The next few days drag interminably.
They gave me the week off work – “take it”, Mark said, “you deserve it”. But
I don’t. Or maybe it’s the other way around, maybe this is my punishment for
never being there enough for Mom. Working would make me forget more easily, but
home alone (really alone, because I pushed away the only people who really care
about me) I cannot help but think of her. I remember her unconscious and
slack-jawed as we rushed her into the ER. I remember forcing charcoal down her
throat and hating her more in that moment than I had ever hated anyone in my
entire life, because it wasn’t enough to destroy herself, she had to make me
watch too.
Everywhere I look I see her, hear
echoes of her voice and I’m terrified it’s making me insane. When do you know?
When do you cross that line from grieving to depressed? When you stay in bed
all day? All week? When you let the phone ring and ring and ring because you
don’t want to talk to anyone – you have nothing to say. When you burst into
tears because you find in your closet a dress that she sewed you for a
Christmas party then you never wore, as the night of the celebration she
refused to take her meds, locked herself in the bathroom and got drunk out of
her mind on your bourbon.
I think a lot about John and Luka in
this time. They take my mind off Mom for a while. But I only end up travelling
further round in circles. I tie my feelings into knots. I’m not even sure if I
should have broken up with Luka, and my feelings for John are even vaguer. Luka
was safe. He couldn’t fall in love with me, so I couldn’t fall for him in
return. We both locked up our hearts safe against each other and the
arrangement suited us. Arms to hold me in the dark, a hand to grip when I walk
down the street, a low voice to fill up the silence. It was good for a while,
but when does ‘good’ cease to be enough, when do you start expecting more from
your partner?
The first time I fell in love was in
high school. Okay, maybe it wasn’t love then, but it was the closest
approximation to the state I could have gotten at that young age. And it
terrified me – not at first, of course, at first it was great. His name was
Jack and when he kissed me my heart thundered in my chest and I felt dizzy. For
three months he was my entire world, even Mom and all her problems faded into
the background. Twelve weeks of laughter and making out in the back of his
Dad’s truck and counting the minutes until we saw each other again. Then –
inevitably – it all fell apart.
I was lost, drowning. I couldn’t
believe someone I cared about so much could treat me so badly. It felt like the
centre had dropped out of my existence. That was when I first started to drink.
Nothing major (that didn’t come until the disaster that was my marriage) but
just the odd beer snuck here and there, a few sips of whiskey to take the edge
of the pain off. One night I got really drunk and I followed her home –
the girl Jack had replaced me with – I started yelling at her, screaming that
she ruined my life and pummelling at Jack with my fists when he tried to
protect her. They called me crazy and just walked away.
That was what got to me, the idea
that my feelings could be so strong they’d drive me over the edge. From that
day on, I guarded my heart possessively, because I believed losing it to
someone would lose that thread of meagre self-control I had over my actions
too. People you love hurt you, I learnt that day. So, the fewer people you
love, the less you’ll end up being hurt, right?
But I just don’t know anymore.
Because loneliness hurts too. It forms an empty chasm inside me and falls in
salty tears from my eyes. And it’s cold. So, cold that I lie curled up
under thick blankets all day shivering, chilled to the bone. It makes me want
to call Luka and tell him it was a mistake – we could be together if we tried,
if we really wanted it – just so I can get back some of his slight warmth. It
makes me want to call John to and bask in the heat that shines from his eyes
every time he looks at me. But that’s something I don’t dare do, because I’m
afraid of that fire. Afraid I’ll get burnt.
I’m scared of so many things now, it
amazes me how I ever get through the days anymore, how I find the strength to
leave the house and carry on. Well, at the moment, I don’t, but I know I will,
in time, even though nothing will have changed. It’s not places that scare me,
however. It’s not walking alone at night, or travelling on a crowded train, or
catching some horrible disease from the dying patients I treat all the time.
For some people those are the stuff of nightmares, but not for me. It’s not the
fear of a murderer’s touch that keeps me awake and staring at the ceiling
during the depths of the night, but the fear of a lover’s.
Getting close frightens me, because
when you open up your heart to someone, then you leave it vulnerable to pain.
If anyone taught me that it was my husband. For a brief, intense time, we
shared everything. He knew all my secrets and my emotions, all my desires,
hopes and regrets. And then things fell apart and he turned all my private
thoughts against me. He knew I wanted more than anything to qualify as a
doctor, to graduate from medical school and prove myself worthy of something
for once. So, in his quest to hurt me, what did he do? Take that away from me,
and then work to shatter my morale so I never dreamed of it again. After that,
I swore I’d never let someone that close to me again.
But now I’m teetering on the edge,
clinging on by my fingernails to rational thought. Part of me wants to let go,
because I know that part of the falling is flying. It always starts that way –
like a drinking binge – you soar high up in the air and for a while you’re on
top of the world. Everything is shining and new, the colours are brighter and
all your goals more achievable. Then the earth comes crashing up towards you,
and suddenly, without warning, you are hurtling down to the ground at a
thousand miles per hour with no parachute. And you think it can’t get any
worse, that the sickening dread in the pit of your stomach, the nausea as your
body rejects the alcohol you forced into it, is the end. Then the biggest shock
of them all comes. Then you land.
