LJ Idol Three Strikes: Prompt 24 — Don't Shoot the Messenger

[flipflop_diva]

There is a moment that I regret more than anything else. One that I have played on repeat in my head more times than I can count, always wishing I could go back to that specific place and do it differently.

It’s summer time during this moment. Early July, I think. Some of the details are getting fuzzy as the years pass, especially the ones that aren’t quite as significant. But I think it’s early July or somewhere around there. I’m twenty-four years old, and I’m living at home for the very last time with both of my parents and my sister.

Only technically, though. Neither my sister nor I really live at home, but we also don’t live anywhere else at the moment. My sister is home from college for the summer. I have a job lined up, but I still need to have an in-person interview and find an apartment. At this point, these are pretty much formalities, but they still need to happen. If it works out — and I have no reason to believe it won’t — then my new job is going to start in four weeks. Four weeks earlier, I had a different job, but that one had always been on a temporary basis. The new one will be permanent.

My dad helped me pack up my stuff from the old job, thousands of miles away in Boston, and drove with me across the country to California, back to the home I grew up in. He will help me pack up again when it’s time to move to the new job, this one just five hours north.

My mom will go with me for the interview and the apartment hunting. That’s in a week. It will be the last trip she ever takes, the last time the two of us will spend a significant amount of time alone together. But we don’t know that yet. At least, we don’t know it for a fact.

But on this summer day that is the scene of my deepest regret, it is my mom and I at home, my dad and my sister both off at work.

I’m in the small bathroom that is just off the kitchen, washing my hands after playing with the dog. She’s a big thing — half German shepherd, half lab. She used to get daily walks with my mom, but that is long over. So, I play with her when I can.

In my memories that play on repeat, I remember turning off the water, drying my hands, and walking into the kitchen. My mom is sitting at the table, in the chair my dad normally sits in. I think there are papers on the table in front of her. Maybe a glass of water. These details are hazy.

But I remember how small she looks. How thin. How I can see her bones protruding. How short her blonde hair is when it was once so lush and flowing.

I also remember how sad she looks when she sees me.

What I don’t remember is how the conversation starts. I don’t know if I say something — maybe ask her how she’s feeling, maybe ask her if she’s okay, maybe ask her what she’s thinking about — or if she just dives into it, but I remember the words that pierce my soul.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get to see you get married.”

I don’t even want to get married. I’m twenty-four years old and very much single. I’m starting a new job in a new city with new people I have yet to meet. Marriage is years away, at best.

But this one comment, this one thought, hits hard.

I don’t want to lose my mom. Not now, not tomorrow, not even in years.

I don’t want her to not be there when I do get married.

But I don’t say that. I don’t tell her I’m scared. I don’t tell her that the idea of a future without her is more horrible than I can bear.

I also don’t sit down and take her hand and tell her it will be okay, that there is still a chance. I don’t give her a hug and let us feel each other’s love.

Instead, all the anger and all the fear at something I can’t control — how can my mom, of all people, have breast cancer? — roars to the surface.

“Don’t say that!” I scream, instead of all the other things I wish I said or wish I did. “Don’t ever say that!”

I turn around then, hurry back outside to go sit with the dog. I’m shaking. I think I’m crying too but I don’t remember.

But I can hear the words I screamed at my mom echoing all around me.

I don’t know if she cries after that. I don’t know if I hurt her. I don’t know how she feels.

I should know, but I don’t.

I know she is quiet. I know she doesn’t call for me to come back. And I know when I go back inside later — maybe minutes, maybe hours. It’s another detail lost to time — that she doesn’t say anything about it. Instead, we talk about our trip to go apartment hunting the following week. It’s like the whole situation never happened, and my mom never mentions anything like it again.

About seven months later, though none of us know it then, my mom will take her last breath, her body ravaged by cancer that nothing can stop. She won’t see either of her daughters get married. She never even will get to meet the men we marry. She won’t meet any of her four grandchildren, including the two granddaughters who share her name as their middle name.

She won’t be there when both of her daughters move to Texas. She won’t know the names of our dogs or see our houses or hear about our jobs. She won’t know what TV shows we watch or what music we listen to or who we grow up to become.

I wish I could go back to that day. I wish I could go back to that moment. I wish when my mom spoke aloud what felt like my greatest fear at that time — “I don’t think I’ll ever get to see you get married” — that I would push aside the anger at something that wasn’t any of our faults and just sit with her. And talk.

Talk about the things we never talked about. Talk about the things that would be harder to deal with because we never talked about them.

Just talk. Because time is short, even if we didn’t realize how short.

It seems silly sometimes, to focus so much on that moment. I don’t know if my mom ever even thought about it again. I hope not. I hope it didn’t bother her the way it bothers me. I hope I didn’t make her even sadder or more scared. I hope I didn’t add to her burden that was already too much.

I also hope that next time when something seems too hard or too scary or too sad that I’m not afraid to face it head on. I hope the next time, if there has to be a next time, there will be no regrets.

For anyone.




Non-fiction.

My mom, long before cancer. I miss her.



This was written for therealljidol Three Strikes Mini Season. If you liked my entry, please consider voting for me! You should also go read all the other amazing entries. You can find them all here. Voting should be up Tuesday night!

Comments

[adoptedwriter]

Hugs... I am so very sorry. My dad missed some big life moments for me and my brother. I understand this.

[xlovebecomesher]

This hits home for me with losing my dad recently and my mom being gone for a couple of years now :(

[ofearthandstars]

My first read of this just had my heart in a vice, because, well, I know grief and regrets all too well. Thank you for sharing such an intensely vulnerable piece. We are all sometimes just silly meat-brains at the mercy of our physical emotions, and I hope you have found a way to forgive yourself. I am sure your mother reasoned and understood your response and loved you through it regardless.

[erulissedances]

I understand this all too well, and that the sorrow never truly goes away. Our cases and lives are widely different, but the heartache and sorrow is still there, barely below the surface, and it doesn't take much to bring it back to the forefront and cause tears to spike my eyes. *hugs*

- Erulisse (one L)

[banana_galaxy]

That's so rough. It's really hard losing a parent at such a young age. This reminds me a lot of one of my strongest memories from when my mum had cancer and I was 21. I think I'd reached a different place of acceptance, though. I remember asking her what's the thing she'll be the saddest about not getting to do before she dies, and she said getting to meet her grandkids. I remember at the time thinking that that must be so far off and that I understood why she didn't think she'd live long enough for that. The tragic thing is that it was less than two years later that her first grandchild (my first child) arrived. There've been times I thought "If only she'd have been able to stick around longer," but on the other thing, I think, if she had, she'd have helped me make a smarter decision and I wouldn't have been so driven to get married and have a child as young as I did.

[roina_arwen]

It’s hard to deal with losses and what-ifs. My mom passed when I was four, but I think it’s harder to lose a parent later in life, because there are so many more memories and possibly regrets to deal with. Thank you for sharing your story.

[dadi]

Oh dear, this is so sad. Those missed moments, those messages refused are so terrible to remember.
A warm hug...