i am my mother's daughter. i don't know how pleased she would be with this declaration, but i think it is true.
this short phrase has been resonating and echoing through the curved chambers of my cranium for years now. it has been getting louder and louder with each passing year since she died almost 14 years ago. every mother's day, every occasion when family usually gathers, it thunders. as i try to gain a better understanding of myself i am reminded of her.
i catch glimpses of her in myself all the time. the sharp angle of my profile, the elegant swoop of my neck are hers. our thin psychic skin; so easily bruised and hurt; our circumspect pride.
make no mistake about it, she was as much a stranger to me at the time of her death as i am sure i was to her. there was an unspoken chasm we never bridged. we never even neared the edge. on a few wine soaked evenings we laughed with abandon, skimmed the surface, but even then she was vigilantly guarded. she never dropped the barricade that protected the pathway to herself. the more i pushed, she further she retreated into a blithe and unaffected cool. the longer i knew her the further away she disappeared from my view. at one time, in a patch of domestic turmoil, she reached out to me, and with it glimmered a tentative possibility. then, in the blink of an eye, a rabid cancer coerced her into the refuge of the status quo, to what she knew.
with age comes a certain type of wisdom, a more learned perspective (one would hope), i bear the excruciating knowledge that she will always be an enigma to me. the questions i had will forever remain unanswered. i will never gain any insight into who she was, save for the uncanny resemblance i find in myself to what i do know of her.
holidays loom and i find myself caught in a tumultuous grip of acute inexplicable grief and loss, triggered by the season. this is the month that she died. and even more baffling, with each year that passes the more persistent this ache becomes.
as i continue to grapple with my own conundrum i hope that my son won't find himself struggling to gain a similar understanding. i've made my life transparent to him with the invitation to ask any question he needs answered. i've made it known that he has every right to know. i love him without reservation and trust that we will both grow to possess the level of a deep and abiding relationship.