from the archives: yaya!

A panic-stricken but stern phone call on a Monday night ended in a flight booked for Wednesday; my aunt was on the other end of the phone. She was always critical of how I decided to handle my mother’s illness. We grew used to her judgemental gaze, standing on her pedestal, looking down on all of us. It seemed my mom had become too weak a target, and I was the next in line. I brushed off her coldness and in turn, increased my own. 

She told me that ‘the time’ was soon and to get to Toledo as quickly as I could. I booked a round trip for just about 48 hours. I couldn’t stomach any more than that.

All of my previous trips over the last two or so years had been the same. I’d stay a comfortable distance away at a close friend’s home in town. I never stayed with my family. The three-bedroom had been home until I was kicked out at 18, still a senior in high school. I never remembered it feeling suffocating, but eventually, that’s what it became. Today, the entire city of Toledo feels too small to breathe.

I’d set aside a percentage of each visit to hang out at home and give my mom the company she so desperately wanted from her kids. But when she got it, she did everything in her power to make it uncomfortable. To avoid the conversations that mattered, to turn everything back towards her illness, to speak poorly of anyone who rubbed her wrong that day. I inherited her viciously sharp tongue. Does the text ever start to rub off on a cancer card after too much use? Was this who she had always been, and the cancer allowed her to act on it unapologetically?

The second I touched down at the airport, the weight on my shoulders increased. My chest grew tighter. Every time I fly home to Detroit, my paternal grandparents pick me up and drive me back to their home about thirty minutes away in Monroe. My grandma lets me borrow her car for my time spent at home in exchange for some quality time, usually a nice dinner, with her and my grandpa. Usually, this drive is relaxing. We catch up on how my flight went, make sure logistics for the weekend are covered, and exchange many hugs. Not even time spent with two of my very favorite people could relax me for the trip ahead.

As I began my drive to Toledo from Monroe in my grandma’s Ford Focus, I tried to map out a plan. I’m a person who finds comfort in knowing what’s to come and being in control of a situation. My anxiety is chaotic otherwise. How was I supposed to plan my last visit with my mother before she died? What hadn’t we accomplished over the last two years? What did I want to say?

In my visits before now, I sprinkled the weekend with time spent with friends and copious amounts of alcohol. If I stayed drunk, it would be easier. I would stay distracted. I could handle her sharp jabs at my father and my stepfather. I could handle her toxic relationship with my little brother, and how strongly she manipulated him. I could deal with her disappointment that I was single, child-less; unlike my younger sister, who “visited regularly” with her two sons (she didn’t.) 

This visit, however, came with a specific goal in mind. And as much as I wanted to stop by the bar at the end of our block like times past and order a beer and shot special in preparation; I knew I needed to be sober.

I walked into my childhood home, or a version of it I’d faintly come to know. Still filled with chaotic clutter despite its population being decreased by three. A home that used to hold my mom, my stepdad, my sister, my brother, and myself had diminished to just my mom and brother. My sister had chosen to live with her father as a young teenager, I’d been kicked out years prior, and just 6 months before her passing- my mother divorced my stepdad. 

In our place, my aunt and my stepdad’s daughter came in and out. Taking care of my mom, filling the space in her life. The irony that she had pushed out everyone she could and two people who had never cared much to begin with had replaced us. They were now, for the first time in her life, the only people that mattered. Both deriving their separate benefits from the situation. I shudder thinking about it, yet feel relief that she wasn’t alone.

I walked up the carpeted stairs, holding onto the creaky railing I’d gripped many times before. The primary room’s bed had been replaced with a hospital bed, making it easier for my mom to get comfortable while spending the majority of her day lying in it. The room, smaller than most I’ve had in my adulthood, seemed so much bigger with a twin mattress instead of a queen. My mother, skin and bones lying there, gave me a weak grin. 

Emaciated from the illness spreading throughout her, her bald head covered with a knit beanie, you’d think she was powerless. You’d think she couldn’t do anyone any ounce of harm. But if you’d thought that - you didn’t know her. Even in her final days, I’m confident my mother knew the power she held, that she’d always held.

This was never going to be a textbook “last goodbye” visit. My mother wasn’t going to talk to me about the trauma I’d been through, most of which she inflicted. She wasn’t going to tell me stories about who she was before she had us kids or give me final pearls of wisdom. So instead we watched a movie we’d grown up watching. One of her favorites: Divine Secrets of the YaYa Sisterhood.

The movie follows a mother-daughter relationship in which Siddalee (Sandra Bullock) writes and produces a successful Broadway play describing her version of the abuse and neglect she’d received as a child. Her dramatic, southern mother (Ellen Burstyn) throws a fit after being publicly humiliated by it; to which her lifelong best friends respond. They kidnap Sandra Bullock to explain to her the real story of her childhood and the hardships her mother faced. The conclusion results in a better understanding of each other and, in turn, a better relationship. A happy mother-daughter ending. 

I think we both chose this movie because this is what we wanted. We wanted this time to come with a better understanding of each other. We wanted forgiveness and compassion. And honestly, after two years of watching my mom disintegrate into nothing; I had found my own version of that. A fucked up version, but a version nonetheless. I took all of the bad memories and pushed them deep down, as I had my whole life. I slapped an ‘everything’s okay’ bandaid on top of our relationship; as I had my whole life. That way, two weeks later, when she did pass; I could heal.

I do hope my mom truly believed that ‘everything’s okay’ bandaid I slapped over our broken relationship. I hope that she passed with the peace of thinking that she and her oldest daughter had a clean slate and she left me better than she found me. After all, that’s what mattered to her. The happy Facebook posts, the empty “I’m proud of you’s” when I graduated or got a new job. How everyone else saw her as a mother. I want that peace for her. I still want that peace for her.

For me? I’d rather have the truth. I’d rather dig into every single memory, even if that means opening up old wounds; and heal them the right way. To me, ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is torment. My mother instilled in me the habit of burying everything and slapping a bandaid on my problems. Consequently, I’ll find myself spending a lifetime re-evaluating my own wounds and scars.