All the breath is knocked from you in the force of the impact and
you lie, shocked and broken on the floor, amazed that something that felt so
good could hurt you so badly. It’s the mother of all hangovers, the pounding
head and the vomiting and all your muscles aching and the room spinning around
and around and around, until you’re so dizzy you want to be sick again. It can
be hours or it can be weeks before you recover fully, but when you eventually
do, then the only overriding feeling is the urge to go out and do it all again.
And again. And again. Until finally something snaps.
Well, something snapped. I couldn’t
take the continual assault anymore, so I went into detox. I started attending
AA meetings. I divorced my good for nothing husband, and I built a new life for
myself. A safe life, one with no risks and everything in a neat, precise order.
I worked as a nurse, dated a doctor, made a new best friend. I was in control.
Then Mom came back and in true Maggie-patented style, everything went to Hell.
~~~
I let my brother organise the
funeral, since he was always the together one. He didn’t get her crazy genes,
just a calm steadiness that I always envied. So many years I wanted to be him,
quietly unaffected by all of Mom’s irrational behaviour. While me and Maggie
screamed and shouted at one another, he would just stand by and watch, an
impassive expression masking his features. Then he’d sigh and make peace
between us, coaxing Mom into taking her meds and lecturing me on how I should
have more patience with her. Somehow, I never found that patience, though, and
that more than anything else is what makes me cry this afternoon.
I lean on Luka’s arm as they lower
the casket into the grave. Somehow, we just reverted from a couple, back to
being friends. It’s the one positive aspect of the whole situation I can focus
on; how nice it is to just have someone make no demands of you, to have him
support you unquestioningly and ask for nothing in return. And it’s something
we achieved wordlessly. He just called to see how I was, then turned up at the
funeral. In case I needed a friend. And I feel much better with him this
way.
Maybe we were never more than
friends in the first place, or perhaps that’s the way it should have been
between us. But I can’t regret the time we spent together, because of the
platonic closeness it brings now. I am glad to have him in my life now and
relieved by the conspicuous absence of the pressure to love him.
John comes too, standing in the
background, his eyes lacking much of their usual brightness. He stares at Luka
then says a few polite words.
“Thank you for coming,” I call after
him as he strides off through the cemetery, his shirt sticking to his back in
the oppressive heat. It shouldn’t be hot and sunny for a funeral, should it?
Where’s the storm clouds, the overcast grey, the rainy sky weeping the tears of
angels’. I wanted Mom to have all that, but instead the day is beautiful and
clear and the rest of the city goes about its business like nothing happened.
My word ended and nothing happened.
“Do you want to go after him?” Luka
asks, as I stare numbly at the retreating figure of Carter.
I shake my head. “I can’t leave. I
don’t want to leave her.”
Beloved Mother, the headstone
reads. Was she? I wonder. I loved her, in my own dysfunctional, screwed up
family way, but was she ‘beloved’? Did we ever have the group hugs and the
Hallmark mother-daughter moments that the term implies? I try to remember a
single time she made me happy to have her there – a grown-up adult time, when
despite her illness and my own problems, she was actually just Mom, the person
who loved me for me.
Tears spill down my cheeks as my
mind draws a blank. I remember my high school graduation when she embarrassed
me in front of the whole senior year by making a huge banner that read ‘Way to
Go, Abby’ and waving it high above her head. I remember sitting hugging my
knees on a hard hospital bench after the first suicide attempt. I remember her
breezing into the ER in Chicago and telling everyone about her wonderful
daughter the doctor and I remember disowning her afterwards.
Then it comes to me. One moment that
cancels out all the rest, that makes her a wonderful person I am privileged to
have known, let alone been related to. The day I first knew – any by this I
mean, was absolutely certain – my marriage was over, I curled up in a ball and
cried. Mom was taking her meds at this point and she prised the bottle of
alcohol I hadn’t yet dared to drink, out of my hands, then she wrapped her arms
around me, rocking me like a baby. I needed my Mom that night and she was there
and I loved her.
I fall down onto my knees next to
the grave and whisper. “Goodbye Mom – I’ll miss you.” Tears cloud my eyes as I
stand up once more, brushing the dirt from my knees, but perversely I actually
feel better, probably because I’m beginning to let go of the past. All the pain
and the problems and the regrets between Maggie and I don’t matter anymore. All
that’s important is that we were mother and daughter. We had our good times and
we had our bad times, like any other family. Maybe the bad outweighed the good
and maybe we never had that perfect, rose-tinted relationship you see in all
the movies, but what we had was ours and nobody can take that away from us.
Right now, I don’t remember Mom as being crazy, but as being special. She was
unique and I’m so proud of her.
A little shakily, I turn to Luka. “I
think I’m just gonna go home now.”
He nods. “Do you want me to come
with you?”
“No,” I shake my head. “It’s okay,
but I’d rather be on my own. Thanks for everything.”
We hug briefly then I walk away from
him, a lone figure making my way across the empty cemetery. It feels like I’m
heading away from my old life and towards a new one.