Alone with all your letters

I have been home sick with the flu for three days now. Really sick, so dizzy I can barely stand and coughing and headachy when I move around too much. Which is why it's taken me three days to get to this box.It's a box of cards Mom sent me when I was away at college. I sorted through the trunk they were in 2 years ago, before her cancer came back, and forgot all about them. But all the thoughtful cards that have come in the mail, day after day (thank you friends!), reminded me that I had these. I remembered exactly where they were, and why I had decided to keep them.

I went a long way off for college on purpose, to try something new and make a fresh start. I struggled with depression and anxiety all through high school, and while my parents tried to get me help, I don't think they ever really understood the extent of my depression. So I had very little desire to move a few miles down the road to Athens with most of my graduating class and be reminded of my academic and social failures.

Now I can better imagine the terror of sending your child off to a strange city. And I suspect my mom was really worried about how well I would 

cope. But she encouraged me and gave me my space and always let me know, on the phone or in writing, how much she loved me and believed in me. I keep these cards for so many reasons - her words, her handwriting - but right now what I need them for is to remember the person who believed in me even though I created many of my own problems. The person who had a front row seat to my biggest flaws and never failed to cheer me on. 

How I know that she loved me

I keep trying to hold on to the things Mom surrounded herself, and us, with. Things I remember from my childhood, or remember her buying for herself. 

But then I found an envelope of pictures from when I was born. I've seen some of them separately in other albums, but some I'd never seen before.

And when I see the look on her face as she held newborn me, I realize this is all I need to hold onto, for the rest of my days, to know that she loved me. This was the message I was holding out hope for.

Hummingbird Tattoo

In The Hospital

Being in the hospital with a victim is very different than with my parents. I usually don't arrive until after the patient has been admitted, when called by hospital staff or law enforcement. There's no mystery, even if what happened is unclear, because all I need to go on is that the victim believes they experienced a sexual assault. Anything mysterious or unclear is the responsibility of law enforcement or medical staff. I usually have to make a stand on at least one issue with medical staff on behalf of the victim. Take your pick: reporting vs. non reporting, HIV risk and prophylaxis, discharge from the ER. And once the call is done, I leave, go home and rest. I try to follow up, but sometimes the victim only sees me as a reminder of the assault. I know I did the best and most that I could. I sleep at night.

I spent more time with my dad in the hospital than I did with my mom. We waited to find out what was going on, what symptoms were cancer, or treatment side effects, or just the hazards of living. Medical staff are more deferential to cancer than rape. 

But ultimately you go to the hospital for things that were done to you (unless it's a "Darwin Awards"-style accident). I can now joke that my one personal trip to the ER was for a rogue appendix, but at the time I definitely cursed my body for what it was doing to me. Rape is a betrayal of trust (you are more likely to be assaulted by someone you know). 

I realized, on my most recent work trip to the hospital, that cancer is a betrayal of trust too. It was the stupid hospital socks that got me thinking, about feet in beds and the grips on the bottoms of those socks in case you get up. Cancer betrays without the malice of the rapist, but  forever mars the ability to hope or trust the body's cells. Your body makes cells, using energy, for the purpose of maintaining the body's life. And when that cell is done it should have the good sense to die, to make way for new cells for the good of the body. But cancer cells refuse to die, and then they populate.

Then doctors treat the cancer. They talk in terms of numbers, of years left and percentages in studies and lab test results. My mom's doctors have her amazing news in May and she died in August. I can't decide if I wish I was never told that May news, because I'm so far from the hope they gave me. Cancer and its medicine yanked my hope like a rubber band. And at some point it snaps.

The Exhaustion of Never

These are some of the things I will never do with my mom again:

Wake up on a Saturday morning knowing she's there to have breakfast with Stanley and take him to the park.

Marvel at her Goodwill/garage sale/consignment sale finds.

Ask her about my childhood.

Call her for the answer to some question about my childhood or parenting.

Worry about her, how she's feeling, whether she's telling me everything or trying not to worry me.

Pick out some books from my shelves to recommend to her.

Call her about my day, or to wish her good morning, or set up a video call with the kids. 

Giver her a birthday present or receive the perfect one from her.

Take Stanley to a coffee shop.

I'm exhausted thinking about all the things I'll never do again with her. Sometimes, looking forward towards a future without her, I don't know if I can do this. I'll never struggle through a week towards the joy of her arrival on a Friday night with the promise of a weekend of fun. I just want to lay my head down and wake up when it's not so hard.

Secret Message

I yearn so much to hear from my mother, even one last time. I actually do hear her in the laughter of my children, in birdsong, in my grandmother's voice...but I fantasize about her leaving one last message, just for me, with the wisdom of the dying. I wanted some secret transmission directly to my eyes and ears on my birthday, the first without her.
One of those last days, at her house, she did murmur that she wanted to tell me something. But she didn't finish the thought. Or maybe she did, and I didn't recognize it. 
I've dreamed two dreams over the past week about a message from her. In one, she was dying, and I asked her to call my phone and leave me a message for later. This was probably the night after I did listen to the last voicemail she left me, telling me how she was feeling but that there was nothing to be worried about. In the second dream, the book I ordered with my birthday checks - The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, hardcover - came with an inscription from her, rambling about dying wishes and practical arrangements with tenderness. 
I almost - almost - expected a birthday card from her. Not mailed from beyond, but signed and delivered by advance arrangement. And when it never came I realized that (of course!) if she had planned not to be here, she would have found a way to make sure I got a card from her on my birthday. But all the things she didn't do - birthday card, final arrangements, updating her will, writing down her email password, for goodness' sake - meant that she never planned not to be here. Dying wasn't in her plan. All the things she did in the last few months were rooted in the intentions of living. She didn't waste a precious second on death.
That is what these acts and omissions mean to me. My mind has put them all together in this pattern. But my heart isn't there yet...my heart breaks on a Sunday morning, on a three day weekend, screaming inside how will we fill these hours without her? These days? These long years ahead without my mother's touch? My heart quails at the long years of motherhood, of life, that I have to walk without her. That would feel less lost without some words to guide them by.

The Last

The last day my mom was alive...I've been measuring so many of my days and doings now in time since then.  She died at 3 pm on a Saturday, and that night I didn't want to go to sleep because I didn't want the last day she was alive to end. Let alone end with me going to sleep, as though it was any other day. 
That Sunday was the first day she wasn't alive - the first day that held no part of her, no breath, no touch, no sight or sound. Most of what I did recalled no part of her. I went to brunch with my sister's friends, I went to a tattoo shop and got a new tattoo, I ate dinner from somewhere I'd never been. But these doings were book-ended by waking up and going to sleep in her house.
The first day I went back to work, I sat at my desk and realized that the last time I looked at my desk, got up from my chair, spoke to someone, she was alive. I had come so far over the weeks I was gone only to come back and realize that I had to pick up the doings of my life without her. I rearranged my desk, now I look out at the window instead of at the wall.
I drove home from work that first day back without calling her to talk about the previous weekend visit and drive home with the kids. That might have been when the thought of going forward without her felt the most hopeless. If I can't discuss my kids with my own mom, to hear her joy, perspective, advice, empathy, how can I face the next decades of parenting?