The views on my website spiked the day of my birthday. My blood pressure spiked as well. It meant someone googled my name and went through my posting history. I held my breath for the email from my mother, which I got the next day.
My mother pointed out the aspects of the subject matter she didn’t like, which is understandable from a church-going person. However, there were other pieces that emotionally moved her.
The one that grabbed her most was about living in Ireland as an old man under a pseudonym, and celebrating at a pub, then coming home to smoke from a pipe as I watch the news from a country I abandoned about the new Dalai Llama, and her policies in her nation, The United States. Consequently, I close my eyes to prepare for death and think about what I want to be the next time around. Who do I want to be and what do I want to do?
There was something about seeing myself as a young and enthusiastic woman with thick socks and hiking as a stranger to the world that everyone else is so familiar with. And I discover for myself what everyone else has already penned to paper. Then I die and, presumable, come back for the next go around.
I don’t necessarily believe in reincarnation or God — I think most of what constitutes organized religion upends the personal mysticism one discovers in being alone. That solitude reassociates perspective through unconditioning of the mind. There are no commercials; there are no voices; there are no perspectives to foment grief other than your own. And in the end, there is a comfortable emptiness much like drinking your favorite wine, or beer, or scotch, or food, or desert, or whatever at the end of a long day.
The conversation with my mother turned towards the lack of connection I have with her. I told her that it wasn’t just one big thing, but the biggest, I think, was being sexually abused when I was younger. There wasn’t just one abuser, but the person that did the most psychological damage still lives in Oregon and has a family and children, I made the mistake of telling my mother his name a few years ago and she looked him up and considered contacting him to let him know how much damage he had caused. She didn’t and now has the weight of this knowledge like a rock in her heart. Part of me feels responsible. What could I say to ameliorate this grief?
I told her what I could…
He has a police record. The mug shots over the years showing a gaunt face that only comes from addiction. Some part of me wonders if him withering away is in part because of guilt and shame over his actions as a young man, that the sins of his youth made it harder to escape the eventual sins of adulthood — sometimes, I wonder if I’m even a thought.
He was interviewed for an article because he was a resident at this farm that was, in essence, an inpatient program for families. They would work the farm and learn skills and tools to function. That was a few years ago. And his most recent mug-shot is from last year. I felt bad for him and still feel bad for him. His life is incredibly short and this is where he is at.
Part of me has been debating on whether I should send him a letter. Just something saying that if he needs my forgiveness that he can have it, and that he needs to get back on track — I don’t want him in my life, but I don’t want him to suffer. I’m in such a fortunate position and he is not. He’s stuck. It’s almost as if something in him died along the way and he can’t come back… I want him to come back. And that, for me, is the definition of resurrection.
My mother pointed out the irony that she, as my church-going mother, hadn’t gotten there yet; and that I had over thirty years as opposed to her three to cope with this. But I don’t think that’s it. Instead, I think it’s understanding how insignificant the differences are. There is only a sliver of difference between those monsters in history and the rest of us. I truly believe that.
I am me 