The Mother From Hell  

I tiptoed into the bedroom and there she was—my otherwise demure mother—covered in a blanket on her air mattress, flat on her back, perpendicular to the way sober people lie on beds, her feet and legs dangling off the edge.

“Are you ok?”

“Yessss,” she said, in that long drawn-out drunken way.

I heard rustling. I knew it was her bottle in its paper bag. 

I thought about pulling the covers off but decided to let her have some dignity. 

What good could come from seeing it? We both knew it was there.

“Mother, you’re going to hurt your back lying that way.”

She didn't move.

“Do you want my help?”

She smiled with inebriated delight. “Yesss!”

I tried lifting her legs. Even though they were so skinny, they weren’t moving easily. 

She laughed a little as I strained, always finding my efforts amusing.

“Help me a little!” I said. But she still wouldn’t budge. 

I lifted her from under her arms and positioned her head on the pillow the right way and placed her bottle quietly on the floor. 

My mother was still smiling—that spaced-out relief that has no ability to focus on life’s miserable details—and I had to laugh. 

She looked at me. Her eyes so distant, and yet, I could sense they were seeing me clearly. 

They reminded me of my grandmother’s eyes, that same confused but stubborn stare. 

I rubbed her arm, trying to be affectionate, but it felt awkward. “Is that better?” I asked. 

She responded with a heavy drawn-out, “Yesss.” 

I wanted to say something that would make her ok, but the only thing I could think of was, I love you. 

She looked at me again, almost without blinking. “I love you!!!” she said.

“Do you want me to close the door so the cat won’t come in?”

“Yesss,” she said.

But really, I closed it so she wouldn’t get out—her sounds, her crying, her drunkenness—and I dumped her vodka quietly down the drain.

The following morning, my mother shuffled into the living room. The vision of her was like a ghost—pale, vacant—like she was wondering what she was doing there as much as I was.

We said nothing, and she shuffled into the kitchen. 

I heard her in the refrigerator and then she headed back to her room. The door closed and I got up quickly, ready to remove whatever toxic substance she found before it was poured down her throat. 

“Mother, can I come in?”

There was no answer. 

Maybe I was wrong, I wondered. Maybe the night had brought sobriety, and I’d open the door and find her in front of the mirror, fixing her hair, applying anti-frizz serum, comb in between her teeth, all excited about the day. 

But when I opened the door, she was in bed again and the room smelled even more like vodka. 

She was holding a glass with both hands, one that was on its way to falling to the floor. I took the glass and smelled it. Soy milk. Sickening.

“Are you ok?”

She was wheezing bad. “My stomach hurts,” she moaned, sounding a little less drunk.

“How about I make you something to eat?”

“This is making me feel better.”

“Not drinking vodka will make you feel better.”

My mother glared at me. “I do not drink vodka!” 

“Whatever you say.”

I sighed, realizing there were no excuses left to help me pretend that this woman wasn’t killing herself.

“Ok, Mother,” I said. “I’ve stood on the sidelines long enough. It’s time for me to do something about this.”

“About what, Jessica,” she said condescendingly. Then she moaned again and held her belly, laughing at my attempt to be serious.

“This isn’t funny,” I said. “You have two choices: St. Joe’s via ambulance, again, or come with me in my car to Columbia Presbyterian, so maybe you can get some good quality help for once in your life.”

She tried to be stern from flat on her back, but she sounded like a belligerent teenager. “NOOOO!”

I rolled my eyes and sighed again.

“This isn’t a yes/no question, Mother. I’ve given you a choice: St. Joe’s or Columbia Presbyterian. Which is it going to be?”

“Just give me some more time,” she said, slurring. “I beg you!”

“No more time, Mother. I should have done this three days ago.”

I left my mother’s room for the living room and called every number on my list—NAMI (The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill), Jewish Services, Columbia Presbyterian—hoping to find someone, one special soul who wanted to be the star of a real-life Hollywood movie and help get this brilliant woman out of her gutter and into the wonderful life she deserved.

Unfortunately, there were no takers. 

The best I got was Mary Lee, a social worker from NAMI.

I told Mary Lee my mother’s story, well, an abridged version—how she’d become homeless and moved into my one-bedroom apartment in Yonkers, how she heard voices, how she drank to drown them out, how she’d been doing a great deal of drinking… In fact, so much so, that she seemed near death. 

