I sit and read through her journals, one by one the words come at me, one by one they simultaneously fill my heart with love and then deflate it because it’s her handwriting that I am reading. It’s a page that she once touched and placed a pen on, dancing with her thoughts. It’s truly a gift to have her thoughts, some dated from the 1990’s and others from January 1st, 2023.
I am not sure which stings more, the earlier journals when she is healthy, still writing about the life she wants to live and all that she would still like to discover, or the last journal written directly to me that shows the progression of her last months. The pain is there in her penmanship, which becomes more difficult to read as time marches on into the summer months. Her last summer.
She writes about her pain and the chemotherapy treatments that stopped working. She writes about being tired. Mostly, she writes about her children and confesses multiple times how much she loves them.
She tells me of the story of how I was born in St. Claire Hospital in Baraboo. My dad dropped her off at the front door and went to a card game, and she had to tell the nurse she was alone. She says how I was ready to come into this world and even though the nurse told her to wait, it didn’t happen. I was delivered by her, my mother, without a doctor or nurse, and when the hospital staff walked into the room they asked her, “Why didn’t you wait?” My mother laughed because I was ready to come, all nine pounds of me. She loves to tell this next part, about how the nurses thought I was such a beautiful baby that they laid me naked by the window for everyone to see. I suppose that’s why I am not too shy now.
The last journal takes me up to August, just weeks before she dies. I want to go back. I want to be with her again. I cry out, “Momma!” and sit with my head in my hand, holding the journal I bought for her. I can feel her near. She is here, close, and I can sense her concern for her son, her youngest, who is devastated knowing that he has to live a life without her.
I want to scream. I want to yell towards the heavens, “Fuck you! Why so much pain in one lifetime?” I know that’s not the right way to respond. Her death is far from my control. We all owe a death. I have decided that I owe a life. I owe it to myself, to my love, and perhaps those that I may be able to help. Is that my purpose, to help others?
Yet, I have been sitting here for months, staring at blank screens, listening to bluegrass music, something we both loved, and wondering how to breathe again. I wonder what my purpose is? I seemed to have lost it somewhere along the way. I have drifted further from myself.
Her death has spun me around and the words that she has written have entered my dreams, my thoughts, as I attempt to walk with tired legs. Oh mother, how tired I have become. I am a poor wayfaring stranger who doesn’t recognize the man staring back at him in the mirror. He seems like a stranger these days. I think I must roam and rediscover who I am.
