Today is the beginning of Mother's Day weekend. I am kind of aprehensive about the whole thing. The memories come rushing back: how my angel daughter was born on Mother's Day, May 8th, 1983. My child, whom I didn't even know I was pregnant of until my belly kept growing... a more or less comfortable pregnancy, but a hard labor when it was time to come into this world.
I had pre-eclampsia: my blood pressure was way up... my baby was going up instead of coming down the birth canal, so my doctor decided to do a C-section. It seemed like the only solution to the problem back then. So he did. And she was born. And I didn't see her come into this world, just like I didn't see her exit into the spirit world.
A very quiet child she was. Always open-eyed and wondering, with the natural curiosity of children. Yet I know she was special. There was something about her that only a mother knows. She grew up very close to me, but when her father and I divorced, we separated. He got custody of the children because of my bad choice. A choice I regretted for 9 years... when they came back into my life, they were already grown. With a lot of anger and issues... and I had to deal with all that plus my guilt and pain... and it wasn't easy. But I kept hanging on.
With time, our relationship improved, but every time there was an argument, I was reminded of my mistakes. Not exactly in words, but actions. And one day, she told me straight up. That was our last discussion. My daughter was surrounded by too much pain: she was abusing drugs and alcohol to hide her depression and the fact that she was threatened over and over by DCF with taking her baby away... they would come to the house when I was at work and verbally abuse her to the point that when I came back she didn't even want to talk to me. She just sat there, staring into the wall.. and she would disappear on weekends with her friends. And I would not hear from them until she needed to come back because life had become unbearable at her father's house. This went on for a couple months until one day it stopped.
It was Sunday, July 17th 2005. She took her own life by hanging herself on her father's basement. No words were spoken, no goodbyes were said. Just my son coming to my house to give me the bad news. And me falling to my knees saying no, no, no... not believen she had decided to leave without saying goodbye. I had to go through the motions of her wake and burial, still not believen she was gone. I looked at her friends cry with a certain amount of contempt. I held them responsible for my daughter when I knew there was nothing anybody could do. She was just using drugs and alcohol to escape.
And now, I get to go on without her. My youngest child: my angel now... oh, how hard it is to live with the memories. I cry and find no answer to my questions until I convince myself that she is in a better place now. She is not in pain anymore, I tell myself. I will see her again...
Yes, I will see her again. And this Sunday on Mother's Day, I will be thinking of her, as I do always and will do for the rest of my life.
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