While I was talking with Mary Lee, my mother was screaming from her blow-up bed, “Jessica! Hang up the god damn motherfucking phone!!!!!!”

“She sounds psychotic,” Mary Lee said.

I shocked myself by defending her. “She’s just pissed,” I said. “She doesn’t want to be committed. Who can blame her?”

“Well, you’ve got to dial 911 if you wanna get her some help. It’s the only way. She could die, you know. Being drunk for that many days is dangerous.” 

I wanted to ask how many more days it might take, but I didn’t want Mary Lee to think I was a terrible person. 

After we hung up, I headed downstairs with my phone so I didn’t have to deal with my mother’s screaming. And then, as my mother always liked to say, I ‘911'd her ass’. 

What other choice did I have?

I begged the dispatcher to please send an ambulance that would take her to Columbia Presbyterian, but the 911 lady was not very compassionate, as far as I could tell. She said, “Ma’am, you can discuss that with the ambulance driver.”

Five minutes later, a fire engine and three cop cars blazed up the street and skidded in front of my building. 

About 10 cops and four firemen piled out in their uniforms, circus-style, still laughing at whatever jokes they’d been telling on the way. And they all headed past me, up the walkway toward my apartment. 

I ran ahead of them, horrified, and blocked the door. “My mother has a bad heart. You don’t all need to come up, do you?”

“We got a call about a disturbed woman,” one of the firemen said.

I couldn’t believe it. “I never said she was disturbed!”

No one was listening. They just continued with their small talk and joking, and I realized I was going to have to raise my voice to get their attention. 

“Hey, listen up!” I said. “How many cops does it take to fend off a frail 58-year-old woman?” 

Suddenly, they all stopped in their tracks, and for the first time in weeks, I felt proud of myself. 

Then the ringleader pulled me aside. 

I stared right into his eyes and had the feeling he was someone who'd had a deep thought or two. And I said, “For better or worse, this is my mother. And I want her treated with dignity. The same way you’d want someone to treat yours.” 

He was quiet for a second or two and then said to his guys, “Wait downstairs,” and he pointed to just one other fireman, and they followed me inside.

Up in my apartment, my mother was sitting at the edge of her bed with her hood on, holding her heart, and wheezing worse than ever. 

“Mother!” I said loudly, as if she were suddenly hearing impaired. “These guys are here to talk with you, before the ambulance comes!”

The two officers stood before my mother, their hands on their hips. “What seems to be the problem, Ma’am?”

My mother shot them both dirty looks. “You should knooooow,” she said, “I’m deathhhhly allergic to Adenosine.”

“We’re not gonna give you any drugs, Ma’am. We just want to listen to your lungs.”

“It’s my heart, sweetheart.”

Even near death, my mother still had an edge.

I left them alone and headed to the bathroom to fix my hair. Why, I'm not entirely sure. Maybe so no one felt badly for me for not only having a drunk mother, but for also having messy hair. 

Then on my way downstairs to wait for the ambulance, I noticed the deadbolt had been turned so that my apartment door wouldn’t close all the way.

This really annoyed me. That these two large men somehow imagined my mother was a threat. But I kept it turned and let the door slam and ran down the stairs.

Five minutes later, the ambulance pulled up and two women with crew cuts hopped out, a blonde and a brunette, both packed tight into their uniforms.

I was so glad to see women. For some reason I had a feeling they’d understand my predicament more than the men. 

“Thank you so much for coming,” I said. “Is there any chance you could take my mother to Columbia Presbyterian? They almost killed her at St. Joe’s. And I really want to get her some quality help. She’s an amazing woman and I know if she could find an intelligent person to help, things could really change for the better.”

The two women were busy collecting their equipment from the back of the truck. 

“Hon,” the blonde said. “We gotta stay in this county, otherwise it’ll cost you a shit load of money. Let’s just get her relaxed and we’ll take her to St. Joe’s and then you can have her transferred once she’s there.” 

Even though I didn’t get my way, it was a relief to be listened to. “You two have been the best people I’ve talked to all day,” I told them.

I led the two women up the walkway and into the building, past the flock of cops who were still perched at the front entrance. 

Up in my apartment, the two officers left, and these two women took their place, standing before my mother who was still seated at the edge of her bed, looking like hell.

“What seems to be the problem,” the blonde asked.

“Nothing,” my mother said in a very deadpanned low register.

“Have you been drinking?”

My mother nodded, looking down at her socked feet. 

It was brutal to watch her admission after all the lying she’d done. She looked so small, so shameful.

