"Mom"

Don't ask me why I decided to write about my mom-probably the only valid reason I could give you would be that yesterday was the 2 year anniversary of her passing and with that comes yet another wave of grieving for what was never to be. It is always hard for me because I am not sure how I am suppose to feel- Funny how life comes back around to sometimes bite you on the ass and not leave a physical mark. See my mother and I saw things so very different and yet both sick enough to believe that each of us was right in her own moral convictions. And in the end although I was able to be with her in her last days of human suffering though my suffering continued.
Although I had not spoken to her in almost the 2 years previous to her passing there wasn't much time in which I did not think of her or wonder how her life was. We were so much alike in certain ways. In my drinking days I was living waiting to die, she did not need alcohol to dull her pain of living, she merely passed her time with her god, her bible, baseball and copious amounts of sugar. We all have our ways of escaping. I could not or would not see pass her imperfections or her lack of motherly love as I perceived it. Instead I came to her as a broken adult, expecting her to fix my battle wounds with motherly hugs and kisses and when my fantasy did not bore it fruition's, I resented her even further until my glass castle came shattering down around me. It was then I turned my back on her and her dysfunctional thinking, never stopping long enough to remember that she too may have suffered as the little girl pictured above, becoming what I too had. Funny we were more alike then I had ever imagined.
The day I received the phone call from my sister informing me of of the seriousness of her illness, my friend and confident spoke to me as I sat in waves of guilt and obligation-saying that the only possible way for me to return to her was to let go of those feeling of guilt and obligation and to have no expectations of what was to come or to be. I had done this picture a year and a half before this, I had wanted to honor her,for somewhere in that time of unbearable pain and suffering on my part I found a path for healing. Through art and the ability to see just how beautiful she and I both were. Both just wounded children wanting to be loved. And now I was going to bring it to her while she laid on her deathbed. I would love to say that when I got there that we had those amazing mother-daughter re connections, that I was able to present to her this work of love that we had created, but by the time I got to the hospital she was already starting to slip away and though she was not able to see what I had created for the both of us, I believe she knew in those 72 hours that I sat holding her hand that I had come to acceptance for what had been and what we were sharing. And really in the end we both did the best that we could.