light outside the wolf: words after mum's suicide: part 2 of 3: so this is the aftermath
She'd outpester any pest
Drive a hornet from its nest
She could throw a whirling dervish out of whirl
She is gentle! She is wild!
She's a riddle! She's a child!
She's a headache! She's an angel!
She's a girl!
-“Maria”, The Sound of Music
So this is the aftermath
Walking over rubble
Which was once
Down to the center
Which used to be central
-Tricky
And she said losing love
Is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you're blown apart
Everybody sees the wind blow
-Paul Simon
Ah, how frightened I have been! How dark it was inside the wolf.
-Little Red Riding Hood
i guess, before i go on, i should explain a few things.
first--mum and i didn't get along; for much of our lives together, we fought like rams.
we'll get there.
to understand why we fought, and moreover--to understand precisely why i was so shattered when she died, i need to explain just who she was.
her baseball card would have said things like this: five feet tall, 100 pounds on a good day, a triplet and one of nine irish catholic kids, raised in milton, ma, serial marathon runner, gemini, lover of odd numbers/hater of even numbers.
that all says something, but only a little more than nothing.
she was fickle. she was generous. one moment she was handing a beggar a dollar, the next she was shouting at my aunts on the phone and adding them to what we called her ever-evolving "shit list." she loved to pull pranks: my uncle told me once that he was driving my mum and some of the other siblings in the car when mum was a teenager. from the back seat mum asked my uncle, “are you a good driver?” and—unfortunately—he said, “of course.” with that, mum wrapped a kerchief over his eyes and shouted, “are you a good driver now?!”
when she got excited about something, she was always jumping from foot to foot like a leprechaun. she started up new hobbies with zeal, and left half-done crafts projects all over my childhood house—there was the era of the wreaths which left dried flowers poking from all beams of the basement. there was the era of making sea glass and seashell frames--there are still bowls filled with glass in the basement, sitting underneath the dried, pokey flowers. there was photography, chi running, card-making, puzzles.
she sent all my cousins and their children and really, any child within a 500-mile radius she knew, packages and cards. her state of rest was walking up the aisles of tj maxx looking for puzzles, toys and trinkets for all of us. she remembered every birthday and milestone ever. one of her earliest jobs was as a gift-wrapper at filene's; forevermore she creased the corners of every gift she wrapped perfectly. she minded my cousins and friends' babies often since she stayed home after she had me; she made us watch her favorite movie the sound of music over and over again.
she did anything and everything for me, her and my dad's only child. she made me buttered toast, gave me a little bell to ring when i was sick to call for her, took me to the new england mobile book fair (basically my version of heaven on earth: books and books for miles) and loved me "to the moon and back" as she liked to say. she stayed home with me rather than going to work and let me play hooky from school at the slightest cough and wince.
nearly perfect
for most of my childhood, life was nearly perfect. at my parents’ second home in new hampshire, my cousins and i spent our days swimming in goose hollow, blackberry picking by the power lines, jumping in piles of leaves, catching the little black crickets to feed my dad's lizards, petting the soft noses of barn animals across the street and feeding them carrots, coasting on sleds down the three trails my dad groomed for us on his twelve acres of land, and floating in the hot tub, which sat within the greenhouse my dad had built so he could grow citrus trees and gardenia. near our home in boston, we went to red sox games, rode the swan boats, ran through boston common, watched rated r movies, and snuggled with endless pets.
perfect right?
well--not exactly. i mentioned the shit list right?
the shit list
the shit list: the list of people that at any given time mum was in a squabble with. ever on the list were her mum and dad (my nana and my grandpa). when her grudges against family members affected me, i started to have a serious problem with mum. case in point: mum wouldn’t let nana come to my 16th birthday party. i remember my grandmother calling me on the pool phone at the wollaston golf club (this was before cell phones) and saying, “sara, i want to come to your party, but your mum won’t let me.” nana’s voice broke like guitar strings at the end of the sentence, and she began to cry. i had never heard this sound from my grandmother before, and i can hear it to this day, a voice like a buckling of the knees, a hoarseness, and brimming tears. this was the woman who had nine children, a pillar of strength, suddenly weeping violently, choking, on the other end of the line. nana may ultimately have shown up to the party anyway--i don't remember--but i never forgot that phone call, i never understood it.
there was also my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary. until i saw pictures of the party in a photo album years afterwards, i had no idea that the event had taken place--i had no idea that i'd missed it. everyone was there, but me, my mum, and my dad.
moments like this happened throughout my childhood, and they fanned a kindling of fury deep within me against my mum.
mum's squabbles affected who i got to see in my family, and as an only child, not being able to see my family was probably one of the most criminal offenses she could commit.
it was, and is, hard to reconcile the person who spread joy and laughter through care packages and birthday presents, who signed us up for endless volunteering efforts, with the person who would shout and slam down the phone on her sister or mother. it drove a deep wedge between her and me. it was difficult for me to see the beauty of her soul. i allowed it to be overshadowed by these other aspects, and it’s something i regret to this day. it drove me to be much closer to my dad, over the years, which was a sore spot for mum. she constantly felt like the odd man out, and that we were conspiring against her. sometimes to be fair, sometimes she was right, and other times, she wasn’t.
and then there were things like "the shoes thing."
