I'm sorry, I just don't care if it's Christmas. I didn't even open the box of holiday crap. Christmas cards on the table are the only hint in our house that it's not any other time of year. It's just not in me. Jesse was never a big fan either (of course, you say, he was an atheist. But lots of atheists celebrate Christmas--for that matter there are a lot of atheists in churches, mosques, and synagogues around the world). Or so I thought, until after he died. Turned out that every Christmas, when he was telling us he didn't celebrate it, and wasn't interested in it, every year that he didn't say thank you for his gifts, and didn't get anyone else in the family anything, and pointedly avoided the tree, all those years, that he was going to someone else's house and having the party, the tree, the presents. I saw photos of him from the last Christmas of his life at this family's house. And don't get me wrong, they were a nice family, and I'm glad he found a place where he could enjoy himself, despite the fact that it wrenches my heart to realize that place wasn't with me. I mean, I know why, I guess, and there really wasn't much Jesse or I could have done about it that year. I'm not sure that, even if I knew it was going to be his last Christmas, I could have changed anything. It was his choice, to stay distant; he knew it wasn't mine. I guess we both thought we had the luxury of time. Even a few more months, another year? The last thing he wanted to think about, even on his last day on earth, was dying. It all seems like it happened in the same week: he tells me he broke up with his girlfriend (he stands in his kitchen, looking stern, as if he's saying in his head do NOT hug me). He comes into our apartment to ask us to lower our voices because he's studying for finals. I come to his for some reason, maybe to give him his stocking full of silly things I'd bought for him (they all had resonance for me, with events of his life, our lives together) and tell him I'm sorry we aren't closer and burst into tears and leave (he rolls his eyes and says, oh jesus). He's over at our place, looking for nice shoes to wear to a party, he can't find his own and borrows his brother's. They're too tight, and he comes back from the party limping, with blisters. (I find his later, after he is dead, they were under his bed the whole time.) I walk back and forth from the subway to the hospital at all hours of the day and night. He's afraid to die. He wonders why I am here every day. Why I stay so long. He knows there are times when he needs me there, indispensable things only mothers do, but still, he is cautious with me. The mother in the other family there, telling me Jesse had presented himself to them as not really having a family. She was surprised, maybe even shocked that I was at the hospital as much as she was. Jesus Christ. And then I'm standing just outside his room, and then, I am holding his foot so he won't be alone when he dies. I didn't mean to leave you, Jesse. I meant to take you with me. I fucked up everything.
So, fuck Christmas. You can have it.
Unpacking Someday
2 years ago
My dad died in early December, less than a month after I turned eleven. Friday evening I went to a memorial gathering for the father of a young man I coached in Little League. It all came back, or it never really goes away.
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Agreed. My dad passed on when I was 21, and although losing Jesse eclipses it, I wouldn't say I was 'over it' -- any more than a house isn't on fire just because the sun is so much hotter.
ReplyDeleteHi Iso
ReplyDeleteJust wanted you to know that your writing has helped me to do whatever I can to spend time with my own college-aged children.
Thank you.
I can't imagine how you are getting through your days, but I admire how magnificently you are doing it.
Oh Iso, I'm so, so sorry, baby - I don't presume to say I can possibly feel what you're feeling, but would it help if I told you that I was going through the same kind of thing with my 22 year old daughter now (same age now as Jesse was, I know) and that what you're describing, it sounds so familiar and much of the same kind of thing - an undercurrent always present, a hostile kind of letting go, angry with me for no real reason and the "other family" thing, I've been there with her too. There are a million things - I always blamed myself for all of it (divorce, etc) but I've come to a point (as you surely would have, with Jesse) where parenting with this huge guilt hanging overhead - I just can't do it anymore, I refuse to. She knows, deep down - I know she knows I'm here and I love her. Iso, you did the very best you could. You did more than most mothers even know how to do; you mothered him spiritually, physically, intellectually. You were the best mother you could be to him and just as my daughter is damn lucky to have me - Jesse was so completely blessed to have you. And so is your younger son.
ReplyDelete"Over it?" It's like expecting to get over having an arm cut off. My dad died in an accident 12 years ago, and I'm still pissed off--at him, and me, and non-existent God, and an evolutionary history that lets us remember searing pain from decades ago as if it happened this morning.
ReplyDeleteAll I can do (for both of us) is have a drink. Cheers.
I have a daughter who winces when she gets the whiff of a hug coming her way. Or even a smile. For years I have worked hard at loving her not in spite of this, but because of it. Because this is part of who she is.
ReplyDeleteIso, your writing is so smack on. It is the nature and essence and being of the child. Not in the performance of some ritual. I think we cling to wanting those rituals because the other is so big.
But there is no protection. No guarding. Even with the 'cotton batting' you spoke of in another post.
My heart aches for the missing of Jesse that you describe. And I feel grateful that I can share in the space you've created here.
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ReplyDeleteUm...blu is that daughter. I guess she used my computer without my knowledge!
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