I’ve failed you. I’m still lost. I don’t really know who I am without you.
I keep thinking—I keep deluding myself—that somehow I’ve processed everything. But really, I’ve only been taking advantage of my lack of object permanence. If you don’t see someone, or something often, you get used to the void eventually.
And it makes me feel so bad that I could possibly ever live not crying about you every day. Eventually, you don’t need to. In my case, I’ve been using everything in my life to handle losing you. Everything I do is either a distraction from you, or somehow a sublimation—a proxy to solve all the problems I can fix. I’m sorry. I haven’t been thinking rationally…at all.
I mean I still can’t believe you’re gone. I can’t believe I’ve lost you. I can’t believe we’ve lost you. In time, the absence has become familiar. And I hate that I ever got used to it. Even though life has been surreal since your body died.
I was so attached to you. I am so attached to you, still. I miss the physical form I knew you in. Even knowing that you are more than our human form, knowing that you are infinite, I still mourn the loss of you. Here. On earth.
How could I have been in such denial when we knew you were sick? I just couldn’t imagine, I could not believe that I was capable of losing you. And not like this. We went on like everything was normal, until it wasn’t, until it could no longer be. Things started getting real. Nothing was normal when you lost so much weight in so little time. The home visits, the hospital stays, your pain—the very little things that affected your health and well-being. How tiny you became.
When I got everyone to finally move out, and you came to be with us in the new city, we were finally free from the demon. But now you were sick.
And even though I wasn’t really believing it at the time, I think I knew in my soul that time was running out. I just couldn’t accept it.
I hate that even up until your last year, we were still fighting sometimes—a couple dramatic times. I wasn’t trying to control things, momma. I was trying to help you—to help all of us. To get you out of that situation. It just happened that I was trying to solve it with immediate action. You never liked being rushed…
And I know you wouldn’t want me lamenting this, but it’s truly the biggest failure of my life. I spent my 20s messing around doing things in a mainstream “traditional” way, and where I could have made real wealth at the time, all I was doing was exploring who I was as an adult, having superficial fun, and slowly going through school, working, and even most stupidly: getting married to a similar problem—one like your marriage of convenience.
I could have made money to take you from that, just paid you the rest of your lifetime, and you could have lived your life freely. But I was hardly able to afford any type of suitable allowance for you in that last year—and you declined it anyway. Financially, you were fine. But I wanted to liberate you from the toxicity of the demon and its demands—its toll on you. What I still believe to be the ultimate cause of your illness.
I failed in making a better life for you. I failed all of us. I claim to love solving problems, and yet, where it mattered most, for the three I love, I failed monumentally. And there’s nothing I can do about it. Especially for you, now that you’re gone.
The other thing that I agonized about, was that in the few days leading up to your death, I had finally felt an inspiration to start a new project. You know how difficult it was for me to start anything new, it took so much convincing, so much inspiration- and motivation-seeking. I was excited to show you the shopping and projects I’d work on—things I could only do because you had taught me.
But somehow on that horrible day, as I was focused on the first project, I didn’t realize my phone was on airplane mode—I must have carelessly handled it earlier that day…
…so I didn’t get her text saying we should come see you as soon as possible because the nurse said you only had hours or days left. Until…I took a reprieve from my project, wondering why I hadn’t had any type of communication come in in a few hours, from anyone.
That’s when I saw it. The text I missed. Three hours later. He and I could have made it. We could have seen you, been with you one last time. The only consolation was that at least one of us was there with you in your last moments. At least one of the loves of your life was there, taking care of you, while the other two of us raced to see you.
Bug and I rushed to get together to start driving down to see you guys, and we were about 40 minutes away when she said that you were gone. My heart and stomach dropped and surged—they could have switched places from the shock. I almost turned us around since we missed you, but I had to see for myself, it just couldn’t be.
Seeing your body, without you in it…the morbidity. I had never experienced such a thing. I guess I never really understood it until then.
For the whole next day that we kept you, there were times that I swore you weren’t actually gone. There were multiple moments when I thought I saw your eyes flutter, or I saw some type of body movement…somehow. You were just sleeping, maybe a false alarm, a mini coma even. But when you were that degree of cold, I knew. That was it. Your body was stiff. No way people come back from that.
But I couldn’t accept it. My whole being couldn’t. I had to see your eyes one last time…
I gently moved your lids to see them one last time. They would barely budge, but it was just enough to see the color, and the glassiness. And then I understood what people meant by “the light had gone out of their eyes.” It’s very distinct.