“where are sara’s shoes?” my aunts would ask when my mum would drop me off at their houses without shoes, even in the winter.
“i don’t want you taking her anywhere. she could get kidnapped,” mum would say before driving away. she thought if she dropped me off without shoes, we would have to stay inside. but it was an easily rectified situation—my aunts just gave me any spare set of shoes lying around and we were off, walking to the five and ten, bowling in the square, or heaving snowballs.
i overheard her teaching other parents about another shoe-related golden rule, “always remember what shoes your child is wearing when you're out with them, and have them remember yours. that way, if you get lost in a crowd, crouch down, and look at the legs and shoes. you’ll never be able to spot a lost child from an aerial view.”
i once hid inside a clothing rack at talbots and watched as she searched for me. my glee slowly turned to terror as i saw her transform before me; when i walked out, she unleashed a fear-inspired fury that i had not anticipated. she was terrified that i'd been kidnapped.
then, there was also the time in 7th grade mum finally relented and let me go to the movies in randolph with my gymnastic friends. there was only one caveat: i had to wear a siren on my arm in case anyone attacked me. it was something from out of the terminator: an oval the size of a thanksgiving biscuit with a button on it that you pressed if a stranger approached you and asked if you wanted to pet his gerbil. it made my cheeks burn with humiliation, and I made my friend andrea wear it, who thought it was hilarious.
i had everything--a safe home, parents who loved me, an amazing family, good friends, sports, a million pets, but i wanted something else. i wanted freedom.
the first rebellion
even during those idyllic childhood days, i could feel it--this smothering veil that my mum cast over me. the rebellion--mine--started early, back in 1990. my cousins and i were swimming in the hot tub in my parents’ greenhouse. i was five years old, and i recall contemplating doing a very naughty thing.
i had been swimming for a couple years at this point, on a swim team. i could swim butterfly for 25 yards, and tread water for three minutes. still, my mum insisted i keep my head above the water when we were in the hot tub. it shamed me in front of all my cousins, whose mums and dads didn’t care if they put their head beneath the surface. my cousins would toss things onto the bottom of the hot tub and go underneath to fetch it, or float to the bottom cross-legged to have "tea parties". it made me crazy i couldn't join them. it made me crazy to watch them, distorted and bubbles billowing up from their underwater giggles, as i hung out at the surface of the three-foot deep hot tub.
mum would see me get the gleam in my eye – the underwater gleam, and her jaw would set firm and she would say, “sara.” meaning don’t even try. and so we come to the moment of contemplation.
my cousins and i were all bobbing along that day when i went on strike against the no head underwater decry. the dots of white chlorine jumped in perfect parabolas on the surface. i looked around, and slowly, i submerged my head, feeling the warm water around my face, the rush of rebellion, and the bubbles as they slipped out of my mouth. then, a mass crashed the water, and raised my head above the forbidden deep.
mum had jumped in, with all her clothes, to rescue me. and she was very very pissed.
this is the earliest memory i have of rebellion, which was a harbinger of things to come in the relationship between my mother and me.
i understand it, in a way, now.
i was the only child.
i suppose if you only have one child, and there's no back-up or replacement if this one gets lost or broken, maybe you'll be extra careful, extra terrified to lose her, extra neurotic. and i wonder now if she was making up for growing up in a huge family where that attention was harder to come by. the theories are constant, the theories are ever-unproven.
regardless, it blew even more space between mum and me. i continued to side with my dad, who always played switzerland in conversations about freedom. it must have hurt.
my parents came to everything, and while i appreciate it now, i just wanted them to skip a soccer game or a swim meet. i wanted to be latchkey, or forgotten, for once. mum was everywhere, everywhere, and i just wanted some space.
i would write about it all--i would say terrible things about her in my diaries. then she read those, and yelled at me about it. at the time, it didn't bother me, that i hurt her feelings, that i'd said such horrible things. but after she died, the things i had said to her in my life, the things i wrote about her--these things began to spin in my mind. the thoughts started rumbling in my mind and other memories welled up.
