I M Perfect lady

Tag: broken family

  • Mismatched Lives

    I will not presume what grief of losing a love one in death is, but I feel like I can articulate the grief felt when leaving a family.

    It is an odd sense of grief, almost self-inflicted, where you purposefully leave and walk into a field of sorrow and lonesome.

    You continue to keep yourself there each time you choose to not participate, you segregate yourself to solitary confinement, yet knowing others gather and go on, you become a ghost in their lives and they in yours, living walking talking ghosts.

    Your lives no longer intercede, nor are there new memories made, unless you count the new grief ones.

    The relationship has died but the body lives on.

    You become a silent witness, a ghost with a body.

    We may all appear the same, unchanged, and many have kept up their same old routine, it is only I that have left the path, one that keeps us separated.

    The separation is as complete as death.

    And even colder, I feel, for there isn’t loving feelings flowing back and forth, instead stark obvious disagreement, irreconcilable differences.

    The differences are what separate us, not death.

    Death is final the ultimate trump card, there is nothing to wish, hope or try to change. Both sides agree.

    In irreconcilable differences, sides continue to be haunted by trying.

    Trying to reconnect and trying to move on, failing to articulate and stop even trying, there never seems to be a Game Over sign.

    And you can be going along seemingly healing from the ‘divorce of family’ and a phone call comes in, a name is mentioned, a party gathers, a reminder once again of where you are literally standing, alone outside.

    Where in death people want to keep the old memories alive, I feel that when the past comes knocking it sets me back.

    Back to me having to decide again, is this a relationship I want, is this healthy for me, what has changed in their worlds, a ghost coming back to me…asking again,
    divorce or not, dead or alive, with me or not, friends or enemies, sisters or strangers, mother or abuser, a choice to once again be made.

    Nothings over, no final exit, just flowing in and out, shouting our glaring difference, daring me once again to not see, to turn away from the truth and get along. See not our mismatched selves and be a family.

    A family of mismatched lives.

  • Me

     

     

     

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    My daughter brings in the mail and drops it on my lap.  In the small stack is a manila envelope addressed to me, and of course the writing is recognizable, her scrawl immediately slings me into feeling that she is pleading or wanting something from me, ‘what now?’ I say, ‘what can she possibly want now?’

     

    Dearest daughter,   10/19/09

     

    I am consolidating my scrapbooks.  You were always the one interested in relatives.  That may have changed and that is fine.

     

    These are yours to keep or throw away.  My memories are only mine.  No one can take those from me.  May you find acceptance and peace in the past.  What is – is, no amount of screaming, shouting, crying can change it.  I love you, always have and always will.  You are my beloved daughter I continue to pray you will come to accept me with all my faults and failures.

        Always and forever,

          Mom

     

    Beneath her declaration of ‘love’ are old photos from my father’s family, his parent’s death certificate, their wedding certificate, just photos of relatives from long long ago. 

     

    Only one picture pops out, it happens to be the first one and has a little green post it note.  “Family, only Edna is missing,”

    Dated January 1957.

     

    I didn’t even know I had an “Auntie” Edna, until a few years ago.  She was never brought up, it just never came up that my mother had a sister that she lost contact with.

     

    Isn’t it strange how history repeats itself? 

    Maybe by scrawling a little green note that she is missing, she is included.

     

    How I would love to know her story, to know the reasons she left and perhaps of all of us I know.

     

    My mother’s letter wants me to accept without screaming, crying and shouting what is.  To silently accept it, perhaps put a smile on my face and be a good girl!  Accept rape with dignity.  Accept being molested by my father with grace.

     

    And that I am to accept her failures and faults, like accepting a body part.  That she has issues, but she doesn’t have to change them, but I have to just accept that, she prays for my acceptance, not for her the courage to change herself! 

     

    Oh my God, I wonder what my letter of response would be?

     

    Mommy Dearest,

     

    What I want from you is for you to kick and scream and shout and cry when you see me.  I want you to see the past and feel the past and live with the pains and hurts and bruises and silence and all the goodness that I was forced to do while I was wounded inside. 

     

    I want you to react when you see a child of yours wounded.  I don’t want you to turn away, to make excuses or forgive the man that did this.  I want you to make a scene, to shout it to the heavens a little soul is wounded!

           

        Wounded, always and forever,

            ME