“How much?” asked the brunette.

“More than I could handle.”

My mother sounded tired, really tired of everything. She looked down and began to cry, her shoulders bouncing up and down in that way that’s always annoyed me.

“Where are your shoes, Hon?” the blonde asked.

She was crying too hard to answer, so the brunette and I looked around.

“We just wanna take you to the hospital to make sure everything’s alright.”

“I’m allergic to medi-caaations,” my mother slurred, somehow still finding enough love for herself to prevent being further poisoned.

“Which ones, Hon?”

“Adenosine…  and…  another one... I can’t remember the fuuuucking name of it.”

“Acetaminophen?”

“Nooo. Tryyyyy again.”

“It’s ok,” the brunette said. "We’ll figure it all out. Let’s just put your shoes on.”

“Noooo!” my mother said, sounding like a child.

“Come on, we just wanna to take you to the hospital, to make sure your heart’s ok.”

Suddenly, my mother looked up at the blonde, and I’m not sure why, but her eyes softened and she said, “You, are an angel!”

The blonde smiled. “Just come with me, Honey. I’m gonna make sure you’re ok.”

The blonde offered her arms, and my mother took hold of them, staggering up to her feet, looking so frail. 

The two women positioned her onto the stretcher and somehow maneuvered it out of the little room. Her face looked so red and so small, like it was on its way to being a shrunken head. 

Then she looked back at me. “Just take care of my baby! My little girl!” 

I'm not sure who she was speaking to, but it didn’t really matter. 

The scene was like so many with my mother—slapstick and tragedy all at the same time—my mother forcing me to play the co-starring role in her drama, and me, trying so hard to play the lead in my own.

The two EMT's exited my apartment, and I watched them haul my mother down the five flights of tiny marble stairs. 

She looked back at me again from one flight down. “CALL FRANK!!!!” she shrieked. 

I said nothing. Instead, I thought to myself, Call Frank?? What’s he gonna do? He won’t even talk to you anymore!

Then she screamed again from the next staircase down, “CALL FRANK!!!! He’ll know what to do!”

And the blonde said, “Don’t you worry, Hon, she’ll call Frank.”

But for some reason, this really got me—this plea from my drunken mother to call someone who thinks she’s out of her mind for believing that federal agents have been monitoring her. 

And I realized how there was no one in the world except for me who understood the hell my mother was going through, and no matter how hard I tried, I could never seem to do a damn thing to make anything better. And my sociopathic heart cracked a little and I started to cry. 

“I’ll follow you guys to the hospital,” I yelled. 

But after I heard the front door of the building close, I shut my apartment door, locked it, climbed into my bed, and breathed in the fresh air of a motherless apartment.

An hour or so later, I put together a little bag for my mother. In it were all the same things I always packed for her hospital stays—the crosswords, a snack, her bathrobe—and I drove to St. Joe’s, where I’d been four times in four months, that horrible filthy place. 

At the counter in the emergency room, I was told to wait because my mother needed to be seen by the doctor before she was allowed any visitors.

It was a typical hospital waiting room: 

A TV hung in the corner by the ceiling. Maury Povich was on. A 14-year-old girl named Jessica was on the screen, complaining about her mother, who was 37, but according to this Jessica, looked like she was 60. 

“The cashier gave her the 5% seniors discount today!” Jessica yelled to the audience. And the audience gasped and roared, horrified. 

This Jessica had brought her mother on the show for a makeover. And it was true. Her mother really did look like shit. And I wondered if perhaps the government had implanted a chip in her brain as well.

Beneath the TV, in the reality of the waiting room, two women spoke to each other in a language I didn’t understand. 

Both of them wore black headscarves and rocked respective strollers, each carrying a sleeping baby. 

Behind them, two large women stared at the TV like statues. 

And behind them, was me, standing at a counter, transcribing the scene in my legal pad, next to a woman wearing a clear plastic rain hat, even though it wasn’t raining; a woman who kept looking over at me whenever she had something to say. 

“Can you believe her mother is only 36? She looks like my 97-year-old mother! Ay, Dios mío!"

I smiled and continued writing. 

“How can you write with all this ya ya ya,” she asked. 

I shrugged and smiled again, and she walked over to the TV and stood on the magazine table so she could reach the buttons. 

I was really hoping she would turn it off, but she only changed the station, to Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, and then sat in a chair closer to the TV, answering millionaire questions out loud. 

