by Louise McCall
If you had ever met my mother, she would not be a woman you'd easily forget. She had class, far better dressed than anyone for miles. Expensive tastes far beyond her means. We could sit up all night and talk, and she would even come get me out of school to take me to lunch at some restaurant somewhere for no good reason. She was brilliant, knew something about everything, always reading, always in school, she was a designer, and she was good at it. We could dream up theories, and plots, intricate takeovers. A devout culturalist, we attended every play, gallery, and museum around. There was a downside, there were many downsides, she was a manic depressant, or Bi-Polar as they call it now. There were the frenzies, the weeks in bed, the mean streaks. She tortured my soul, I was never good enough, I ruined her life by coming into this world, I wasn't wanted, I was the reason she spent 10 years of her life with a gay man, who ultimately resents the night he was ever curious about women and slept with her. So I owed her for my life, she allowed me to have it. What a f*cking gift my life was, I thought. Thank you for this astonishing life you have provided for me. I love and I hate my mother. I have to love her, I came from her womb, that is a bond you cannot deny. And yet, for all the memories of my childhood I can share with you, being held, loved, and nurtured aren't among them. For two years before her death I did not speak to her, because when my infant daughter died of SIDS her retort was that “she deserved to die.” She told me my daughter deserved to die. When I heard she was in the hospital, I came, and I stayed a week, but could stay no longer. Even as she lay in a hospital bed, incubated, and strapped down, the initial sight of her filled me with undeniable fear. As it stood however, my mothers life as she once knew it was already over. She had already suffered brain damage from oxygen loss. Still, she knew who I was, and didn't want me to leave her. Her eyes filled with tears and she managed to get out of one of the restraints and proceeded to pull the IV's out of her arm, and the incubation tubes from her throat. Her system failed then, and they had to resuscitate. It was hell on earth before my very eyes. After I left the hospital and started the 700 mile trip home, I hung my head in shame, deep down, I knew it would be the last time I would see her alive. Several weeks later, when they called to tell me she was going downhill, I had to make a decision on whether to resuscitate or not. I said let her go and she died. I was hundreds of miles away. Her worst fear was being alone, and she died alone. All I have left is a legacy.
My Mother, for the moment, is calm.
Her life a patchwork quilt of thoughts.
The pieces, although unmatched, were assembled carefully.
At times, her life was a grand garden in which she remained the most delicate yet stunning blossom.
Then balance subsides to imbalance.
The mania rises, and fires light within.
The rage spirals on a staircase leading towards a place that most have never been let in.
My Mother, for just a moment, stares into her garden through narrowed eyes, bitter and bedeviled.
They turn and rest on me, as if my presence cursed it.
Her lips curl as a litany of verses are hurled at me, pulling me into a world between heaven and hell.
That gaze is shifted to the offering of peace I set before her.
Coffee steams in a coffee cup, a remedy to bring her down, to wash the shadows away.
My Mother, for just a moment, smiles and looks at me with love in her eyes.
However time or circumstance may come between a mother and a daughter, their lives are forever interwoven.
In her passing, I struggle to place the last square in her quilt, and I realized;
That in search of my Mothers Garden, I found my own.
And I, for just a moment, stare calmly out the window at the fresh unfolding buds of
Spring, and find a rose.
In Memory of Laura Frances Trahan
November 24th, 1947 ~ December 9th, 2001
© 2003 Louise McCall