I haven’t been writing like I feel like I should. I haven’t been doing anything like I should. Just about everything is numbing or washes over me. I actively avoid and distract myself from thinking about my mother—selfishly. The process of her death was so efficient and swift that I haven’t allowed myself to stop and think about it. It’s past hurt; it’s an indescribable feeling of emptiness. I don’t want my mother’s death to be real but everything I do makes it real. Waking up, getting out of bed, going to work—especially talking to older black women who come into my job, is a reminder of her.
I haven’t picked up her ashes yet; they’re still at the church and I know I’m a shitty son for it. The idea of becoming a better person is always on future me'; the lazy man’s forte. The fear of accepting my reality even bled into my relationship with my father. I didn't call him for months after my mother’s passing; not out of spite or bad blood—but one “I’ll call him when I get some time” turned into me being terrified to call out of fear that he’ll tell me he received some terminal illness. I wish I had more time with her. My head is a whirlwind—I’m grasping at straws with numb hands.
All of my aspirations have become cinders; crumbling under the weight of the wind. Death is a guest that has overstayed its welcome. I’m tired of normalizing the malaise and hanging my sadness on the rack of “that’s how it is”. I don’t want to talk about it because most people won’t understand and the people who do, I just want to break down because, like, what the fuck do I say?
I’m not well. I smoke like a chimney, drink energy drinks like water, my kidneys are empty Capri Suns, and I get 6 hours of sleep, max. A few weeks after my mother passed, I was struck with the insatiable desire to do any and everything. Watch more movies, read more, go out more, write more, fuck more, laugh more, travel more, do more, and be more. I carried that weight with optimism because I saw time as fleeting and precious. Time is also a sickness. You can feel it in your lungs and under your eyes. It lives in your memories; turning happy times into sealed doors you refuse to open.
My father said when he lost his mother, it took a year for it to hit him, then he was able to properly process it. As I’m typing this, it’s been 9 months since mine has passed and I think I’m seeing the waves recede from the shore. The church where we held her service sent me some papers on the grieving process and I wanted to jump out of the window.
I just…don’t know how to think about her without wanting to fucking explode. My AirPods are always in my ears either playing music or youtube videos; silence simply isn’t an option anymore. I’m in no rush to normalize this reality and in all honesty, tired of waking up to it. I’m here and there, more there than here. She was my heart, she was my home. I’m lost and I wish I never grew up.
Oh man I used to cry a lot as a child thinking my mom was going to die or my grandmother after I had found my great uncle overdosed in his bedroom with my mother on her birthday, seeing him get taken out of the house by the ambulance people covered with a white sheet on a stretcher was the most surreal thing it was very strange to me I didn’t really fully feel it until later in the day when I was sleeping over at my friends house in the middle of the night I just broke down in tears. You can’t ever take away the pain fully but just think of what your mother would want you to feel she would want you to be happy and I like to think we meet them again when we pass I believe in second lives and many more than just two but that is my personal belief so I don’t know what you feel or think but I hope you read this and I hope that it makes you feel a bit better if possible (: have a wonderful day or night