On carrier pigeons through the veil

Not to wax poetic or be that person (I feel like the following sentence puts me firmly in the camp of that person – I do not who or what that person is exactly, but I guess it’s like porn, and you know it when you see it) but on my drive home last night I spent approximately 18 minutes composing a letter to my dead mother.

Now would be a good time to confess that I spend an inordinate number of drives home composing lengthy communiques to people, dead or other, in my life or not. I drive at night a lot. Dark suburban highways tend to bring out the epistolarian in me, god knows why. I never write these letters. Ninety nine times out of a hundred I forget about them entirely in the forty-five seconds it takes for me to lock my car door and walk up my front steps.

But I was thinking about my mom, appropriately I guess. She died nine years ago this past Sunday. Nine years is a long fucking time. That’s 28.125% of my whole life. It is difficult for me to wrap my brain around the fact that it’s just been me and all of motherless Brooklyn for nearly a third of my existence.

I started my mental letter all erudite, like, My dearest mother, lo these years are barren. Who was I trying to impress. I could hear her say that. D, come on, who are you impressing. This is the type of woman who would respond to someone telling her that her bra strap was showing with, it’s clean and well-paid for, what’s it to you? No. Tomorrow and tomorrow would not do. We are not bougie. We are, as I recall, upper poor.

It’s been 24 hours and it’s hard to remember, but I want to remember. Maybe I need to. I’m grasping here, for the gist. I don’t think it’s called paraphrasing if the thing you’re trying to transcribe only happened in your head. But it’s close. It’s that.

Mom. Yo.

You’ve been dead for 9 years, did you know? I don’t know how time works wherever it is you are, if you are anywhere, and I want to believe you are somewhere because while I may roll like a boss bitch I am ultimately just terrified of everything. The idea that you still exist, in some form, somewhere, that there is maybe a chance that I could ever see you again, makes me feel less afraid.

You have missed a lot. I moved out of Brooklyn and got married and actually graduated college. I have cats & a dog. Sorry, no kids. I know you wanted me to have them because every mother wants her daughter to have children, but it’s looking pretty unlikely. Medically, emotionally, financially, whatever. It’s just not a good idea, I don’t think. It’s actually kind of a tender subject, maybe let’s not talk about it just now.

I married Joe. You liked him, remember. He cut his hair, finally. Remember how you always told me to marry someone who loved me more than I loved them? That was terrible advice, Mom. Seriously, what the fuck. That thought clangs around in my head all the time,  and I wonder how much of it is true. How much did I translate. What was the level of osmosis, exactly.  Not to get Freudian here, but I think there may have been some Inception-level shit going on with that, and then I start thinking that ultimately I am looking for an explanation. Or maybe just an excuse.

I spent a lot of years wondering why on earth you stayed with Dad, in that absolutely bizarre facsimile of relationship the two of you had. I think I get it now. I think I understand. I’m not sure I can forgive it, totally, which, you know, don’t give me shit about it. I’m trying. You’re both dead, anyway, how offended can you possibly get? Jesus, I sure as fuck hope no one gives a damn about petty things like shame and forgiveness in the afterlife. What a fucking nightmare that would be.

The cursing. Sorry.

You should see Soph & Cate. They are a marvel. You would be really, really proud of them. Like fall over dead proud. Oh wait.

Remember that time I made you a bunch of tapes for the car and put the first 30 seconds of Nine Inch Nail’s The Only Time at the end of every single one? Because the part where he says “while the devil wants to fuck me in the back of his car” for some reason made you convulse with laughter? And you had to scramble to remember that it was coming if you had other people in the car because that is some jarring shit to hear after Cher’s Greatest Hits or whatever?

I think about that stuff a lot. Moments. Flashes. Pieces of cake. Paying for single packs of Marlboros in quarters, or worse, nickels and dimes. Spilling a chocolate milkshake on your white sweatshirt at a Waffle House in Virginia and both of us so tired from 10 hours in traffic that we could not stop laughing for a solid twenty minutes. When Dad’s chair broke on Thanksgiving. When you terrorized me with that witch lollipop through a parking lot. When we gave Mike a giant clown doll the week after we watched Poltergeist and he literally screamed like a 12 year old girl.

I think that the world remains a much darker place without you in it. There are days I don’t think of you at all. There are days when I have difficulty conjuring your smell, that distinct mix of cigarettes, hair spray, Shalimar, that old leather coat. I see photos of you and I realize that my memory is not crystal, that sometimes you fade around the edges. I feel guilty when I recognize these things. I feel not like I have let you go, which would be reasonable, but that I have let you slip while I was distracted. It seems forgetful & uncouth. It seems flip.

Although. There are other days, still.  Other days I am back to nine years ago. The smallest things do still have the power to reduce me to that wounded animal; overwhelmed, choking, clutching, howling. I think of everything you have missed, that you will miss still, and I simply can’t hold it in. I can’t shoulder the loss. I read it somewhere, I forget, pain demands to be felt. The agony of your absence, some nights, is in technicolor.

But in all things, perspective. I am living my life. I don’t know that I am living it the best way I know how, but I am living it. I try to be a good person. I try to not be a jerk. I try not to dwell, or regret, but I am not very good at either of those things.

I’m sorry I was an asshole teenager. Thank you for not sending me to reform school.

I hope they have a good bakery in the afterlife.

I have so much more to say but, you know, the woods are dark & deep, etc.

I miss you. I love you.