I was haunted. Now I am healed. But no matter how healed over a wound is, no matter how much time has passed, a wound that size leaves a scar.
My mother, at 52 years young, died of an accidental overdose sometime in the early morning hours on March 7th, 2014. A month later, I wrote a blog post trying to process my initial shock and grief, but in that post I very much glossed over the circumstances surrounding my mother’s sudden and untimely death, our strained relationship, and my rage-filled, denial-laced grief. My mother was an addict. I’m not going to use this post to demystify or de-stigmatize addiction. I did that for years trying to justify my grief to people who just didn’t think it was valid. Not today folks. I choose to state this fact now as that’s all it is, a fact, a piece of the puzzle, and because I am not longer ashamed of how my mother died. But mostly, I am no longer protecting anyone else’s comfort.
Today marks 5 years since my mother left me feeling haunted. Haunted by all the ghosts and skeletons in my closet. My closet that then felt filled with all her inherited demons. Hoarders: From Beyond the Grave! I have since cleaned out my closet. I Marie Condo-ed the shit out of it. But it was no easy task, of course. “Life is pain, highness, anyone who says differently is selling you something.” A lot of pain and discomfort, which is actually worse than the pain in my opinion, went into getting to the space where I am today; I have a better relationship with my mom now than when she was alive. Whoa. Am I right? That just blew your mind didn’t it? Some people reading this also have mothers or fathers that have died. Parents they’d do anything to get back. Parents they miss dearly. Parents who were their best friends. Don’t get me wrong, I miss my mom. I miss when she was good. The Good Mom. I would kill to hug her. Make her laugh. Have her cook me supper. Cuddle my kids. I still to this day pick up my phone and start dialing her number. However, if I was granted one wish and I used that to bring my mom back. I don’t believe I would get The Good Mom. See, when you lose a loved one and something big happens in your life, you’ll get that one platitude from someone saying “Wow, Mary Beth, your mom would be so proud of you!” But if my mom was here, she’d still be battling her demons. So much so that feeling pride for her daughters was a heavy task that just most days she wasn’t up to. My mom loved us. But her love was often conditional. And that condition was usually if she was sober or not. It’s not to say that drug addicts don’t feel love. But my mom couldn’t always operate beyond the limits of her disease. She just wasn’t always the mom I needed. She was stuck. Stuck in pain; emotional and physical. Stuck in fear. Stuck in the past. Stuck in the dark. Stuck. Death freed her. Now, I no longer have days on end wishing for The Good Mom back, because I now have The Ghost Mom. Ghost Mom is great. She’s around when I want her to be, and sometimes when I don’t. She never misses a big life moment. She can love and support my sisters and I without all her human flaws and foibles getting in the way. Ghost Mom isn’t bound by her mortal coils, she is free. She is present. She is unconditional. More over, she’s all I got.
At this point, anyone reading this is probably like “Hold the phone, what in the holy, mystic, medium, ghost-whispering shit is this?” I get it! But look, it’s not like I see Ghost Mom. I’m not communicating with a ghoulish mist. My dog doesn’t whine at the corner. Whoopi Goldberg isn’t pushing pennies. Nothing like that. This is akin to how some people pray or talk to their god, or how some people feel the Holy Spirit’s presence. I’m not about to get all theological here or anything, but this is my way of feeling connected to my mom. I believe to my core, that I can sense my mom’s presence. When I talk, she hears me. When I need something, she’s on it. I feel like I can also tell when she’s trying to connect back. Little things I won’t share here because they’re private connections only I get. My sisters would probably say very similar. And I don’t want to make this a Ghost Mom Hunters story either. Whether it’s all in my head or real, it makes me feel better. I’ll be brutally honest, being that blasé about it feels inauthentic. I believe she’s with me. And I believe that wherever she is, she is NOW proud of me. Because she can be. However, to get to the point where I could feel these things about my mom, I had to let go of all my anger, shame, and guilt surrounding her life and death. I had to truly forgive her. And also, myself. I know how much I demanded of her, always. From a young age I think I just needed more love than others. Not that I was entitled to more, just that I needed so much more reassurance and validation and attention. I took a lot out of her. But that pales in comparison to the guilt that I couldn’t save my mom. I couldn’t save her, no more than anyone can save anyone else. Growing up around addicts you sort of know the song and dance, but the reality when faced with a death due to accidentally overdose isn’t as rational as Betty Ford would like you to think. You can offer help, love, support, even rock bottom, but you can’t save someone who doesn’t want it. But it doesn't mean you ever stop feeling like you didn't do enough. That sort of does a number on you.
