A Mother's Love

Author's Note: Sensitive topics include emotional abuse, terminal illness, death, and loss.

They say we are all created as God’s children, all created in His image, and you asked me once, with your childish innocence, if God had a body. You asked me if God could get hurt, if God’s body changed as your body changed. You asked me if God died. I laughed away the questions, told you I wasn’t a theologian. I didn’t have any answers on that day. Now I do. But you cannot understand those answers until you, too, are dying.

Am I God? I made you in my image. Your hair is the same gold shade as mine used to be, before it went gray. Your eyes, blue, not green, are light like mine. You have my lips. My facial structure. They’d always say you were my twin, and when I looked at pictures of myself, before I aged, I’d see you. When I saw that easy childish smile on a face so much like mine, I saw how I might have been.

I’ve done far too much over the years to ruin your easy, childish smile. Maybe it was because I never had one of my own, or at least not that I could recall. The pictures of me from childhood are deceptively serene, my Mona Lisa grin belying the sadness inside. I’d mock myself for that sadness, because my latchkey childhood was never that bad: food stamps and divorce, TV (without cable) and a rented VCR, a meal cooked (by me) from a box and a can. My mother missed work only when necessary; I knew what it was like to be the only child without a parent in attendance to witness an important—to my childhood mind—event. My ignored attempts to gain my father’s attention made me wonder what was wrong with me. But I was never beaten. We never starved. Faceless bill collectors never had reason to shut off our lights or heat.

I tried to give you more than that. I was at every school event (okay, I might’ve missed a few). We had a nice house in a good neighborhood (you never had to smell the neighbor’s cooking or overhear their fights). You had the fancy private school education I could’ve only dreamed of (although I worried about surrounding you with children who’d never know strife). Yet in the end I couldn’t give you more. I could only recreate how I’d been created: all the ugliness of that image, but with a fancier veneer.

You see, when I’d scream at you over some perceived mistake, when I’d turn cold and ignore your attempts to speak to me, it was because that was what I knew. I’d feel the twist in my gut when you’d beg me not to yell, and I’d promise myself to do better; the promise only lasted through the next fight. I’d remember hiding in my room as a child, not even brave enough to beg my own mother to stop. You have courage, my dear. I hope you have the courage to do better than I did as you raise grandchildren I’ll never meet.

The diagnosis came a month ago. Back pain, sudden, sharp, demanded an MRI. Afterwards, I’d been expecting the doctor to distractedly explain that the ache in my spine was a herniated disc, or maybe osteoarthritis, not the grim announcement that they’d found lesions. I’d expected a referral to Physical Therapy, not Oncology.

My memory of subsequent events is hazy. There were a series of tests. Serious doctors explained the results. Metastatic. Nearby organ involvement. There was no discussion of five-year survival rates. The bright young oncologist spoke of one-year survival, but I could tell he was lying. The social worker came later. She sat with me while I wept. She left me a pamphlet with a picture of a flower on the front. Inside was a checklist of things to do when you’re dying.

Will

Advanced Directive

Hospice Care

Jesus Christ

You and I continued to speak every weekend, a ritual built of duty. You could tell something was wrong. You could tell I was hiding something. And your curiosity sparked my irritability as it had in the past. It reminded me of your earnest fearful blue eyes when you’d see me cry when you were a child. You’d ask me what was wrong, and I’d tell you it wasn’t your business. You knew the sharpness might come if you pressed it, but still, you often asked again until my sadness turned to anger, directed towards you.

Like now, as it was then, I didn’t tell you. I won’t tell you. I’d chosen, through my actions over decades, to walk alone, so at first I subconsciously maintained the status quo. I asked you questions about your coursework, your friends, the boy who’d taken you out to dinner last weekend. It was the usual superficial conversation, marking time until we hastened to hang up. But with each grim test result, with each brutal infusion, I became less able to hide, and with each weekly call, the concern in your voice became more urgent. Please, mom. Tell me what’s wrong. And each time you asked, the familiar rage grew.

