Halloween

Sometimes, I have questions I want to ask my mom. 

Obviously, she’s dead. 

But I still have questions. 

Sometime, those questions are big things:

Is 26 scarily late in life to learn how to cook?

Am I doing things right?

Would you have eventually left Mormonism like I did? 

Other times, the questions are different. Smaller. 

Which voice part in Wicked’s For Good do you prefer to sing? 

How did it happen that you were the science pride award winner at your high school? 

Did Whitney Houston really sing at your high school graduation night at universal, or did I make that up? 

And I guess none of the questions are really bigger or smaller. They all have the same weight and impossibility, since I’ll never get to ask them and hear her answers. 

Sometimes, I forget I ever had a mom. The first 20 years of my life are a blur. Other times, I remember it all too well, and the pain hits me like a blessing and a curse all at once. 

Which is better, the numbness of forgetting, or the pain of remembering? Ignorance is bliss, but I’ve crafted a life on the horrors of reality. Maybe I’m a masochist, but how can I not be, when pain is the last pathway I have to feel close to you? 

When the salty tears taste sweet, I know I’m as close to you as I ever will be again. 

Sometimes I wish I still believed in god and an afterlife, just so I could imagine the certainty of hugging you again. Most of the time, I’m glad I’m an atheist, so I can pretend the loss of you doesn’t matter, that there isn’t a gaping wound in me that no time seems to heal. 

Bandaids are nice, but the bleeding doesn’t stop. It’s held back by gauze and elastic, needing to be changed when it starts to overflow. 

I miss you, mama. Others have died, and I haven’t felt a thing. But you? You’ve left me ruined, and yet better than I would have been otherwise. 

If there is a god, he is cruel. What loving father would require his children to experience the grief of uncertain, inconceivable, irreparable separation from the ones they love best? 

Legend has it that the veil between the living and the dead is thinnest on Halloween. I don’t know if I believe that, but I do know that tonight, in the hours between Halloween and the start of November, I peel back the bandaid and am struck with the gaping wound I’ve been left with since you left. 

I’m not sure it’ll ever heal. Maybe it will scar. Maybe I’ll be replacing bandaids forever. I don’t know. For now, I have to face that the wound is still raw, even when I pretend otherwise. 

I love you, mama. Maybe this pain is the only way I can express it.