I was lost, I couldn’t feel you anymore. Where were you? Was I blind or non-sentient? Were we disconnected, or were you really gone? I couldn’t handle it.
It wasn’t until a few weeks later when I took Bug and J to a class with me, that I finally felt you here again. I don’t know how anyone could know that sort of thing, but it was my intuitive knowingness. I felt connected to you again: that there is us beyond this life. It gave me some peace. I don’t know why it happened on that day at the event, but it was a tiny bit of relief.
I remember my cries back then. I felt like I had died too. I couldn’t understand how my body was alive when I felt my whole being had been destroyed. How was I alive? If you could call it that anymore.
Those cries were long…painful. When I was sobbing in despair, I felt every last bit of air leave my lungs—my chest felt like it was almost fully collapsed. No more oxygen was inside me, and I felt my body know that if I didn’t take that next breath, I would die. I’d cry until that quiet wheeze came out, when it felt like I was drowning in my own agony, and I knew, surely, that would be my last breath. There’s no way I could exist without you. My chest felt like one solid mass, my heart was about to stop pumping. My body’s desperation to breathe again set in. And then suddenly…unfortunately…my body survived. It took a huge breath like this time it actually needed it to survive. Like it could have died just then and that was a close one.
Every time it would happen: my body suddenly gasped, and my lungs filled completely with air, my ribs fully expanded again. And…I was still alive. I didn’t get to be free. I didn’t get to be with you. Another breath taken only to fuel the next breath—-that would surely be my last. But that relief never came.
How could a human withstand this level of pain and it not cause death? It just didn’t seem fair.
The pain in my spirit, in my mind, in my body. It was unfathomable that the body could withstand this pain—how was it surviving? I felt dead. My self, living in a body that was just a walking carcass. One of these breaths was going to be it. But no.
It kept relieving itself of all air, gasping and wheezing, while all I was doing was willing it to die. Every time, the sharp inhale would always come. There would be no freedom for me. Not now.
After all that, it was surprising that in the days and months after, we were even able to laugh again. To see life with any level of normalcy. At first, it angered me, and it depressed me, that given your absence from this world, the sun still shined, and people of the world just went on like nothing had happened. Like the world hadn’t been absolutely devastated by your loss.
Another thing…how did people go through all this, and still choose to have children? To bring them into a world where we will all feel this loss at some point? Why are people absolute maniacs?
Then the thoughts turned to: Mom, how could you do this to us?
You had us, knowing that you would leave us one day—leave us in complete debilitas. Why would you choose that for us?
Sure, it’s all a natural part of life: birth, growth, decay, death. But how is everyone acting like it’s normal? Like it’s just one of life’s many incOnveNiEnCes, and not the end of an entire universe?
Furthermore, how can people go to funerals and memorials for social reasons? How can they even show their faces when this type of loss devastates your whole being?
Somewhere along the way, it became “easier.” But then, I felt guilty for not actively mourning you every day. For not crying about you every day. I did normal life things again. But I’ve never been the same, and aside from some superficial logistical and commercial matters that actually have improved since then, I can’t say any part of me has actually evolved in a major way. Or maybe I’m not giving myself any credit.
I needed to feel like I could be good at something, because I had failed in what mattered, and I could never fix it. For anyone. For anything.
I’ve been focusing my attention on “practical” issues since then. Since all the emotional, spiritual, and ethereal issues are beyond me. At least, it’s not like I can solve many at once like I can with “real” problems. And the whole time, afraid to get inspired by anything because last time I felt a motivation, you died days later.
Now, if I get a surge of inspiration or motivation, maybe the good feeling lasts a moment, but then, who else will be taken from me if I pursue those inclinations? What else will I lose?
So I don’t do anything. Even the thing I’ve always known is my tangible purpose in this iteration of my life. The thing I have to share with this world.
I guess it’s why I’ve always tried to be “even-keeled.” Being high emotionally, and in a great spirit—just makes the fall to misery that much further. I’d rather fall a lesser distance. Even if it means feeling less goodness, less excitement, about life overall.
In the midst of processing all of this, and speaking to you while I wrote, I was imagining you and I in one of our conversations. Sometimes we would feel so helpless about something, but as we were talking and crying through it, we would start laughing mid-sentence because we knew it was going to be fine. We just felt desperate in the moment. We would laugh at how ridiculous our obstacles were…I mean, we created them. Just for life experience, fun, and aesthetic. And there we were, lamenting the struggle that was really just an earthly role play of our own machination. Role playing being just a victim for at least a moment…ridiculous.