as a child, i felt surveilled, squeezed, imprisoned. while my friends were hanging out at the local coffee shop, getting jobs as babysitters, meeting up at the carnival, i was stuck at home, or, come junior or senior year of high school, released with a thousand caveats. "well, you can go if i go with you or if there's a parent there," she would say. which was worse than not going at all. it seems almost silly now, but for me then, it was everything, this freedom to be out with friends, to have a job, to ride a bike down the street. she was convinced if she cut me some slack, i'd be kidnapped. every step forward towards freedom took years longer than my friends. i was a good kid, i got good grades, and i felt like i got punished for it.
between the constant drama with the family, feeling trapped and, as i got into high school, her incessant proclamations of malady after malady, it drove me to villainize her. i had flattened her out like flat stanley: she was the tyrant, the oppressor, the nutter, the militant red queen. during college and after, by the time i was really able to think of her as a three-dimensional person, not a two-dimensional enemy – even as a potential friend and ally--she was already very mentally ill.
if i hadn't gone off to college the summer of 2003, she and i would have come to blows. we'd already come very close.
one august night that summer before college started, i got invited to a friend's party. the friend was someone mum had made it clear she didn't like, so i lied to mum, and said i was going to someone else's house.
i went with the intention of not drinking since i’d driven over, but i was malleable in the face of the blue jello shots and the jovial encouragement and “come on, sara!” from my friends.
it was the noisiest, funnest night of that summer. i just remember feeling incredibly beautiful in some aqua tank top I’d just bought, and the town's star football player following me around to my delight.
the cops showed up a few times. the noise level was mind-deafening and the neighbors knew my friend's parents were away. when the cops came, i hid upstairs in under the bed, drunkenly telling the people who were also hiding how I was going to be a famous writer.
i vaguely remember my mum calling around 1:00 AM on my cell phone saying she’d called my other friend's house—she’d had a feeling i wasn’t there and sure enough, my other friend's mother had answered the phone and confirmed that i was not there.
mum kept calling, asking where i was. “sara, just tell me where you are and I’ll come pick you up.” over and over, i hung up on her, click. she was worried. but I was having a good time and i wasn’t going home; i was so through with being a good kid. this and the details from the rest of the night make me nauseous when I think about them now.
“sara, where are you?” my mum asked me over and over and over again.
“i’m not telling you.”
i wanted to get my keys from the party's host and leave to go anywhere. i just knew mum would find me. i felt like she could have found me anywhere.
i looked for my car keys so i could leave, go anywhere she might not find me, but my friend refused to give them so i stayed at the party, walking around unsteadily, just waiting for my mum to show up. the world was a full-on tilt-a-whirl.
and, as i knew would happen, mum showed up about an hour later, entering the house full of stacked keystones and slowly-mellowing kids. she beelined it upstairs. i was in the bathroom fixing my makeup, wholly unconcerned and wholly drunk.
i don’t remember the moment when I saw her; i simply remember following her downstairs.
the walk down the stairs, everything brown, the walls, the carpet, the deep shit i was in and through the kitchen should have made me feel naked with all those eyes on me and my mom, but it didn’t. it must have been the boldness of the booze because in that moment, for once, I didn’t care, and i was just really sick of everything.
outside, my mother begged me to just get in the car and go home. she was angry, bull-like, steaming, but calm enough to just ask me to get in the car. my toes go numb with shame when I think about it now.
i didn’t answer at first, just started walking. i can still hear the steps of my heels clinking icily, defiantly, on the pavement. she followed me, walking and shivering, “sara, please, let’s just get in the car and go home. we can talk about this tomorrow.”
i stopped, turned to her for a moment and for the first time ever said the stripped down thing we all say endlessly when we’re children:
“No.”
that “no” tasted so good rolling off my lips, tasted sweeter than any lie i had uttered to her in exchange for freedom. it was a cold summer night and being in a tank top in a cold night and still feeling so warm from the alcohol, and being an idiot 17-year old piece of shit, made me feel invincible.
and i just kept walking, passing under the streetlights, amazed by how bold and strong my shadow looked in those brief illuminated intervals on the concrete. it made me feel like i had an accomplice, a backup.
i started talking.
“all you do is smother me. you fucking do not let me breathe.”
“i can’t stand you—i can’t physically or emotionally stand to be in the same room as you.”
