Sometimes life takes us in an unexpected and unwelcome direction. This year has been nothing like I pictured it would be. In January, my mother died after two and a half months of suffering to lung cancer. I spent those months helping her, forgoing and forsaking my life so that she may have a good death. As a daughter, I wanted her to not be in pain, not struggle, and not die without peace. As a writer, I paid attention to everything. I figured, as her daughter and a writer, I had an obligation to honor everything from the struggling of her breath to her last laugh.
It has been a hard obligation to come to terms with. What right did I have as a writer to observe death in such a clear cut manner? Should I have sat there and listened to her dying breaths with intense curiosity? Was observing death with such clarity and curiosity right or wrong? I still cannot say that I was in the right or the wrong.
What I know is my mother died and I was able to see her through it. It has been just a little over nine months. And still, I am dealing with the side effects of watching and participating in death so closely. Grief is a tough mistress.
At the end of this month, it will be a year since I sat on the edge of my bed in a darkened room, holding a phone to my ear, and hearing my mother tell me the news. Almost a year. And in that year, I have felt the urge to write. To record the unpleasant obligation I had the pleasure of participating in. I would have never had it any other way. But, I have been unable to push myself. Even through months of therapy.
Now, I find myself working for just one hour each day. To accomplish something related to my writing. Where it will take me, I don't know. What I know is that I had a privilege that most people don't get to have anymore. I got to see my momma out of this world. The stories inside me have never quieted, but grief overshadowed them. I wanted to share the quietness from me as an author in social media and in writing. Quietness in grief. Quietness in loss. But those damn stories continue.
It has been a hard obligation to come to terms with. What right did I have as a writer to observe death in such a clear cut manner? Should I have sat there and listened to her dying breaths with intense curiosity? Was observing death with such clarity and curiosity right or wrong? I still cannot say that I was in the right or the wrong.
What I know is my mother died and I was able to see her through it. It has been just a little over nine months. And still, I am dealing with the side effects of watching and participating in death so closely. Grief is a tough mistress.
At the end of this month, it will be a year since I sat on the edge of my bed in a darkened room, holding a phone to my ear, and hearing my mother tell me the news. Almost a year. And in that year, I have felt the urge to write. To record the unpleasant obligation I had the pleasure of participating in. I would have never had it any other way. But, I have been unable to push myself. Even through months of therapy.
Now, I find myself working for just one hour each day. To accomplish something related to my writing. Where it will take me, I don't know. What I know is that I had a privilege that most people don't get to have anymore. I got to see my momma out of this world. The stories inside me have never quieted, but grief overshadowed them. I wanted to share the quietness from me as an author in social media and in writing. Quietness in grief. Quietness in loss. But those damn stories continue.
