Life goes on …
“Long after the thrill of living is gone…”
I woke up this morning to a cheerful little girl jumping in my bed. “I win!” she sang, happily hugging me awake. We have an ongoing contest for who wakes up first. The winner wakes up the other. As I groggily came to, the song on my clock radio came into focus after she’d scampered off to get ready for school. John Mellencamp.
I feel like I’m just now waking up from another six-month nightmare into these lyrics. Life does, in fact, go on, long after the thrill of living is gone.
Last July, my aunt called me to tell me some important news about my mother. My aunt and I had connected via Facebook in the summer of 2021 and were soon spending long hours on the phone with each other, and sending pictures. Eventually, in the fall of 2022, my daughter and I drove up to visit her in person for the first time. Up until last July, she would give me regular updates about my mother during our chats. She’d tell me about her health, what care facility she’d been transferred to (and she transferred so often, we could barely keep up), and whether she’d responded to conversation about me. While my aunt and I were becoming family, my mother sent me a letter once in response to mine, and later left me a single voicemail. Neither of us was sure about the other. When my aunt called me last July, she said, “She’s in hospice. I thought you’d want to know. In case you change your mind about visiting her.”
She was right. I did change my mind.
Hospice was a blessing and a curse. It meant that the end was near, but it also meant that my mother would most likely stay in one place long enough for me to plan a visit and make it there. I hastily planned a visit to the middle of Texas.
There are 10,000 or so words (so far) that I have written elsewhere that detail my visit; they were written both for my own catharsis and for the historical documentation of my daughter’s biological history, something I wish had been done for me. There’s no way for me to summarize in any colloquial way the absolute joy and utter despair that I felt upon meeting my mother for that very first time, spending just short of a week visiting her in the nursing home where she would live out her final days.
She was a shell of what she had once been, and I only know this from the pictures and stories I have from my aunt. But still, enough of her was there for me to connect with. It was the third time in my life that I immediately and without reservation, loved unconditionally.
It was not an easy love to manage. She was stubborn and self-centered, proud and determined, forceful and single-minded. She was just like me. I brought her vapes to smoke and clothes to wear, silly little things from the dollar store that she asked for. I argued with her when she didn’t want to eat and sat with her in silence after I’d asked too many questions of her. I cheered her on when she walked with the help of her physical therapist and marveled at the strength of her hugs despite her small, withering frame.
After I’d returned home to a life that was already filled with other hard things like single momhood, running a nonprofit conference, and full time work that was beginning to bleed over into after hours, I fell into a dark hole. There were only a few people in my circle I felt comfortable venting to. I had to hold my head high and process all of this joy and heartache on my own, separate from parenthood, separate from community work, separate from my job.
The people I needed to understand the most didn’t. The comfort I wanted was out of reach. I was not alone, by any means, but I needed time to stop, and it didn’t. I kept on keeping on, trying my best not to drop any of the balls I was juggling. More news from a different side of the family surfaced in the fall, and, predictably, I began to waiver under all the weight. Soon after that news, I spent a weekend I should have spent working visiting my mother one last time in September on her father’s birthday.
I came home and tried to focus on the tasks set before me. My daughter came first, then the conference, and finally, just before Thanksgiving, I snapped.
I have snapped before. Someday, when you’re older, maybe I’ll walk you through the times that I have toyed with insanity.
This time was different from all the rest. I gently held the branches in my hand and said out loud, “I must break this, I am sorry.” I put in my two weeks notice on a Friday and felt a rush of relief from the lifted weight. There was nothing else that I could put down.
The next Tuesday, I got the call that my mother had died. And slowly, as I worked my final two weeks and planned for Christmas and cleaned the house, I fell into myself with grief.
Life goes on.
And to make sure that our lives do go on, I compiled a poetry book that roughly follows the storyline of my life as it’s been impacted by my adoption. If I know anything about carrying on, it is how to document these moments and frame them for the walls of our hearts. For me, for my family, and for anyone else who might see their grief reflected in these pages.
Putting this poetry collection together, ordering it in a way that reflects some of the moments I’ve lived, even if those moments were hard, was pure instinct, the same as deciding in an instant that I had to meet my mother before she died.
The first paragraph of the foreword reads:
There is no coherent beginning or ending to my story. This particular tale spans several lifetimes and it won’t end with me, but still, it’s time to document some things. At the very least, there can be a beginning and ending to this chapter.
There are only a few more things to do before I can close this chapter and start a new one. On a full moon in 2024, I will send this poetry collection out into the world.
I hope you’ll be there.
