Academic Papers

My mother died today.

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No, not today.

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But another, a sunny and warm day in July, has left an echo that makes every day the day my mother died. Some part of her being eased from my brain, dulling edges down until there is nothing left but sand…a kernel of a memory.

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But she died in July, and the phone rang as I set aside the book I was reading, Crash by J. G. Ballard. Fitting as I watched the final moments of the crash that had been my relationship with my mother come screeching to a halt in its resting place on this side of my life. The twisted metal jutting sharply to the sky—a fractured middle finger to my childhood; the glittering shards of glass sparkling against the ruin of what could have been; the pressure of the blown airbag gripping my lungs as I tried to inhale all the what ifs, what should have beens, if onlys —

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—if only she’d been a different person…if only I had been better.

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I grasped the edges of the book and clawed for the grief that should be welling out of me and spilling onto its own pages…but all I felt was empty…

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How do I grieve a woman who I’ve grieved for a lifetime?

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Grief.

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Is it linear?

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Does it follow a path that will see an eventual end to the journey?

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Or does it stay with a person, rising up, crashing down, twisting a heart as others drive by slowly, their necks craning to see the bloodied person within the wreckage of a mind destroyed by this confusing metal trap my emotions have become?

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Elisabeth Kübler-Ross…5 stages

                    Kübler-Ross…of grief

                                   Ross…a linear model of grief that I cannot find myself in.

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Am I normal?

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Probably not…at least…the expert, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, wouldn’t think that I was. But when she theorized the stages, did she dream of a child who began her dance with grief sometime when she was four and her small voice gave her the acceptance that her mother was never really there. Can you start the grieving process at the end?

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Was there ever any way for me to move through grief when I was catapulted to the understanding that I would spend a lifetime grieving for a woman I called mom?

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Acceptance.

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According to Google, Kübler-Ross viewed acceptance as the end of the journey; that destination where the weary driver can navigate herself into the spot and I can accept the reality of my loss.

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But I accepted it before I realized it was lost.

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Accepted the grief that she piled on me, so she didn’t have to carry it.

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Accepted the sharp words and insults that I was never enough—

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Not clever enough,

Not pretty enough,

Not strong enough,

Not thoughtful enough to lift up her confidence so she could pretend to be a mother she wasn’t.

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Accepted that I was too much—

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Too sensitive,

Too weird,

Too demanding of my worth,

Too weak when she needed someone strong that could carry her burdens, so she was free to dance away at a moment’s notice.

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Accepted the neglect, the loss, the knowledge that she would sell my body, my heart, my safety if it meant that she’d have more—

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More money,

More love,

More laughter,

More moments where she could feel the freedom her daughter wanted to enjoy.

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Accepted the fact that when I needed her most at four, at six, at 12, at 15, she had more important things to attend to than a daughter drowning in a hell she should have never experienced.

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Accepted that, when I needed her most, my mother was gone…nothing but an echo of sound that only rattled through the telephone line when she needed something from me.

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So, it was easy.

 

I’d accepted the loss of her so many times that when my sister became an echo of sound rattling through my cellphone, “Mom’s dead,” I simply nodded the acceptance of a fact I’d known for an eternity.

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Anger.

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But I wanted to feel that anger. According to Kübler-Ross, anger is normal; it’s healthy. It is the way we can feel the frustration and sadness and resentment. It’s that place where I can finally blame her instead of blaming myself for not being able to pull my small frame up to the stature of a daughter more heroic than I.

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I’d done the anger. I’d raged at her; told her the pain that had splintered my heart decades before her death had crashed into me, sending those splinters out in a spray of violence that pierced my soul.

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Anger that couldn’t be gathered together to form any semblance of blame. My mother was dead but the last time I’d spoken to her was eight years prior. So, did she die then? Or was it me who died at that moment when I angerly shouted, “We protected you! Goddammit, we loved you so much and we knew you wouldn’t be able to carry the violence he had done to my body. We made sure to protect you from those horrors…don’t you understand that. It was all for you and you fucking threw me away!”

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Why?

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The three little letter word ripping through me like a gale, wiping out the anger until it was nothing more than a sigh.

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Bargaining.

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Please understand.

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        Let me escape this rage that has burned inside me since I was eight.

                I’ll be a good daughter, the bestest daughter in the world if you only see me…see the pain that I’ve endured.

                       Please Mom. I love you. I’m weak. I don’t want to be burned up in this fiery wreckage we called my childhood.

