Mother's Day is More Like Tim Burton Than Hallmark For Me

I wake hot and throw off the covers.

The sun is shining in through the window and I wonder what time it is.

My mind drifts to the approaching holiday. I’ve been pretty chill with Mother’s Day for the last few years, but this year, with all the emotional turmoil that has accompanied this move, 

I find my mother keeps floating to the surface.

I think we carry our moms deep within, like a disease waiting to blossom.

The last time we spoke was perhaps five years ago.

The caller ID says Betty Ball and I wonder why my grandma is calling.

I say hello and my mother’s voice is on the other end of the line.

It has been too many years to count since I have heard her voice,

but you don’t forget the sound of the mother.

She doesn’t ask how I am, how her granddaughter is, if I have cancer, if I’m happy, the plethora of things I would ask my daughter after a decade or more of not talking. She wants to talk about

 herself, about how I have wronged her,

about her terrible place in this world.

Another lost chance to mend this gaping wound.

 I hang up.

Lump in throat.

Willing myself not to lose my shit over her again.

It’s not her fault. It’s the disease. Insidiously pushing my mother out 

and replacing her with this person that I don’t know.

This weekend my heart aches for those of us who have mothers with mental illness, for those who are estranged, for those longing for a connection that will never be.

 Self pity is not a place that I like to visit for too long and I remind myself of all of the wondrous people that I can count on, and I think it’s time, time to shake this off and to love the people in front of me. Time to be happy exactly where I am, with exactly who I have in my life today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. But today, and today I have too many people to count that support and believe in me. 

So why give so much power to one?