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Posted by Ann Teve
November 2, 2009
Filed in Society Girl's Personal Blogs
2,114 views
It is just over a month since mother passed away. It has been tumultuous. I finally surfaced from my retreat and had coffee with a friend.
"You're such a drama queen." she allowed over her lunch, "Well, I suppose not so much drama queen as having a lot of drama in your life." And I thought I was just recounting personal anecdotes. I suppose that she is right, but I've never really thought of myself that way.
Slowly, mother's house is being emptied of its contents. It is a slow and very reflective process. Each article is laden with memories. Each article is judged, considered and discarded or saved. At first, the discarded pile hardly grew, and the judgment long and difficult. I am drenched in memories of the last months of mother's life and our two years together before that. I see back 25 years to my father's death. I see back in found photographs -- curled and yellowed, the colours faded -- to a different time when I was a different person. My heart is tugged and wrenched. I miss him. I see all the pain and all the good. I pause for a moment to wonder why I couldn't make his life work. I dimly perceive my future but even that uncertainty doesn't sway my realization that he didn't have a future; the future was only for me as I am.
I am being hustled out of the house where for the last two years, I lived and helped my mother. Without her, in is not the home it was. I am sad about leaving, not because I am leaving but because of the uncertainty of my future. Will I find a place where Smudge, my cat, will be allowed out and still be safe or will I have to force her to be an indoor cat. There's a special love you receive when through the open window unexpectedly, your cat returns -- of her own will. She comes back to see you, to be with you -- actually just to be fed, but I'm trying to be poetic.
I find notes in all the debris of a life lived. I find notes, hand written by mother, of her observations of me during these past two years. It is strange to realize that I was watched. It is strange that I was to mother what Smudge was to me. I always returned and with love -- and looking for food.
For the past two years, mother's home has been mine. I saw her through to her last days. On her last night, I lay quietly in the bed next to hers as her breaths settled to quiet and unheard. I felt her slip away, but as she wished was there to see her go. It was not unsettling or sad, I was not fearful of her end, it was as if I were seeing her off, there to let her know that she would be missed, that she would be remembered. I lay in silent vigil and when the time came closed her eyes and kissed her cheek goodbye.
I am being hustled by my family -- all except my older brother -- into a new life. In this last month, he has come to know me as Ann. I arrived in his life without preamble or warning and he didn't understand. He stepped away to let me find myself and has now returned to understand and reunite with me.
It hurts to rewrite our history growing up. I feel that he has an image of me that I don't want to tear down.
"How did all you went through happen, without me ever knowing?" he asked, "Where was I as you struggled?"
"It was where I was that explains," I tell him, "Hidden in my own world of confusion and shame and despair. I am sorry that I hide my life from you."
It seems a treason to have hidden myself from my brother, who, at every moment of need had been there for me. Perhaps the sadness of mother's passing has finally allowed us to talk. I tell him of my real past, my experiences, my shame and my regrets.
We lug boxes out of the house for the dump. We explore the past in old papers and photos and long-forgotten items of our past lives as two brothers. It will be forever different between us now, and forever the same because we have talked and shared and found that we are still the same.
I have thrown myself into the pain of electrolysis this past month. It is my time -- eyes closed -- to think, and wince and twitch. There's a special clarity one acquires at the tip of an electrified needle. My face changes with the days, my skin is smoother and paler. Electrolysis is a form of petting, it forces you to detach from your body and fall into your thoughts or to fall into that abyss of no thoughtsat all, where only time exists but is immeasurable, like a trance. With each prick of the needle I am close to my goal. It is slow. It is painful. But I am happy.
I am applying for jobs but I am not receiving replies. I am damaged goods, I guess, but I don't know why. Where are my flaws and how is it that they are apparent to others but not me? I am lost as to what of me is good and what is bad.