I spent all of 2014 swathed in grief. Grief is tricky. Grief isn’t an object you can take down from the shelf and hold it and control it. Grief doesn’t come neatly in stages like the internet told me it would. Oh no, grief is more like that scary ass Kool-aid guy bursting through your wall at 2:00 on a weekday when you’re just minding your own business, spilling his blood juice everywhere, screaming “OH YEAH, time to cry over your dearly departed mom!” Grief is a living, breathing thing. It’s a shape shifter too. It’s not just one thing. It’s whatever you need it to be, whatever you don’t need it to be. It's your own personal boggart (if you don’t get my Harry Potter references, that’s on you!). It’s shock and denial. It’s fear and paranoia. It’s resentment. It’s anger. It’s pain. It’s guilt. It's the bottomless pit of sadness. Grief is scary because death is scary. We know when we see our loved one lying there, very much dead, that that is our fate too. No one escapes death. A huge part of grief that NO ONE tells you about is facing your own mortality. Maybe that’s why it’s as hard as it is. We are facing the ultimate boggart, the ultimate fear. The one thing no living creature can escape, death. That being said, that fear of death bit sort of fades when you’re like me and get distracted. You finally stop spinning out of control and take a look around to assess the damage. You look and see that closet. That fucking big, bulging closet of shit that stopped fitting under the rug. Some people ignore that groaning, busting at the seams closet. Some people open it and step back and get to work right away. Some people might mentally turn that closet into a storage space hoping it’ll be sold to the next highest bidder. And other people, well, sometimes that closet explodes and the mess crashes over you like a wave when the tide is coming in and you have no choice but to deal with it. Hi, I’m that person!
When the wave crashed, I was stunned. Rolling and thrashing in the riptide. I was getting pulled under, can’t say for sure how long I was under. But then, by some stroke of luck, I got washed ashore feeling like death warmed over and once I got my footing and lungs working again, I had some work to do. First it was about realizing that that closet exploding into the tsunami of hell was created in part by me. But not me alone. The trauma that happens to you isn’t your fault of course, but it is your responsibility. So there I was looking at a mess that was created by me and for me by others. And I will spare you the details of that, another story another time. But it started first with forgiveness. If I couldn’t do that, I wouldn’t be able to let go of the anger that held me hostage. That anger was making it worse, but that anger had the potential to contribute to my children’s own metaphorical closets. That was the moment when I knew I had to end the cycle of dysfunction. That crappy inheritance was ending with me. When the anger was gone, what was left in its wake was sadness. Anger is my surface emotion, my go-to place. Like anger was my Disneyland. But like Disneyland, that sort of anger is just a fancy ass castle constructed of weak materials made to look strong. Anger can be useful, anger helps you survive, but at a price.
The sadness came for me next. Letting myself feel the real emptiness was the most difficult part in that first year, but it’s when I stopped fighting it. I had to face the thing I was trying to hide from in my castle. I loved my mom. I loved her a lot. And I missed her. Which is what normal people experience after they lose their mom. But what I was also feeling was “did my mom love me back?” Even now, writing those words, is gut-wrenching. My biggest fear after my mom died, aside from Mr. Death, was that my mother died hating me. If anyone knows me, or read the prequel to this, you know that before she died I hadn’t spoken to my mom in over a month. I called and called and called and I just wanted her to answer. I know she was struggling during that time. You sort of deduce that given her patterns of drug use and depression that made her practically agoraphobic. Hell, the last 4 years of her life, our relationship was heavily strained. I needed a mom, and she needed… I don’t know what she needed. But no matter how logical you are, when death strikes, all those things went go the window. I think that fear of not being loved is something that has plagued me my whole life. And not just by my mother. It’s sort of the root of all my problems.
