Hook

The week my mother was dying, I pushed my bed against the wall so that there would be only one way out of it - the left side.  I then placed my numerous pillows in such a way to insure I would be encompassed by them from head to foot.  Protected.  Womblike.  This wasn't an unconscious physical metaphor on my part; something that I'm now looking back on and having an "ah-ha" realization.  This was an on-purpose, physical metaphor I was consciously creating.  I was cocooning myself and I knew damn well why.


My mother was dying.  And I was alone.

I admit I was jealous of my brothers at the time.  We all took turns at the hospital.  The four of us were there with her 24 for hours a day until she passed.  We cried together, we worried together.  Once, words between us got heated out in the waiting room when the weight of the anticipation of losing our mother got the better of us.  That was just us, four opinionated siblings trying our best to find our way through hell without a map.  But I knew when my brothers went home they had wives or girlfriends that were waiting to comfort them.  People who would sit up in the night with them.  People that would make them their favorite soup.  Hand them tissues.  Hold them.  People that would leave them notes of encouragement and love in their shoes.  Stuff like that.  Stuff like you might see in a movie.  At least this is what I imagined.

I didn't have that.  That would be stuff my mom would have done for me.  Does that sound emotionally immature?  Maybe it is.  But it's the truth.  I've had two husbands and a ton of close friends but if I ever had a soulmate, a lone someone that would stop, drop, and roll with me for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, it was that lady.  No one in my life has ever come close.  When the funeral celebrant asked us to tell him what we would miss most about our mom I said, "No one is ever going to love me as much as she did."  Because no one ever has.

We didn't have a perfect relationship.  We had arguments and disappointments.  We had heated words and regrets.  Slammed doors and days of silence between us.  And she left this world with important things she should have told me, but she didn't.  And I don't have her anymore. 

At first, I had cocoon and denial.  How am I doing?  I'm doing well thank you and how are you?  Friends and acquaintances remarked how strong I was.  I smiled but inside I perpetually felt like a fish pulled clean out from the water; gasping and writhing on a sharp hook, remembering well what being in the lake felt like. 

Following her death, I read countless Internet articles on grief.  I wanted to know how long it would last.  If I could just see some light at the end of the godforsaken tunnel that'd be swell.  I read that if I was still a basketcase after six months, that'd be worrisome.  That's complicated grief.  I learned that if I had complicated grief, I should seek medical/psychological attention.  My mother died on November 1st.  I began ticking off days on the calendar.  I just had to get to May 1st.  May Day.

May Day.

May Day.  

That's fitting.