Two and a half hours later, I was led into the emergency room, through a horseshoe of patients’ rooms, each partitioned by light blue curtains, but I could still catch glimpses of people moaning, receiving varieties of intravenous drips. 

Hospitals have always interested me, the way life damages in so many different ways. 

Down another hallway, was a series of other little rooms, with regular doors that lock. 

Because my mother had been brought in as a disturbed woman, she was placed in this cracker factory wing of the emergency room, the kind that comes with an armed security guard. I had to chuckle.

My mother’s was the last room on the left, Room 8. 

At the door sat her security guard, a tall thin man with shiny white nails, thumbing through a National Geographic. 

Inside my mother was lying on a lonely bed, more like a gurney, in her street clothes, looking like total shit, though a little more sober. 

She stared at me for about 30 seconds before speaking slowly. “You have the mother from hell, don’t you little girl.”

We both couldn’t help but laugh at this profound truth we shared. 

“Did you seeeeee?” she said, changing the subject. “I have a security guard!”

“Yes, I saw.”

“His name is Luther. Luther’s job is to protect me from all the crazy people, isn’t that right Luther?”

“Yes ma’am,” Luther said, keeping his eyes on his magazine.

“Luther is very smart, he reads National Geographics instead of the stuuupid fucking bullshit everyone else reads, isn’t that right, Luther?”

Luther smiled again.

“May I assssk what you’re reading about?”

Luther replied thoughtfully, “I’m reading an article about Shroud of Turin.”

“Oh, reaaaaaly!” my mother said. “I bet one day they’ll unearth Jesus’s dog and call it The Shroud of Urine.”

Luther lifted his eyes from the magazine just for a second and maybe smiled, I couldn’t tell.

“Has something happened to your nose, Darling?”

“No, Mother, not to my knowledge.”

“It looks different.”

I touched my nose.

“Does it feel different?”

“No, not to me.”

Her arm clumsily pat the tiny space next to her. “Well, come sit next to me! I can hardly seeee you all the way over there.”

“There isn’t enough room,” I said.

Really, there was plenty room, but the smell of her vodka repulsed me.

My mother’s smile disappeared.

I figured it was because I didn’t want to be near her, but instead she brought up my husband. 

“I am so upset that Chris left yesterday,” she said through tears.

“That wasn’t yesterday, Mother. That was three days ago.”

At that, she started sobbing. So uncontrollably she could hardly catch her breath. But I couldn’t understand why. Was it because she hadn’t realized she’d been blacked out for so long? Or was it because Chris left town without supporting me while she was dying?

For some fucked up reason, I really wanted to know. Perhaps in her drunken state she’d become a sphinx—able to see things that sober people couldn’t. But she wouldn’t stop crying to tell me.

“Jesus, Mother, just say what’s on your mind already.”

She took a deep breath and calmed herself down. “I know you, Jessica,” she said in her serious voice. “Better than you know yourself.”

“That’s a scary thought,” I muttered.

“We have a magical bond. A mystical bond. And I see how disappointed you are.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have such a beautiful vision for how your life should be, and life just keeps smacking you right in the fucking face. Just the same as it’s always done to me. But you, my darling... You deserve better.”

My mother leaned up on her elbows so she could look at me more dramatically. 

“I want you to listen very carefully, Jess,” she said. “You married someone who is never going to treat you the way you want to be treated.”

“How do you know?”

“It doesn’t take 20/20, sweetie pie. He’s not like us. He’s got eyes that see outward, but not inward. And he will never be able to understand what’s inside of you. And that’s because he will never be able understand what’s inside himself. It’s not his fault. I love Chris. I do. Very, very much. But he's fine being left alone and unknown. But you, my darling, have been left alone and unknown long enough.”

My mother paused. A long pause. She was doing that creepy lip-smacking thing that drunk people do. And yet there I was, wondering if she was right.

“You have so many unmet needs, honey,” she continued on. “I’m sure it’s all my fault, but either way, I’m telling you this as truth, Jessica. Your husband will never be in a position to meet them. So if you want to stay married to him, you’d best get used to meeting your own needs, or he will rip the lining right out of your motherfucking stomach. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, Mother.”

My legs were aching from standing. “Can’t I bring in a chair?”

“No chairs, Jessica,” my mother said, smugly. “Chairs are dangerous. Surely you knew that.”

So I sat on the floor. It was a disgusting floor covered with stains from shit and vomit and everything else that’d been spewed there. But even this appealed to me more than sitting closer to her. 

