My beautiful mom, gentle and kind, my funny mom, my intelligent and wise mom passed away Tuesday, August 24, in her bed here at home. It is a giant emptiness in our lives that cannot really be refilled by anything else, and we will forever have to rethink how we go about things, or risk falling in ourselves. It was a privilege helping her, just as it was a privilege having her on your side or in your corner. Knowing that can always fuel you, like being kissed by a god. For her could I be tireless, but I honestly and sincerely do not believe I’ve anything left for the world at large. In this house I already feel like a ghost left behind.
I’m not sure I have anything invested in this world. I’m not sure I ever did. I think every job, duty or obligation from odd to full-time all boiled down to some form of cleaning up after others, as opposed to ever enriching myself, my personal voids dropped by choice or by happenstance to favor fulfilling the voids of others. And after these last few years of never sleeping I’m not seeing that as a subservient thing free of grey matters, as her last lesson to me was this wordless experience explaining how sacrificing for what others need solves problems, where sacrificing for what others want alternatively manifests them. Everyone keeps saying she helped them more than they ever did for her. The one bit nobody wants to get shared is burden, but it’s the only way to solve problems, life itself being nothing but problem-solving. I am only good when I am helping, and so am I made emblematic of the world we know.
I wished she could have stayed longer, but I am so grateful, so thankful she was here in time and space. Thankful for her always giving her love and support to me even during the most heated arguments across lifetimes. Wherever I lacked the words for regarding myself, she never in her life conveyed anger in response, towards anyone. Disappointment, yes, even towards herself, but never was she angry at anybody for what occurs in these misbegotten lives forced upon us all. If only some of her modest dreams could ever have come true. I made her home as comfortable for her as possible, to the extent of fretful nights for days on end doing my best in assuaging her fears and worries. The lone person she knew who honestly believed in nothing to begin with. Without friends or resources I maintained her home so that it was a reliable measure of comfort, but it was still a cell, and my own endless fear and worry was never assuaged by the thoughts and prayers of others as I shared her divine incarceration of these years. When happiness is only ever possible through neglecting or shunning the needs of others, then any good to arrive in this life comes in spite of the intelligent design of the creator. Faith and personal responsibility are not at all the same thing. They negate one another in fact. And so do I think god was the enemy all the while, all the love from here to there leaving us with nothing but stories, nothing but aches and pains and eyebrows gone all white.