08/27/22

Sometimes, I feel responsible for your death. Like it happened to help me grow, which is perhaps the most self-involved thought of all time. I know it’s not that. It’s that I have to use your death to grow. The alternative is to wilt and join you.

The alternative is excruciatingly tempting.

You asked me to please let you die. If I had to let you, does that mean there was another choice? Could I have kept you? Could you be here, scolding me for leaving my shoes on the floor? For leaving dishes in the sink and cabinets open and my backpack on Gloria’s chair? Small gestures that were so easy in retrospect, that I would go back and do over because any frustration they added to your day haunts me. Frustration that could have contributed to your cancer, couldn’t it?

You’d tell me not to think that way, to be kinder to myself, but you blamed yourself for everything too.

Maybe you wanted to be with your Mom, though I doubt that. I feel like she stole you from us. She tortured you while she was alive, continued to haunt you even after you moved away, crept into the beautiful life you built after all the damage she inflicted. She couldn’t let you get to nine months without her before taking you with her, and even if my theory sounds ridiculous, I’m not sure I can forgive her.

It’s impossible for me to imagine you on whatever the other side is, finding peace with her. All the people you loved, they’re here. Where you should be. 

I don’t understand your death. Why you left us not even halfway through the wood. I thought we were going to have at least 50 more years together. I wrote that to you, on your 50th birthday, on a card I drew by hand. A card that taunts me.

I wish I could watch footage of you on a loop. 

I want your arms around me, your voice comforting me. I miss smoothing your hair back.

I miss you Mom.

You.