My mother cringed. Even in her non-sober state, she could still sense when germs were present. “Sickening, Jessica.”

Then a pretty nurse wheeled in a cart full of wires and other medical stuff.

“Hi, I’m Kera. I’m here to check your heart.”

“You look different from last month,” my mother said.

“You were here last month?”  

“Oh, yes. I make a point of coming here every month. I put it in my calendar. It’s a great way to meet people.”

Kera laughed, and I couldn’t help but join in. 

“I’ll need you to take off your shirt,” she said. 

I quickly looked the other way.

“You turn awayyyy?” my mother said, offended.

“I’m very modest, Mother. That’s all.”

“Well, I happen to have extremely lovely breasts, and I want you to see them.”

“Well, Mother, I don’t want to see them right now.”

Kera was attaching those suction cup things to her chest.

“Come on, Jessica, I want you to see the bosoms you’re going to have when you’re my age,” she laughed, amused with herself. “Kera, don’t you think I have nice breasts?”

Kera giggled. “Yes, Ms. Kane.”

After all the wires were hooked up, Kera fiddled with the controls. “Hmmm. I’m not getting a signal,” she said.

I looked over and wished I hadn’t. It was awful seeing her naked, with nothing to protect me from her rawness. 

“I think you’re dehydrated, Ms. Kane.”

“Well, isn’t that funny,” my mother said. “I was pretty sure I’d had quite enough to drink.”

Kera smiled again and left the room and returned a moment later with a pitcher of water. She poured my mother a tiny paper cup full and placed the pitcher on the floor.

Dramatic sipping noises filled the room. 

“You see my daughter?” my mother said. 

Kera looked at me, and I looked up from jotting in my legal pad.

“My daughter writes down every scene of her life.”

“Really?” Kera asked.

“Not every scene,” I said. “Just the difficult ones.”

“You know that saying, when a tree falls…?” my mother continued. “Well, my daughter is afraid that if she doesn’t write down every detail of her god-forsaken life, she won’t exist. I’m sure it’s my fault. I either gave her too much attention or not enough.”

“You gave me too much attention when I didn’t need it, and not enough when I did.” 

“Write your congressman.”

After Kera wheeled her cart out of the room, in walked a woman with orange-brown hair in a bun. “Hello, Ms. Kane, I’m Dr. Guttenstein. I’m the psychiatrist assigned to your case. May I speak with you alone for a few moments?”

“There’s nothing you can say that I wouldn’t want my daughter to hear. She came from my vagina, after all. I don’t know how much more intimate we can get.”

I wanted to remind her that I was c-sectioned, but thought better of it. “It’s ok,” I said. “I’ll wait in the hall.”

“Please, don’t go home yet, Jess, ok?”

My heart broke a little thinking she thought I would have just left, without saying goodbye. “I won’t leave. I promise.”

Luther was packing up for a break and said I could use his chair, so I did and watched my mother on the security monitor. 

She had started choking, so Dr. Guttenstein poured her some water which she sipped with trembling hands.

“So how much did you drink, Ms. Kane?"

“Two bottles of vodka,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“In how long?”

“In three days.”

“Have you ever had a seizure from drinking too much?”

“No,” she lied.

“Do you drink every day?”

“Listen,” my mother said. “Though I appreciate your concern, Dr. Guttenstein, I have to be honest with you. I’m wayyyy beyond this. I know right from wrong. I know how to take care of myself. I know what I did was not using my best judgment, but I’ve been through an extremely difficult ordeal. My husband passed away recently, and his estate is in limbo… and I have no money. I’m living with my daughter, and quite frankly the stress was too much to bear.”

I cringed in my seat listening to my mother’s story, just about the same one I’d been listening to for nearly two decades.

My mother then hoisted herself up on her elbows for her grand finale: “Yes, I, Eliza B. Kane, made a great big mistake. I’ll be the first to admit it. But I ask you to set aside your judgment. Even the most together women have their moments. Surely you can empathize, can you not, Dr. Guttenstein?”

Dr. Guttenstein jotted something down but said nothing. Then, she smiled and left the room. We exchanged pleasantries as she passed by and I returned to my space on the floor.

“Poor woman,” my mother said with a chuckle.

Several minutes later, Dr. Kudio, an exhausted looking older man entered the room. “Ms. Kane,” he said with folded arms. “I’d like to admit you for a few days... for alcohol detox.” 

