sweetmusic_27 | Nine Years

Content warning: child abuse, alcoholism, suicide.

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It's been nine years since my mother died.

I can hardly believe it.

She was my only parent, a single mother. When she died, though my biological father still lives, I became an orphan in some ways.

She was an abusive alcoholic. She could become a terrible monster in the blink of an eye, screaming at me for being a selfish brat. This was a favorite label, and a difficult one, because it felt true. We grew up poor, so I wanted more than I had and I wanted to have things just for me and so I must be a selfish brat.

She policed the sounds I made in a way that I never realized was abnormal until recently. I mean, all parents want their kids to shut up, right? Nobody wants their kids to shriek. But there were so many things she didn't like to hear, including singing, and she could snap at any moment. She was not well suited to have a musical child.

When we "argued," she never could talk about it afterwards. And if I brought it up, she would fly into a rage. It took a long time to realize that she couldn't bear being confronted with evidence of her abuse and anger.

She would haul me around by my hair, scream and shout, beat us, throw dishes, and make sure I knew it was all my fault. Everything was, except for the things that were my sister's fault, which was also everything, if not more than everything. We were burdens, choices she felt she'd made poorly, shackles to a life she didn't want, and also we were thankless beasts who made mistakes constantly. One time, she dragged me out of sleep in bed to beat me.

We learned to make sure she had wine, or vodka, or whatever she was drinking, because she was worse without it. And when she tried to quit cigarettes, she was worse then, too. When her boyfriend travelled, things would be okay for a while, and then worse, and when he came back, things would be great for a while, and then progressively worse. That last part evened out when he finally got a house nearer us.

One of the things she did that I hated was she'd go to the grocery store and fill the cart and then something would happen - something would scan wrong, a coupon wouldn't work, something she thought was on sale turned out not to be on sale - and they'd call over a manager and there wouldn't be a satisfactory solution and then mom would get angry and leave all our groceries, take us and leave the store. And then we'd go home. We didn't always have food or her attention or ability to make food, so it could be pretty hard to see that whole cart left behind.

She was responsible for my violin music. We fought over practicing, but it was the one area of my life where she was very encouraging. I was never thin enough and rarely smart enough, she criticized my poetry and drawing and singing, but she believed my music would be my saving grace, and so it has been.

She had this childlike sense of wonder and delight, though. She would pull stunts that made us believe in Santa. One year, the presents were out on the front lawn in cardboard boxes covered in saran wrap to protect them from the snow because "Santa didn't have enough time." Another year they were 'dropped off' on the back porch. She would do a big dinner for Christmas Eve and we'd have family over. She liked to make the table beautiful, and one year she got a big piece of gold lame and used it as the tablecloth, and the candles made everything glow.

She mellowed eventually, got a job sorting packages and got tired, and we were older, and my sister stayed away. I didn't realize it, but she drank more, having less wine and more hard liquor. She got a DUI with me in the car once. She'd always had trouble, but then she found a book about AA, joined the program, and killed herself about a year later. I will always wonder if self-medicating was what had been keeping her alive.

Now it's nine years later, and I can look back and see the ways her death changed me, and that's scary too. I have good friends and partners now who have never met her, and never will.

Sometimes I see a Japanese quince, or a forsythia in full bloom, and I cry like I just found out she's died.