It's been a while, but I'm still around.
Family is more than those people who you are biologically commited to. In our post-nuclear, post-American family structure, we have so much family, we can't even keep up with it. Some folks resort to ignoring most of them, especially if they are so intense and undesirable as to force us to seek solace in others. We form our bonds with our peers, our friends, our co-workers. We fill the roles of brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers...any combination of these, sometimes (depending on gender, and even then, modern science plays with genetics enough to mostly pretend otherwise).
But we could be wrong to do so. When we abandon the unwanted, there's a resentment that forms, both within the shunned and the one leaving. There are some scenarios where this is a necessary risk. There are risks in forgiveness, too, and some risks aren't worth the attempt. The resentment is worth it. And then there are some risks that should be breached. Some rifts can be healed. Should be healed.
But it's too late now.
My mother died at 12:45 AM, while my brother held her hand, and I watched and hoped that it was another false alarm, but knowing it wasn't. For almost ten years, I had little to no contact with my mother. Before she died, she was drinking nearly or over three gallons of gin a week. You're reading that correctly. I knew she was an alcoholic, and instead of reaching out, after so many arguments and unsavory scenes, I gave up. I gave up on the woman who gave me life. Who taught me to read and write when I was three. Who left my father when I was ten. Who never attended any sort of school function I was involved in. Who should have had a son that forced her, that would have picked her up from her chair, and drug her out of her house by her hair to commit her into some sort of rehab to help her, even if it meant some deep resentment later on. Someone who would have done this over and over and over again, if necessary.
I was not that son. I left.
And now, she's gone. She was only 48 years old, and she's gone.
Before the funeral service took her body from the house, I knelt down next to her, and touched her shoulder, holding my head up with my arm, and I stared at her, trying not to cry and feel sorry for myself, and I thought about how close we used to be, and how horrible it had taken her death to remind me that life is full of mistakes. Forgiveness is difficult. I have to live the rest of my life trying to forgive myself for my inaction. For turning right instead of left. For loving my friends more than I did my mother for so many years.
I hope she's happy, and I hope she's free of the pain her life handed her, to drive her to drink for as long and as hard as she did.