endless

the story of my mother's death is one i've told again and again.

the story of my mother's death is a story that i can go on telling without any threat of ever coming to an end, of ever having to find the last word on the matter.

i can tell it beginning the day it happened.  or i can begin a year before that day. or a year after.  i can begin from this very second, right now, today.  the story doesn't stop. because i haven't stopped. the story of my mother's death shifts and changes as i shift and change.   there are the unalterable facts of her passing - those details stay in place - but a death is so much more than a breathless body.  my mother's absence from my life is an on-going presence.  i feel her absence like a fist.  i feel the fact or her physical erasure the same way i feel loneliness and heartache; a spiritual homelessness with no end in sight, an everlasting yearning for the impossible, a day-dream i can't seem to snap out of no matter how many days have passed, no matter the distance of years and experience. there are moments when i look up and without warning i notice myself thinking: my mom would love this or my mom would be so proud of me right now or shit, i wish that woman was here right now to see this or shit, i wish i could call my mom right now and talk to her, i have no idea what i'm doing and i need some advice.

the story of her absence is a story that never ends and i'm not sure what my task is in this regard other than to learn how to carry it anew.  the 9th anniversary of her death is a month and a half away and i sat at my dining room table after everyone had passed out on thanksgiving and wished for her so hard.  i wished and wished and a part of me could feel the energy of her personality stored inside my own heart for a moment... a time-capsule or an old forgotten well that i can sometimes draw a bit of solace from.

i've forgotten what it means to be part of a family in certain ways. i don't have parents asking me what the hell i'm doing with my life, what's my 5 year plan, when am i finally going to get health insurance, when am i finally gonna set down this goal of being an artist? i have forgotten that other people deal with those questions and have to navigate familial expectations that i don't.  i haven't had to answer to anyone in nearly a decade.  i haven't had a mentor nor the threat of feeling that i've disappointed anyone other than myself.  that spiritual homelessness i mentioned has its own sort of permissions and freedoms, some of which are actually quite nice... though nothing really ever makes up for the lack and trauma of losing ones mother or father. you simply greet a new day and learn how to stop looking at the fact of loss so that you can go to work, so that you can do more than lay around feeling sorry for yourself.

and i don't feel sorry for myself.  not usually.  but the holidays are hard.  the holidays are hard for everyone.  my mother loved this time of year and christmas was her favorite holiday.  her tree was still up, chock full of ornaments, when she died.  i took a few from her tree the next day and tucked them away.  i didn't look at them for years.  they are currently out in my own home and i take it as a sign of healing that i can walk passed them and smile, feeling the warm sense of my own sweet lineage waving at me from glint of a sparkling glass donut or crystal pickle.

what a life i keep thinking lately.

what a life. i look at my weird christmas tree and think how lucky i am to have come from as sweet a woman as my mother was... how lucky i am to be at least half-way sweet because of her.

we roll forward into the day, learning at each step how to rearrange the load we carry in order to take the next step. and the next. and the next.  and to tell the story of how and where we've come to Be from a new position in time.