And just like that, she’s gone. This woman who formed my broken thinking and filled my childhood with torment. This person that I tried to avoid in my adult years as much as my own guilt would allow. The creature that, try as I might, I couldn’t fix, couldn’t save, couldn’t heal, couldn’t make whole. And I’m left with …
I don’t know. I’ll never know. There was no closure. There was no moment of enlightenment. No chorus of angels shrouding her in light and allowing her a brief moment of humanity while she hesitated at the crossroads between this world and the next. She didn’t sit up in bed, look me in the eye and say, “I’m sorry. I really fucked up.” There was no tearful apology. No wailing and gnashing of teeth for a life squandered. No remorse for all the unnecessary destruction and emotional trauma and the legacy of shit that she unleashed on at least the next couple of generations.
I feel cheated. I didn’t get a mother. And now I don’t even get to grieve a mother. I don’t get to miss someone on holidays. Instead, I get to compound the guilt of not going to see her with the knowledge that I can’t go see her. I get to live the lie of nodding my head and listening glumly when well-wishers extend their condolences. I get to try and quell the rage inside when kind, compassionate, well-intended folk say things like “it’s always so hard when a man loses his mother.”
You know what? I wouldn’t know. I never had a mother. So fuck off.
And there it is, really. Me playing my role. My shrink says that’s what we all do in times like these. Everyone plays their role. For me, it’s Angry Disconnected Man. Those who don’t really know me think that I’m still wandering around seething with rage for all the injustices she heaped upon me. That I’m angry with her. That I never forgave her and accepted her brokenness. That I disengage because I’m a cold heartless bastard.
It’s not true. Not any of it. The anger is aimed at the hope now extinguished, at least in this life. The disconnect is the shovel that buries the shame of my final great failure. I never could fix her. And maybe, just maybe, it really was all my fault. I know that is not true, but I’ll always feel that way. And that’s a hell of a legacy.
Someone else’s choices are NEVER your fault. After a lifetime of being told you’re the ugly/wrong/weak one, you get to the show the true truth. You choose your own personality. When you’re young, you don’t get a choice. You have to live and endure what you have. Now, though, you do get to select how you will be. You can be angry or sad, or relieved, or happy or any combination that suits you. The choice is only yours. What someone else decides to do with their life is on their head. Just remember it is difficult to change yourself but impossible to change someone else.