1/14/2005 09:35:59 PM|||Amy|||One of these days I'll stop writing about my mother, and more about everything else. One of these days I will run across a picture of her when I am looking for a picture to send to my long lost friend from those substance-soaked days right after high school, as I did at work today, and I won't spend any time at all with my head in my hands and sobbing onto the industrial carpet.

Not that I am indulging in self-pity. But there are days that I get through without tears or soul shrieking, and there are days that I don't. I went to a Sam's Club today for the first time in God knows how many years, and as I walked around in that depressing, industrial-lit Hell of bulk buying and shameless consumerism, I thought about the shopping trips my mother and I used to take there. I have memories of my mother attached to most of my life.

So, on the way home tonight I listened to this cd by Natalie Merchant that I have in the car. I think of it as her death album because every song, or almost every song, is about death or is just so goddamned depressing that I find myself singing along - usually kind of cheerfully. But tonight, I'm listening to this cd and on comes "Beloved Wife". Then, I remembered the time I was in a pizza joint in Olympia, WA with my parents right after I had both graduated from college and experienced my first soul-shattering heartbreak. Or maybe it was my second. Who knows? Anyway, there we were and this song comes on and I start sobbing and my parents ignored me. Goddamn. I think my parenting style is in some ways the direct opposite and in some ways exactly like that of my parents.

Yeah, I have issues. Everybody does. But the problem right now is that I am having to work through all of that with my mother, and she's not around to defend herself.

My mother. There are some things you just never do, no matter what - and yet my mother did them. I would even write here about some of it - or at least the things I can remember because like my sister, I have probably blocked out enough to keep me functioning relatively sanely - but I just can't. Seeing those things on the screen is more harmful than remembering them. My mother was not a saint. She was not the ideal mother. But, this I know for sure. She loved us. Sure, she was damaged and she damaged us in some ways (I mention this more in point of fact, than self pity) but she loved us.

The kids have taken this so matter of factly. Grandma is gone, and she isn't coming back.

I have said before that I know my mother is no longer in her body, that her body is a shell. What I actually think is more possible than say, she went to Heaven, is that the spark that gave my mother life died out, and my mother is gone in the purest sense of the word. She is gone. Not someplace else. Just gone.

I probably need to get some counseling. But, at the end of the day, this is why I have this blog. I can write here about all of my psychological bugaboos that I don't really have the courage to express to my friends or my family, except my sister.

So, on the drive home tonight, as I was listening to this song about a man on the night his wife of 50 years dies, I thought about that time with my parents in Olympia and of course, I thought about my father and his grief. Out of nowhere and like a lightening bolt, I sobbed body shaking, hiccupping sobs. Then, just as quickly, stopped. It was weird.

Like I said, I'll get through this and I'll start writing about other things again. But Goddamnit, I have lost my mother. My mother. The woman, who no matter what harmful or hurtful thing she did or said, always gave unconditional love. As my sister wrote, there is a feeling of rudderlessness. As if the anchor is gone. And the sail. As if unconditional love no longer exists for me, except from my father - and he'll be dead one day too, won't he? What am I going to do?

I'll get through this. My sister, my brother and my father will get through this. Losing her won't kill us. It will just make us very sad for a while, and then one day maybe we can think about her without grief or unresolved anger or resentment or pain. Maybe we will be able to think of her with nothing but love. |||110576270387750816|||