“i legitimately wish i could say i was never inside you.”
at that moment in time, I’d seen my mother cry three times in my life: at her favorite aunt’s funeral, when she got in an argument with our local priest, and that night. the night I told her i wished she wasn’t my mother.
i just kept walking and talking until finally my mom got my cell phone from me. my feet were starting to hurt a little from my high black shoes and she pounced. she called my dad, “we’re on X or Y street…” he showed up maybe seven minutes later and got out of the car. i tried to keep walking but dad wrapped his strong arms around me and wouldn’t let me go.
“call the police. she won’t get in the car and i don’t want her to start screaming and the neighbors to think anything strange,” mum said.
“sure. call the police. i don’t care. i’m not going home with you,” i said.
dad made the call.
within maybe ten minutes, a cruiser pulled alongside us and parked. my dad’s arms were still wrapped around me and i couldn’t get them off. no matter how mad or invincible i felt i was, i was no match for his sixty year old arms.
the police officer got out. he was young, clean-shaven and fit, not like the normal donut-dunking cops of our town. he and my parents talked for a few minutes.
“take her away in the cruiser,” mum asked the officer. “it will teach her a lesson.”
he didn’t want to; he looked uneasy but i insisted upon climbing into the back of the cruiser. we were quiet for a bit as he started to drive.
“i want to spend the night in the cell,” i said. “I don’t want to sleep in the same house as them.”
“you don’t want to sleep in the cell,” the police officer said. “it’s cold.”
i knew he wasn’t going to let me, so i changed the subject. “you look young enough to have been at that party,” i ventured.
he chuckled, turning right into my street. “i was actually friends with your friend's older sister. i remember those parties.”
we pulled into my driveway and i went inside. i was suddenly exhausted. i climbed into bed and closed my eyes.
after mum died, these were the types of memories that echoed through the vaults of my mind--memories like this, of which i had several, and those awful awful words i could never take back. was it my fault? i wondered. ya, our relationship had gotten better once i grew up a little, once i'd been out on my own for a bit, but did the years of my siding with dad, my pushing her away, spitting at her, telling her i hated her, not being around for her, play the pivotal role? these questions weighed me down.
there are so many things i wish i could take back saying, so many things i wish i could take back doing.
right before she died, she told me she found a card i’d written to my father, when i don't even know. in it i'd written “everything good about me i got from you.” as she told me this, she was sobbing.
a river of pain begins at that moment in my heart and rushes today.
“mum, that’s not true,” i said desperately. “i didn’t mean it.” her face was wrinkled and tears clumped in her lashes and fell down her cheeks.
i’ll admit, she was in the wrong for always snooping, (“snoop and thou shalt find shit you don’t want to see”) but still—who writes that?
these were the moments that seared, these burned, these wedged into my heart and would not pass. i wanted to turn my head from myself, i was so ashamed.
i went to school nearly 300 miles away at colgate university in upstate new york, and though my parents still came to visit often, there was some reprieve. for mum, amazingly, it was like out of sight, out of mind with me.
it was amazing.
i could breathe.
i could go for a run alone.
most summers in between college i spent away too--i was out of the nest and i intended to keep it that way. if i lived at home again, it was only for a few months here and there. things began to settle between us. she was still going on and on about ms but i was out from under her thumb. and i fell out of touch with what was going on with mum.
after college, i moved to ecuador to volunteer for a few months, and while i was there, my mother's mother--my nana of the 16th birthday party poolside phone call and the 50th anniversary party--passed away. i think this rocked mum. when i returned, she was different--she was more nervous, more amped up about her illnesses and it was more than ms. i don't remember the sequence or the timeline of it all. i had stopped listening about her maladies years before. it all jumbled into one long stretch of murkiness, but i felt like she was different. like something was weighing her soul down, and i think it's because mum had regrets when nana died. the irony is not lost on me.
i want to give you the precise sequence, the precise chain of events but as i said, everything seems to blur together. mum was functionally sick for a long time, but suddenly, after college and after nana died, it sped up--it got really bad, really fast. when i stopped by to see her, she would go off into the other room, googling new doctors, alternative treatments, remedies.
