what do you do?
When you get a text message saying "Your mom is at a hospice, 3 weeks max to live. Want an invite to the funeral?"
What am I supposed to do? Go give her a farewell hug and pretend I care?
The last thing I heard from her was a drunk phone call 30 years ago, where she moaned and said "please tell me I'm a good mom so I don't have to feel guilty for having been a bad mom" and I slammed the phone down and changed my phone number yet again because she was a bad mom, and I wanted, needed her to apologise for it. Not the other way around.
Even if I did go visit her at her hospice, she wouldn't recognize me. I've let my hair grow, now that nobody can stop me. I wear glasses. And nowaydays I smile when I am happy. She always told me not to, because I wasn't cute. It took me years after leaving home to learn how to smile, and I'm still working on the laugh. I'm 50+ years old and feel afraid to laugh because my mom used to slap me. Every time I write !LOLZ is a revolt against her.
And now she's dying. Spending her last few weeks at a hospice. My youngest sister said she hopes our mom will last long enough to not disturb our brother's wedding with her death. That's some legacy, isn't it? I can see the inscription on the stone: "Whatever else, at least she let her beloved son marry in peace." Not that I really believe he would let her death disturb his wedding.
I went to my dad's funeral because one sis said the other would be hurt otherwise, and the few friends he had would have wondered if we weren't all there. Despite all of us knowing he never gave a damn about any of us, friends or children. I'm not sure I can do it again.
I don't owe nothing to either of my parents. If it helps my sisters I'll go to the funeral and pretend, like last time. But I doubt that'll be the case this time. Cold-hearted? So be it. I can mourn the love we never had, but I can't mourn a person who never loved me.
Even so, I do want to care. I want her death to mean more than "it's over, she can't hurt me any more." But all I can think of is "wow, I no longer need to keep my phone number and address secret. That's $150 less to pay a year." That's all she was to me - a cost to keep her away.
Of all the communities I had to pick from, why here, why not Alive? Because this is not a celebration of being alive. Gems? I don't think my mother was a gem, nor that my story is well enough written to count. Scholar-and-Scribe or the Ink-well? I'm not sure this would be ok, since it's not fiction. So Ladies it is. The story is after all about a daughter's relation with her mom, however much of a failure it turned out to be.
