m

OLDER

READS

RINGS

D-LAND

GUESTBOOK

"I put your picture away,
sat down and cried today..."

I received some pictures yesterday from my Grandpa. There were two I already had, two of my late Grandma, and two from a family reunion I didn't go to. Grandpa asked me if he could send me a picture of my mom, and rather than upset him any more about our 'quiet' circumstances, I agreed. I didn't intend to keep it, but he didn't need to know that.

The picture of my mother was one of the reunion pictures. It was of her and her long-time boyfriend, Jim, standing together. Jim was smiling and looked as jovial as ever. My mother looked dead. If I hadn't seen her with my own two eyes after that picture had been taken, I'd have sworn Jim simply propped her body up with a stick for one final picture.

I'd guess she weighed about 80 lbs in that picture, if that. Her skin was sallow and just hanging off her bones. Her eyelids were unevenly drooped and she didn't look coherent enough to know there was a camera aimed at her. She wasn't even attempting a smile. Her right arm was bent awkwardly across her skeletal front, as if she were getting ready to drag on a non-existant cigarette. Looking at that picture, it's hard to believe she was sufficiently aware of her surroundings and had the physical strength to behave as abbhorantly as she did that day.

I immediately threw the picture away. Not only because I'd pre-determined that's what I'd do, but because I couldn't stop staring at her. She looked like a zombie from some horror flick and I say that without a trace of humor. I was afraid that if I didn't stop staring, I'd never stop having nightmares.

The clearest thing about her in that picture is the sadness. It's in her dead eyes and twisting around every bone in her starving body. At first I thought maybe it was me. Maybe she was that strung-out and skinny and sad because of me. But even though I'm sure I've been her excuse on more than one occassion, I didn't create the horror personified in that picture. Her self-destruction began long before I was ever even thought about. The prescription drug abuse. The anorexia. All to control a sadness the origin of which I don't know. None of the family does. I think only mom can know or figure it out. Some time, years and years ago, mom encountered a sadness and instead of isolating it and healing it as much as possible, she let it become her life-long best friend. It's become her shroud and soon, it will be her coffin.

As I looked at her in that picture, I felt an old flicker of the desire to go and fix her. But being my mother's daughter has taught me that you can't fix or make another person do anything; I never could make her happy. I couldn't make her leave David. I couldn't make her get help and if I had kept trying, I would have withered on her vine and my spirit would die right with her. How tragic that that is probably the best thing she ever taught me.

design by fergie

Bits of fire in the sky push me east back home. I used to live in flames but it's hard on the wings. Choke me. Smoke me. Scare me back. You try but you just can't. I peel the layers in my spare time, and you're easy to see through. I can fly, I've discovered on my own. I may be the lesser butterfly but my wings are just as strong. Who are you to tell me to find a place to land? I may be the lesser butterfly but baby watch me glide.