Today it's been four months since she's been gone. I still feel the guilt. I could have done more, should have. I feel guilty because I held onto my own pride and didn't think of things from her side of the relationship. Or lack of one. I couldn't imagine my children ever cutting me off. But I can't imagine cutting them out of my life either. I guess God blessed me with a life of mundane choices. Nothing that would spiral someone else into a world beyond their control. My biggest decisions are what to feed my children and how are we going to spend our afternoon. Nothing close to the things she had to struggle with, never a question of having to hand my babies over.
When Sera turned two I hated my mother. How could she look in my face and willingly give me to someone else at that age? How could she stand to have someone else get the words of "mommy" spoken to them? I don't understand it. I never will, that is my blessing. I never asked her that question. I don't know why, maybe because I didn't want to hear the answer, maybe because I didn't care to hear it. My anger was way louder than any words she could have given. On two occasions she had sent my children things, the first time I just threw them away. I wanted my children to know nothing about her. I wanted her to have no ties to them. The second time I wrote "refused" on the box and made the mail man take it with him. I felt violated and angry. They way to my children was not the mail...it was with me. I felt like she had to make things right with me. We'd had talks about her coming to visit and how we did not have to tell my children that she was my mom. Just say she was a family friend. I couldn't do it. The fear of letting her around my children choked me. I got panicked just thinking about it. I wanted to protect them. Keep them from ever knowing that world. Not keep them from knowing my past, but what good does it do to my children to see or know what I lived through? It would only bring them sadness. I had enough of that between us, they didn't need any. I then got to the point where it no longer mattered. I could think of her and my sisters and not be sad, happy, angry. I was indifferent. It was as if it was someone else's family. Not mine. I had my own. I had a mother and father who showed me the shining example of marriage, love, trust, and happiness. I had a sister and two brothers who I knew I could go to whenever I needed. They loved me, I loved them, and our children were completely content having the family they had always known.
I got a friends request on FB from my mother and I struggled with it. Told her no, that I was not interested in her knowing anything about my life. That she gave that privilege up. With a change of heart I let her in. But it became too much. I felt like I couldn't be myself, I found i was being more guarded of myself and my children. So I had to let it go. I had to just say no, this is my life and I can't deal with this. I thanked her for her gift of letting me go, because without that I would not have the parents and family I have.
When I was told by my aunt that my mother was gravely ill, it came at a complete surprise that I was emotionally and physically torn apart. This woman may not have been in the most recent part of life, but she was very much a center of my childhood. She was my everything. She was always a part of me. No matter my fight or distance, we were forever connected in a way that no one else in the world was connected to me. She was my mother. She was the one I looked like, sounded like, and loved like. When I was younger she was the mother who taught me how to blow bubbles with my hands and catch them, the mother who I followed around with my hands in her back pockets. I have many great memories that now outweigh any of the sadness.
I got to speak to her a few times before she died. I don't talk about it much because it's the one thing that brings me to tears. Because in those conversations it was me, talking to my mommy. Just the two of us. The last time I spoke to her I was told to not expect anything in return. That she could not speak. I was told that I needed to let her know that it was okay to go, because it was believed she was holding on for some reason. It was a conversation that I will forever and ever cherish. At the end she was trying so hard to talk to me and it broke my heart. I said "I love you okay" and to me, her baby, she said "Okay". That was the last time I ever heard her voice. The next day she was gone. But what she gave to me was that the power of being a mom is some pretty amazing stuff. I know that the only thing that gave her the strength to speak was the fact that she knew her daughter needed this just as much as she did.
Now, I am left with my reality. I have two moms. I now have this place of balance. I am trying to figure out how to handle it all while being sensitive to the mother who raised me and to the mother who gave me life. And also to both families. I have come to learn from my children that the heart is big enough for both. They loved being with their family that looked like them, and sounded like them. But they also know that Grandma and Grandpa's house is home, and their cousins they've grown up with will always and forever be their family, nothing can change that.
So finally, after four months I can finally put some of this at rest, with my mom. She was a woman with many many demons in her life. She love us in the best and only way she knew how. In the end she reunited her family, her three babies all under one roof. I know it would have broken her heart to see the pain and anger between them. But I can't help but think that she would have been happy seeing us all there, sitting together as sisters. Something time, space, nor anger can ever change. We will always be connected because of her. We have something no one else in the world has, Marie is our mother. So, it's been four months. I am still sad, I miss her, I wish I could go back and do so many things over again. But, I am left with the blessings I have. The parents, brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews that God gave me. I just know my life is pretty amazing. Pretty darn AMAZING!
