Musings on Lost Mothers

 My mother died March 24, 2024.  I'm having a hard time processing that, I guess.  It is only starting to hurt.  When I was little ("like a number approaching infinity, say, 6") and not so little, but younger (30), I could not imagine a world without my mother.  To consider such a place and time was unbearably painful.  Yet, here I am.  And, often, it saddens and confuses me to say, I don't feel anything.  More, when the loss was new, I am ashamed that I felt relief.  I was her caretaker.  I wasn't all that great at it.  She told me so regularly.  She told me I was a disappointment.  She told me I lacked compassion.  She was sad and lonely and she wanted me to split my soul open and share everything with her.  She wanted me to satify her needs for connection and give her the opportunity to mother me in my distress.  "Ann.  Why are you so unhappy?"  I think I tried at least a few couple times, but it seemed to lead to us fighting, or me being more hurt, afraid, withdrawn, or the successful occasion being swallowed up in her dementia and forgotten, leaving her, once again, alone.

Thinking about her as I read The Antidote - wondering if I would give up those memories so I could feel the loss of the person she was - would I do that.  Wishing I could reverse a set of four numbers and call back the memory and emotion of her from one happy time years ago....if only, to break my heart.

Asphodel Oletsky, as a young teen, lost her mother to murder. 

Mama, where are you?  Are you still . . . ?   Anywhere?

You know, if you sync up your breath with the thing breathing behind you, you can barely hear IT at all.  I have founght so hard to keep from thinking about It.  The absence of my mother, the way It swells to fill everyplace and the entire future.  All day and night.  Every minute since they told me she was dead.