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Kübler-Ross said that bargaining was used when we can’t accept the loss but was there ever anything to lose?

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Because bargaining, I did.

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To God that he’d stop the violence I was enduring. To you that you would understand that I wasn’t the one to blame.

        I promised to be good.

                To be better than good.

                       To be exceptional in all the ways I could but it wasn’t enough.

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I didn’t bargain when you died. All those what ifs were gone. I’d never have that chance to make things right between us—to hear my mother tell me that she loved me and was proud.

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There was no anger, no bargaining…simply a whimper as I tried not to look at the crash behind.

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Denial.

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Kübler-Ross says that denial is…who cares what Kübler-Ross says when I have never felt that denial. Never had a use for my mother’s tool of choice.

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Deny, deny, deny.

 

A lifetime of denial.

Denying me…

Denying my pain…

Denying those parts of me that should have been embraced.

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What use was denial in this process of lifelong grief…you denied enough for the both of us. The words spilling from your lips, “Won’t put food on the table,” as you denied my love of crafting stories. I spent years bargaining with you that if I made enough, maybe you’d stop denying me. But every penny earned, chimed with the cacophony of, “This isn’t food on the table.”

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Your denials, erasing my truth.

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11 years old.

        One story of a girl forced to run away because she was raped by her stepfather.

                Two eyes shining with hurt, bargaining with you to see the truth behind the dark blue smears of pen on paper.

                                Three minutes that I held my breath, silently bargaining with you…I would give up everything, including                                    writing, the only thing that allowed me to breathe…if you only saw my truth.

                                                Four heart wrenching rips as you tore the pages and told me to write something useful                                                             instead of the lies on that page.

                                                                Five screams that caught in my throat as tears slid down my cheeks.

Acceptance…

that constant companion engulfing me as I hung my head and agreed to write your wishes instead.

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So, when my sister said she was dead, there was no great denial. The twisted metal was already surrounding me, the careening crash coming to a silent end…almost anticlimactic in its final resting spot.

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Instead, I sighed, tried to force the tears to my eyes, and simply replied, “Are you okay?” because even in her loss, I still denied me.

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Depression.

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I don’t need Kübler-Ross to explain it to me. I understand depression, it comes in waves, threatening a new climatic car crash whenever I feel the most pulled thin.

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At nine I understood that the same wreckage that had pushed my grandfather’s action to kill himself was embedded deep under my skin. I threw myself toward that same end all while wishing that my mother would see her daughter bleeding on the side of her life, begging for someone to encourage her to live.

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At 38, my depression was given a name—high functioning—they said.

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High functioning like I won the depressive prize.

High functioning in caregiving of everyone but me.

High functioning in finding hours in the day that shouldn’t be there.

High functioning in the lifelong insomnia that meant I’d lose track of sleep, only realizing as the sun began to shine over the horizon that it had been 24 hours, 36…sometimes days since I’d last closed my eyes.

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Work, my drug of choice. Never having to sit with the emotions that had plagued me since I was four…always busy…never stopping… “But what will happen when you sit still,” they, but never my mother, asked.

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And when she died, I chose my drug of choice to avoid facing the truth that I felt nothing inside. Went to work writing an obituary for a stranger that everyone else knew, creating a eulogy that made everyone cry at my mother’s brilliance…felt that anger at myself that even after her death I still wrote her wishes…accepted that I wasn’t good enough to write the truth.

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My high functioning depression rearing its ugly head and sending me careening through long days where I lost myself again in the work of the everyday.

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But “Mom’s dead,” caused my headlong race to come to a body jarring stop…forced me to sit still. To appraise the wreckage of a relationship that was beyond repair. I toed the shattered glass on the asphalt as it crunched underneath, ran my fingers on metal that used to burn to the touch, stared in that stillness at the damage that had been wrought from a lifetime of grief.

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The anger—the acceptance—the bargaining—all strange markings on my soul and I found myself trapped in the maze of grief that I have navigated throughout my childhood and beyond. And now what was I to do.

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Because even in her denial of me, through the abuse, the neglect, those moments of pure rage when I wanted to lash back out at her, I had loved her with all of me.

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My sister cried, her heart broken, and I pretended to cry as I clutched the phone to my ear.

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I didn’t feel grief when she died. I felt relief.

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Because in her death I was shown the escape from that maze of grief.

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And, in that escape, I could finally leave the wreckage behind.