I watched my mother’s expression transform from pissed off to gracious. “Ok,” she said. “I think that would be a good idea.” 

I was very perplexed, until I heard my mother’s next question: “Will I be receiving Ativan? To help relieve this agonizing chest pain?”

“Yes, of course,” Dr. Kudio said, without much of a beat, and right away he scrawled some notes in his pad.

What a system.

After Dr. Kudio left, my mother suddenly looked like an excited kid about to go swimming. “I’ll need some things, Jess,” she said. 

I transcribed my mother’s list, which included a Quarter Pounder from McDonalds. “Yuck. Are you sure?” 

She nodded. “I need something like that right now.”

Along with her knitting and reading glasses. 

So I drove home, gathered her things, and drove to McDonald's with it’s giant golden bosoms perched high in the air and waited in a long line of cars, while homeless people staggered around knocking on car windows and birds above swarmed like buzzards.

Back in my mother’s room, I tried my best not to retch as she devoured her food. And shortly afterwards, a tech arrived to inject her beloved Ativan drip, something I absolutely did not want to be around for. 

This drug may be heaven for the user, but it’s annoying as hell for the observer. 

“Mother,” I said, “I think this is a perfect time for me to leave.” 

“Why?”

“Because needles upset me, that’s why.”

 “You? Noooo!”          

“Yep.”

“Not when you were little. Dr. Michael would poke you and you were fine.”

“Mother, please let me go. I need to do some work.”

The tech unpacked a little alcohol swab and dabbed the top of my mother’s hand, and my mother stopped arguing. “Poor little Jessica,” she said. 

I gathered my things and stood beside her as the drug began dripping itself into her personality. “Thank you, my darling,” she said quietly. “Thank you for saving me. Again.”

“You’re welcome, Mother.”

I leaned down to kiss her cheek and she smiled. “You know, that’s the first time you’ve kissed me in years,” she said. 

I felt a trickle of warmth enter my heart before it broke: had she been waiting years for me to kiss her? 

I left my mother’s room and felt a bit of relief, for a few seconds anyhow, until I hit another obstacle: a skinny deranged-looking man from Room 6 was trying to go into Room 7. 

My mother’s security guard shouted, “Wrong room! No, no! That’s not your room!” And as the man turned around, I could see his rear end through his open gown, covered in excrement.

He continued staggering down the hall past his room and into the larger area where several nurses were gathered. 

He was obviously totally fucked up on something. And his nurse screeched, “Oh my god, you didn’t clean yourself off!? You get in your room! And don’t come out!” 

I held my breath and ran for the exit, slathering myself with antibacterial gel on the way out.

And in the hospital garage, I sat in my car until my heart rate relaxed into the reality of having been released as my mother’s hostage. 

I called Chris to tell him everything that happened, but after I downloaded the whole story, he sounded unenthusiastic. Only said, “All right,” like he often did. Like, “Ok, I heard you, now can I get off the phone?”

And as disappointment deflated my heart, I couldn’t help but think about what my mother said, how he’ll never be able meet my needs. How he’ll never be capable of fully understanding who I am, the way I wish he would.

And then, I thought about my mother—how she was always tainting me with her judgments.

I thought of how many people I judged because of her harshness—my best friend in high school who according to my mother was never going to amount to anything, any boyfriend I ever tried to have, any boss I ever had, any relative. 

Nobody was ever good enough, according to my mother. 

And though she often seemed right in so many ways, I was beginning to realize what happens when nobody is good enough—you wind up completely alone.

And in my car in that hospital parking lot, I felt so very totally alone. 

And it scared me. 

And I wondered if I was being naïve to imagine that I still had that friend in my heart, that loving voice that always seemed to soothe me when nobody else could… That loving energy, that lifted each heavy thought just a little bit, so I could rest peacefully in my skin and connect to it.

And yes, I did feel something. 

And I realized, that perhaps it’s this lightness that I should honor first and foremost, before my mother’s predicaments or my husband’s reactions, because in this space, I was able to be there for myself, and not fall apart so easily when no one else seemed available to do this job for me.

And then I realized something else—maybe this was what my mother was trying to explain to me, to the best of her understanding of it. Not to fill me with judgment, but to help me learn the very thing she’d been trying so hard to learn her whole life—how to be there for yourself, even in those moments when life is so fucking painful, confusing, disappointing and almost impossible to cope with.

-JLK