A Day without Mothers

It's Mother's Day today. I lost my mother when I was 17 and now I sit here 2500 miles away from everything that I love, listening to random songs on my iTunes playlist. Somehow that doesn't quite fill the void of things that I've lost - including the sweater that mysteriously disappeared on the beach a few months ago.

It's hard to believe it's been over 8 years since she died. Death is such a weird thing. One minute the person is here, the next they're not; you hold on to every memory - every moment you spent with them. My memories are like movie reels, though. I hardly believe that my past ever really existed...it all seems so far away anymore - I'm like an actor in my own life. I feel disconnected from it. I've evolved into this person that I never thought I'd be...the clone of my mother. This facade of toughness wrapped around this sensitive core...like those hard candies with the strawberry wrappers. Running away to California, only to find out that home isn't so bad after all. Realizing that vices are just an escape from reality, which is not always a bad thing, but unlike her, I won't let it ruin me and take me away from the things I love the most. Though, sometimes I wonder if she ever really loved us at all. I remember her saying that if we were ever taken away from her, they'd have to throw her in the "loony bin". Well? What about us? She left us...how did she think that would make us feel? Or did she not think? I do that sometimes. I am my mother in the most striking of ways.

There were times toward the end when I hardly recognized her anymore. She didn't look the same, I never knew what to expect from her, everything was so bad, so stressful, so scary - I felt like the song "Wonderful" by Everclear:

I go to school and I run and play
I tell the kids that its all okay
I laugh aloud so my friends wont know
When the bell rings I just dont wanna go home

It was terrifying, yet, I still loved her. I'd give anything to have her here with me. Even on the bad days when I'd get yelled at for not putting my shoes away, or the days when we had no food in the house and my little sister and I had to eat ketchup sandwiches. A part of me wishes I could go back to those days just to see her again so she could tell me that she loved me. She always did that, even when she screamed and yelled for absolutely no reason, she would always later apologize and tell me that she loved me...that I was the closest thing to perfect in the world. Stuff only a mother would say.

She taught me so much. She taught me the importance of being independent and that it was OK to be different. She never accepted anything less than the best from me. She taught me the value of a dollar and how important it was to be hard working. She taught me to never start fights, but if someone started one with me, I'd better finish it. She really showed me what unconditional love was - I loved her despite some of the things she did to me, and some of the ways she made me feel and sometimes how unsafe I felt. She was my mother, after all. She also taught me the hardest things about life...it's very short and to always tell people how you feel about them because you never know when they'll be gone. These are lessons that are learned in no other way than to lose someone so close to you.

It pisses me off when people disrespect their mothers or take advantage of them. It's depressing to see the lack of mother-child relationships these days. I don't think people realize what they have until they don't have it anymore. So for those of you with mother's out there - call them today, tell them that you love them, tell them how much they mean to you. Because one day, they won't be there to tell anymore.

So for now I will bury myself in my iTunes and think about days gone by...and days yet to come. That's what music addicts do, I suppose...find salvation in chords, in drum beats, and in angelic voices. It's probably the closest to Heaven I'll get.