You can’t blame her. She wasn’t well. A family member who knew much about me, whom I knew nothing of, assured me. My mother’s pristine porcelain form lay in the casket. Sleeping more peacefully than she ever had in life. My father and I stood next to the casket as prying eyes looked down on me and past him. He had no self left to look at, only empty eyes. His suit, which once fit him well, was now loose, his frame overtaken by it and grief. He hadn’t looked at me since her death. I was too much of her.
I didn’t cry. I was relieved when she died—something I’d never admit, but it was a secret I felt both me and my father shared. A secret that no longer matters. No scandal from the dead. I saw in their eyes that they, too, knew my mother. Not the fine porcelain in the casket, but the pieces she was put together from. The mess of it all. When they looked at me, they didn’t pity my loss of her, but my genes. I was my “mother’s daughter,” not in care but in nature. The madness would claim me, as it did every mother’s mother. As death comes for all, madness comes for us. How she wished for a son. How I wished to not be.
Though past actions assured they were no family of mine, her death offered me a clean cut. No words were said, but my father and I parted ways a month after her death. He left me a considerable amount of money—my part of my mother’s “doomsday fund.” In an envelope on the worn kitchen table of the now empty house, along with a note that simply said, “Stay as long as you want”. I still have that note. I cried at that table. I cried the tears I’d been holding all those years. I cried till I could no longer. Till my cheek was slicked to the table, and I felt the bottom envelope me, swallowing me whole, leaving only one way to go. So I got up and left.
Things got better. Early 30s, is what I was told. “You’ll live till you’re 30,” my mother would say, shaking my bones with her words. I’ve been told by my therapist that there are steps I can take and that my fate isn’t sealed, but I’ve been unconvinced of my agency on the matter. But still, I step. Maybe one day I’ll tell it all. The folklore of the crazed. But until I’m 41, it will be mine. A little book collecting dust on a shelf I can hopefully fill with better volumes.
30 years isn’t too bad. And either way, it will end with me,
in death or war.