. I was born of that death, of pasty deadwhite skin, of eyes that stopped seeing, of the beeping of a machine moving her lungs but not her heart or brain. I was born of that small girl screaming her love over the flatline, sobbing in the arms of an Aunt I barely knew, wishing my mother knew, wishing my mother could hear me.
Wishing my mother back.
I can t fix it. I can t change it. I hardly mourn it now, 18 years later.
18 years. Perhaps my mother was born into another, and is now a fledgling woman, starting out in the world.
Let me know if you see her.
Also posted at my home site:
March 21st, 2007 at 1:40 am
I’m sorry this is such a bad time for you, my dear. I understand. For me it’s the holidays. Though I made them my own - that took time. I will always, always hold my breath over Christmas and Easter.