And you know what, moodreh? It came to me that being the eldest—like being a parent—that sense of responsibility never ends. When we were growing up and you taught me to be responsible, and be responsible for my siblings, it wasn’t just for when they were little, was it?
I will always be responsible for them. And though in many tangible ways I have been, I’ve also still failed them. I’m the one that has to set the example, and in that, I’ve been negligent. How can we all thrive if I haven’t even dared to be authentic to myself and go all in on writing? When I succeed at it, then maybe they will go for their own passions. Maybe they’ll see that if even me—the most receptive to, and most experienced in getting mainstream indoctrinated for the longest time—if even I can escape the effects of it and elevate my life, then it could be possible for them, too.
I kept thinking that unless I financially supported them, that I wasn’t doing anything to help them. But throwing money works on some problems only. In the wish that I have that they both learn to create their own abundance, it can’t be solved by giving money.
So even though it’s hard to let go of my need to fix it all, the real thing I have to be doing is the passion I’ve always known: to show you, mom—and them—that a life beyond what we had is possible. For you to live through us—and have the freedom you didn’t fully have in life. I want you to know it, and experience it through us. Not that these things should matter now that you are the inifinitas…
But I like to think that writing is a way to share life with you. To express you. To express our love, our stories, our life together—as brief as it was…
I’m glad we had those three days together, just you and me, before you were gone. Spent talking and laughing, and loving each other.
And then, I remember the last time I saw you alive, maybe a couple weeks before you were gone. I had that feeling that the three of us needed to be there to spend time with you. Bug brought J—I liked her, but I felt it should’ve just been us three. It was something visceral. An impending doom.
I should have never left. I didn’t know that truly that would be the last time I’d ever see you, I’d ever hold you, I’d ever live. Those hugs and kisses were final. It would be the last time we said I love you, even though we always felt it. We texted a few days before the end, and I’m glad we were good. We were ultimately at peace.
That last day we were all together, I remember you were responding to something J had said—something about family. You said: “Yes, time flies when you have little ones.”
You were looking at the three of us in that way you always did—looking at your own criaturas. So in love with us. Admiring us all in one place, for the final time. We were still your little ones. Forever.
Almost 30 years I was able to have with you. And it deeply pains me that Ene and Bug had less time. But even had it been 1,000 years, it would have never been enough.
You were even a baby…only 51 when you left us. I always imagined you’d live to be a lot older, even outliving us. Though I remember what you said: it’s unnatural and wrong for parents to bury their children.
And now, I was expecting this writing to be even more cathartic—I mean I’ve been avoiding delving into this in the years since you’ve been gone because it hurts so much to relive all the pain so deeply. Like it’s all happening now all over again.
Are my developments going to be more mundane from now on? Not such a huge purging of feelings?
Or is this just what I’m going through now?
I guess we’ll never be truly free of the lows, but maybe they’ll be more manageable?
I get it. You’d be telling me it’s all ego—all these attachments, memories, the pain we put ourselves through—is our unwillingness to detach from the people we think we are, think we should be, or general attachment to this physical being, and the attached “personality.” We identify with an entity that is just a temporary cover—not who we truly are outside of this form…
I wouldn’t even know that without you. I wouldn’t be able to even fathom accepting it if it wasn’t for you. And here I have to traverse this existence—this world, as if I have any idea what I’m doing. As if I have any idea how to be anywhere near as good as you. As learnéd as you. Without your gentle, transcendent wisdom here to guide me, how can I know anything?
All I can do is remember who you are, feel how you love us, and recreate the guidance you’d give us if you were here. I wish I could hear you again, though. Hear your voice, see your face, hug you again. The four of us having our hot beverages and smoking together while we perceived life together, discoursed—mused and confirmed all the many esoteric possibilities of creation.
This world offers nothing. Truly, one of the only things I do look forward to in life: is to be reunited with you one day. For the four of us to be together again—finally, and always. And to never experience this separation again.
We had a brief lifetime together. And even though it was brief in terms of us—I don’t want to live that same amount of time—another lifetime—without you.
And another awful thing is that, even feeling this—the neverending torment of pining to be together—I’m not doing anything about it. And…I couldn’t. I couldn’t do that to them. Life is difficult enough.
As much as we’re devastated, I just couldn’t do that. How would a recovery ever be possible for them? We each have two more losses to reckon with regardless of how it happens anyway, so why make it even worse, and so soon?
I love you, momma. I miss you so much. We’re dying without you.
When will that day be? When will we be together again forever—when will we finally be free?