Self-worth, which is a by-product of unconditional love isn’t something poor, white trash kids in houses filled with abuse and neglect and mental health issues are given freely. No, this millennial wasn’t given that ribbon for participating in the tournament of life. Self-worth was something I had to claw, fight, and kill for. Metaphorically speaking of course. But I don’t think it was my mother’s fault either, not fully. She too had mommy issues. And of course I have a father too, but let's put that in the pile of stories for another day. Back to the point, I can’t tell you when it happened, but one night, I was laying in bed. My husband and kids were asleep and I was attempting to ground myself in order to talk to my mom. Meditating sort of strengthens the reception. I let my guards down and I told her that I forgave her. I forgave the neglect, the indifference, the sadness, the drugs, the cruelty at times. I forgave her for not giving me what I needed. I forgave her for never really choosing me over the things that caused such harm to her. I forgave her for having her own unresolved traumas. I forgave her for not answering the phone. Most importantly, I forgave her for dying. I told her I loved her and missed her. Crying silent, hot tears in my pillow. And then, I swear it, I was washed over in all the warmth and love I had craved so desperately. It was a motherly love. It was her. I fell asleep swiftly, being truly at peace for the longest time. Previous to that I would get little nods and winks, so to speak, from my mom. But this was something else. From then on, it was easier healing because when you have unconditional love and support you can do remarkable things. I continued my journey to not only heal my relationship with her, but with myself. Always an extension of her I guess. Theres no me without her. That saying ‘you’re a mom from the time you conceive until you die’ isn’t quite accurate, you’re a mom forever. A daughter for longer.
With all that being said, all that healing taking place, the scars I am left with from that time are very real, tangible things. They are daily reminders of what I’ve endured, what I’ve survived, and what happens when we are ignoring the hard stuff. So this brings me to the present. Mom’s death anniversary. Yuck. That’s morbid, even for me. This day doesn’t mean much to me, it’s not written on a calendar. This day is just another date. It signifies the pacing of time. But time, the construct that it is, can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Time, in my case, helped heal some wounds. Just not as many as the cliche implies. Everything else was active choices I made to get here. I refuse to grieve extra today, because we’ve sorted out that that isn’t how grief works. I also refuse to use this day as a celebration of my mom’s life, because gross. She was more than the day she died. She was more than how she died. My mother did nothing March 7th but die. Her death doesn’t define her life, as much as her death defined mine. I will save the celebrations of her on days like her birthday and Mother’s Day and Thanksgiving. And I will honor the hard days as they come. Because they do come. You don’t get over grief, you get through it. I’ve become a master at crossing through that bog. You can sometimes feel it welling up and other times it really is like a sudden attack, but if you let it happen, it’s easier to cope with than putting it off.
This year, I am choosing to sit and reflect on how far I’ve come in these last 5 years of my life. I’ve continued raising my wonderful kids, which is bittersweet when thinking of my mom. But they’re growing up well, and they too have their own relationship with Ghost Mémère. I’ve grown closer to my husband, the man who stood by me, feeling helpless, as he watched his wife go one on one with the devil on her back. I’ve gained some new wonderful people, people who undoubtedly were gifts from Ghost Mom herself. I’ve also lost some people, and not to our old friend Mr. Death, but brings a unique brand of grief to the mix. I’ve entered true recovery from an eating disorder that I battled from 12 to 30. I’ve evolved, and continue to do so. I take credit for part of my success and happiness. But I can also give credit where credit is due. “Someone I loved once gave me a box of darkness, it took me years to realize this, too, was a gift.” My mother’s death changed me to my core. When that cord that tied us was severed, I knew instantly that I was different. I swear I could feel the aftershock in my DNA. Losing your mom will do that to you. But in my case, I don’t think I truly understood how profoundly changed I was until maybe 2 years ago. I believe my mother’s death saved my life in so many ways. Her death was the catalyst for me truly living my life. For me to heal from the things she did and didn’t cause. She gave me life, but she also gave me darkness. And her darkness gave way to the light in which I now walk. Gratitude is the word I use to describe a feeling that has no word. When my mother died, I never thought that the wound would close. As I sit now, I can admire the beauty that lies in that scar. The scar that will never fade beyond this point. That has uneven borders, but pretty and silvery in the light. But I don’t need that scar to think of my mom, because there’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think of her. The good and the bad, because of the perspective I've gained, and simply because it's just not a burden I carry anymore. Admittedly, remembering her clearly is getting harder with each passing year. But when I sit like this, and its quiet in my house and I reach out to her with my soul, I can for just a split second hear her throaty laugh that I miss more than I’ll ever miss anything in my whole life, and I smile.