So, it was also subconsciously that I fell into that old, tired pattern. You’d ask, and I’d nastily tell you it was nothing, and even if something was wrong, it wasn’t your business. Even if it was your business, who did you think you were to help? You were still just a silly child, always out of her depth. I’d tell you to worry about your studies the same way I used to dismiss you to your playthings. And each week our phone calls got shorter. Probably best, because each week I got weaker.

The progression of such a disease strips control. In the background, out of your sight, I was doing my best to maintain control. I got my affairs in order, as they say, naming you my sole beneficiary. I arranged for a modest internment of my ashes in a local cemetery. I documented my wishes for pain management and resuscitative measures (none: let me die). The only thing left to control was us, and I chose the only means at my disposal: rage.

Or maybe it chose me.

I don’t remember how the fight started, just that you were unusually irritable that day. You’d had a fight with your roommate; she’d complained about your housekeeping. Maybe I’d made an innocuous comment that you could be a bit messy. Maybe I’d snapped that you couldn’t afford to break another lease. Whatever it was, you weren’t in the mood to hear it. Why can’t you just be supportive, mom? You’re just so…negative. Always. And you were right. I was negative. I’d always drained more than I nourished. In a flash, I remembered every moment of shit parenting over the years. I remembered every moment I’d screamed at you. I remembered each time you’d cried as I snidely criticized your body or mind. I recalled each dismissive response to something you were proud of or excited about. The childish drawings, cast aside. The distracted attendance at your events. I’d stared at my phone during your high school graduation. I wouldn’t be here to watch you walk across the stage again. In that flash, I loved you more than I ever had, and I hated myself beyond measure.

“You’re a horrible daughter,” I said. The words leaped from my dry mouth like vipers, rasping skin and all. There was a long pause, then barely audible what?

“You heard me,” I said. And I continued. I told you that you were lazy, that you hadn’t lived up to my expectations because you had no work ethic. I told you that you were slovenly, fat even, and that no one would love you. I brought up every lifelong failure I could think of: the time you’d cried over a friendship gone bad, when you’d been cut from varsity swimming, the rejection letter from your top-choice college. I recalled the joking phrase that a parent knows exactly which buttons to push since they were the ones who installed them. It was true, and I pushed every cruel point of weakness as I listened to you crumble, your sobs felt physically even over the miles between us.

None of what I was saying was true, of course. You are the most glorious creation I can imagine. It still stuns me that I made you, because I never conceived there’d be enough good in me to create someone as perfect and bright and pure as you. But still, I let the poison drip from my lips like the infused poison they dripped into my body. My words were the chemotherapy to destroy the tumor of me on you. I just hoped it hadn’t metastasized.

You eventually hung up, a ringing silence taking the place of your sobs. I’d held the telephone for a long moment, staring at it, the background of my screen staring back at me. It was a picture I’d taken of you when you were three; you’d put on every piece of costume jewelry you could find and were grinning up from a collar of pearls and rhinestones and clip-on earrings.

My princess.

That was the last time we spoke.

My body continued to weaken over the next two months, and I eased into it, serene knowing that you wouldn’t miss me. I’m sure my passing would come as a shock, and I knew you’d be angry, but at least you wouldn’t mourn. You’d remember the hateful words that pierced you, and you’d think, maybe it’s better she’s gone. And then you’d recall my many failures. Maybe you’d feel cheated out of a good mother, but you’d feel that way regardless, and at least this way unearned love wouldn’t complicate your emotions. It was my final gift to you: anger without guilt.

You asked me once if God had a body. The answer is no. No entity as mighty as God can be contained in our frail and failing existence. I asked you once if I was God. The answer, I’ve come to realize, is yes, and so are you. Because the only creations that last beyond our frail and failing bodies are the beautiful and ugly things we neglect and nurture and destroy between us. And like God, we are sometimes compelled to destroy our most loved creations.

I thought a lot about you during my final days. The drip of morphine allowed me to float away into the past, and I remembered the first time I laid eyes on you, a wisp of golden hair foreshadowing your beauty. The last time I saw you was last summer. You’d returned home, and I’d been so proud of the young woman you’d become.

I wish I had told you.