I miss her

I finally found the words, two weeks after my mother died.

I miss her.

Not the her that she was at the end, where we couldn't talk for more than a minute or two on the phone and where she was really starting to lose herself. Not the her that she was the last time I saw her, disjointed and mean, slapping me across the face in a drunken stupor. Not the her that looked at me with lost eyes, wondering what was going on inside of her.

I miss the her that was my mother. 

It makes sense that I couldn't find words for her because she was a difficult, complicated and screwed up woman. She could cut me to the core and then do something that lifted me up to the clouds. She had a scalpel that could go to the direct center of my heart and cut me so deep, yet she could be so gentle and kind once she put that down.

My mother had a difficult life before she was my mother. Alcoholic father, hinted at abuse. Well, maybe not hinted. She talked about her mother hitting her across the head with a broomstick at one point, possibly being responsible for the damage to her eardrums discovered years later. She ended up taking her own mother out of the situation and being responsible for her family before she was really old enough to be responsible for a whole family. 

And she had a difficult life with us. She didn't sign up to have all the troubles she had with my brother (won't get into them here because, believe it or not, some things should stay out of the public record). Or the challenge that is my sister, who is a carbon copy of my mother. Or having a husband who went through double bypass heart surgery at 48 and spent the rest of his life battling life-threatening heart problems. And me, with whatever issues I brought to the table - two marriages, never having a real job, being the nomadic artist that I am.

It's no wonder that she was kind of batshit crazy so much of the time.

I also think she struggled with mental illness but would never admit it and would never explore it. I would say she had bipolar tendencies and she had epic highs and deep black lows. In that way, I am my mother's daughter - and that scares the shit out of me. 

I guess I'm still struggling for words. It's easy to talk about the surface of who she was but it's not easy talking about what was under that.

I miss the mother I remember from my 20's, I think. The mother that laughed easily. The mother that teased without the scalpel in her hand. The bright, vibrant mother who liked to lay out in the sun, slathered in tanning oil, and who smoked like a chimney. The mother that always had something going on - Avon, Tupperware, on top of her regular job and her family. 

And I miss the mother from my young childhood. The one who always had some craft thingy for us to do. I guess I never gave her credit for nurturing the artist in me when I was that young. We made moonscapes out of melted wax, pie tins and cold water. Ceramics. She taught me to knit as soon as I could hold the needles. In elementary school, I remember having knitting needles sticking out of the little hole that used to be an inkwell. 

I miss the mother who made fudge in the kitchen so very often. Nothing brings me back to my mother like making fudge. Hours of memories in the kitchen, watching that brown liquid bubble and boil, the smell of sugar and chocolate, the concentration on her face and the pleasure when it was all done and we were sharing the remainder of the fudge straight from the hot pot.

I miss the mother who looked at me when I said I wanted to move to LA after my first divorce and just said, yes. The one who handed me her credit card the day I left and who cried a river as I drove away.

I miss the mother who took me in with open arms when my second marriage turned so ugly and awful. Who never said a bad word about my ex-husband and always treated him with kindness and dignity when we were together and continued to speak of him with kindness and dignity afterward. She would always say, "It's just him, it's just R and how he is". 

I miss the mother who tried so hard to understand me, her nomadic artist. The agoraphobic who came to my plays anyway. Who would give me blank checks to cover whatever artistic endeavor I was pursuing. Who didn't understand me so she did what she knew how to do - hand me a check and say, do your thing.

She was not affectionate and I don't ever recall hearing or saying "I love you". It was just not in her nature. Yet I remember her sitting on the couch, rubbing my back gently while we watched movies or I did homework. And the affection she had for my father more than made up for her inability to express her affection to us. There was never a moment where I doubted how she felt about him. He was her life, despite the separation at one point and the fights (oh, my god, the epic fights) and everything that went with their sometimes volatile marriage. But with him, as with all of us, she was always there and would never leave.

The past few years, as her mind started to lose its grip on itself, we talked less and less. We used to talk at least once a week, even when she was living here. If I couldn't get down to see her in Long Beach, we at least would talk. But once she moved to Minnesota and her health started to decline, it got harder and harder to talk to her. She couldn't hold on to a thought for too long and I think it got harder and harder for her. And when I went home last year, it broke my heart to see both of them so fragile and so broken. They were not the parents I remembered. They were both shells of themselves.

And even then, I missed the mother I remembered.

My mother was so much - difficult, devoted, ferocious and stubborn as a weasel, hard-working, angry, funny, broken, dedicated, determined, driven, generous to a fault. So many things, so hard to describe.

So I guess the only way to describe her is this.

She was my mother.

And I miss her so very, very much in so many, many ways.