"helloooo!" i would shout from the kitchen. "i came to hang out with you!" then she would putter back only to be drawn back to the computer, which dad eventually cut her off from due to her incessant ability to find new doctors and treatments.
i would spend time with her, listening to her worry, then listening to her say she was going to try to get better, then on my way home, she would call me and apologize for our terrible time together.
she was just disappearing before me. she was completely unravelling, completely dissolving. and i felt helpless. "let's go for a run, mum," i would say. in the old days, she would have outpaced me, she would have gone for miles. now, she just declined. in the last year she was alive, i tried to get her to go for a run with me, and when she said no, i forced her to go. we descended a quarter mile down clifton street and at the bottom she said, "i can't. my legs--i can't."
it infuriated me.
whereas i had been subtle for years, now i would shout, "it's all in your head!" and then i would curse myself for how careless i was.
she was convinced she was dying. "great!" i would shout. "you're dying--fine! we're all dying every second! get over it and enjoy your "last days on earth" with me!"
she tried. she took meds (sometimes), she received treatment (she hated it), she listened to waves while sleeping, prayed, read the bible.
she asked me to pray for her. "will you pray for me, sazzie?" she asked.
and you know what? i said i would, i said i was, but i didn't and i wasn't. i didn't pray for her.
it was the easiest thing she could have ever asked me.
but i believed she needed treatment, help from doctors, not help from above, and so i didn't. and don't you know, i really wish i had. i really wish i had prayed.
i gave up on her.
after a while, i just did.
it took a long time, but eventually my soul checked out.
this is what would happen:
every now and then, we thought she was getting better.
we would think mum was turning it around, like a boat. i would watch her, i would see a smile, or the glimpse of her former self. and an egg would crack inside my heart, a little baby bird of hope growing. “maybe—“ i would think “maybe this is going to be ok.” i felt warm.
and then i would get a call that she had tried to die again, or she would start talking about another doctor she was going to see, another test she was going to get. after she had promised that the previous test was "the last test, really! no more after this one!"
and i would feel so stupid. like a fool. my feet would tingle, my belly would knot. “never again will i believe her!” i told myself. and then i hated myself for giving up on her. she got checked into hospitals, and i didn't go see her. i stopped going over as much. the day she died, i hadn't seen her for a whole month.
i realized i had been kind of a shit daughter. no one ever agreed with me, but i knew, when i looked in the mirror, that it was true. after she died, i wanted to crawl out of my skin. i wanted to unzip, and slither out, far away from the person — me — who disgusted me. i hadn't appreciated her, i'd said terrible things, i hadn't tried hard enough when she got really sick, i hadn't given up everything to help her, i had given up on her.
i was walking down the street two years after she died when i realized “oh. i hate myself. that’s what this feeling is.” and it broke my heart more.
i tried to run and run and run away from myself, but i was everywhere i turned.
i searched for proof that it had been otherwise. that i had been good enough, that i had done enough for mum. i wanted a vault of artifacts that proved to me she knew i loved her.
i didn't find it.
it haunted me.
it haunts me now.
that question spun around and around like a frenzied carousel: did she know that i loved her?
did she know? did she know that seeing her waste away, fade away, made me want to stand in the eye of the storm and howl? did she know, when i hugged her those last few years, that i was trying to hug her so tight that i hugged the poison out of her and into me, if it had to be that way?
before mum got really sick, before mum died, i walked into the party and i wanted to dance. i wanted to talk to everyone, i held my head high, i wanted to tell jokes. i thought i was hot shit. i thought nothing of it. that was my way.
after mum died, i walked into the party and my eyes darted around. i felt nervous. i hung out with the dog, if there was one. i felt stupid. “am i talking too loud?” “why did i say that?” “was i weird?”
my confidence was gone.
for better or for worse, my mum had always been there.
we had fought, she had driven me crazy, i had infuriated her, but she was the thing i was most solid on, the ground under my feet. the fact that she would be there, always, for me, was like a universal truth. it was like gravity. she would be there because she loved me.
when mum died by suicide, i felt rejected. and then i felt egotistical that i felt rejected.
she had chosen to leave, when she could have stayed, my brain shouted at me. SHE LEFT YOU.
this cut a piece of my heart out and left an absence like air in an empty locker.
i dreamt of her and woke up with a wet face and a swollen throat. i had thought she was there; in my dream she had been there. "you're back!" i would say. i can still feel the golden joy swelling inside me in my dream. all was well--i would have a second chance! a chance to tell her how much i loved her like i'd never told her before! how much i missed her! and then when i woke, she was not there. she was “there” people told me, she’s all around me. but she wasn’t.
i wanted to crawl inside a little walnut.
i wanted to crawl inside and shut the door and stay there.
i wanted to never look at myself again.
everything was too much, my clothes felt too tight, my shoulders felt too broad.
i wanted everything to be quiet, and dim, and walnutty.
i couldn't stop the endless cycle of these thoughts and emotions. i moved through my life heavy like wet sand. i looked out at the long life before me without mum, of this life of endless wondering if she'd known how much i'd loved her, wishing she would appear in a gauzy white haze and say, "sazzie, i know!" this scrabbling guilt, this belief that i was completely worthless dragged me further and further down.