loss

I wasn’t expecting to have a visceral response to observing someone I hardly knew do home renovations.

The truth is, I have no idea where she is. I don’t even know if my mother is alive. I haven’t spoken to my mother for eight years.

Looking at her left-behind crossword puzzles, I had retrieved at least one constant in my mother’s life: her love of puzzles and word games.

Last April, my dad died two days before his 58 birthday after struggling with Huntington's Disease for over a decade. This is my first year without a dad.

After my mother’s suicide in 2009, I was left with a gnawing sense of guilt. My mother had suffered from an undiagnosed delusional disorder.

From the beginning, mothering and being mothered are both brutal. One day you’ll hurt your mom, I thought. And she’ll hurt you, somehow, without knowing it.

Is it okay to mourn the child that never was? That seeped into my blood without my even noticing? I only delivered one baby but I was pregnant with two.

It was the night before my father’s funeral that I finally asked the tarot for help. I was incapable of imagining a future where I delivered his eulogy.