...and counting

poem from the archives for my mother—and some thoughts on day 12,045 without her

Before You Love Me

You should know how many days it has been 
since I have been mothered— 
nine thousand, six hundred, twenty-six days and counting.

You may not think it matters.
You may think twenty-six years made up of days without her 
has nothing to do with how you want to love me.
I should explain.

I’ve seen your mother.
She forms around you. 
Her hands rain with slip and purpose.
She throws you into existence again and again.
You break. She fortifies.
You call. She answers. 
You fly. She holds the comet tail of your rising
without you ever feeling the drag. 
She is unrepeatable.

I am not who I would have been 
if I had had even a thousand more days of her.
I am not fully fired. 
I am soft and missing pieces. 
Yours will not fit, though I will try to make them. 
I will forever be pushing your round love into 
the square space of her absence.

You will finally accept what I cannot. 
What I might never. 
It will leave us in a precarious place.

So, before you love me, you should know—
I have been motherless for 
nine thousand, six hundred, twenty-six days and counting. 

It matters.

Notes:

Day 12,045. Feels like it should be 12 million.

She died on the Monday after Easter in 1993. The day of risings and empty tombs. But on April 12, 1993, everything about me got buried. The tomb of my existence, engorged with her absence. The stone too big to roll away. Remembering that now is like looking backwards through binoculars. Everything small, but in sharp detail. Like little knives dancing point down on my skin.

I woke up this morning thinking of her. Mourning doves always make me think of her, and one was right outside the door pushing that rolling R song from its throat. The soundtrack of my desert childhood.

A reminder (as if I needed one) that motherless is just another word for unyielding loneliness. As lonely as learning to mother yourself, a thing that’s never worked for me. I can take care of myself, I can ask for help when I need it, I have people who love me incredibly well. And I’ve had ones who tried, but I couldn’t receive it. Others I bruised for more, until it all bled out.

The upshot being I’ve yet to fill the black hole she left in me. I’ve thrown almost every possible love I’ve been given into that gaping, vacuous mouth, and it just gets whooshed through to some other galaxy, I guess.

It’s un-fillable, is what I’m trying to say. But that doesn’t keep me from trying. Doesn’t keep me from wanting every love I feel to be the one to close the portal. I will not be surprised to find myself calling for her as the last of my breath leaves my body.

This morning I wondered who I’d be if she hadn’t died when I was still soft clay. It’s hard to imagine. After 33 years, what I remember most is the absence. The ache. I have to quiet myself to the core to recall the details of her—the sweetness of her voice, her sky blue eyes, and that lovesome space between her front teeth.

When I was a child, the answers to everything about me lived in that little space. It was my home. I could curl up there, in the warmth of her mouth, ensconced between pillars of exploded stars, knowing where I belonged. My very own motherlode.

I’ll never know what might’ve been different. About me, or us. I haven’t been anyone’s daughter in a long, long time. Haven’t stood under that warm summer rain for more than half my life. There’s something significant about that, I’m sure. Probably a million things. But I’ll be damned if I know what they are. I just know losing her changed me in ways nothing has since, and I’m not over it. I won’t ever be over it.

I both curse and thank god for that. In the same way her teeth and bones and hands made me something, her absence continues to be an ethereal slurry that forms between me and everything that’s happened since she died. My world keeps spinning, her gone still kicking the wheel. Still forming me with hands that aren’t here anymore.

~

None of this is to say she left me empty handed. She left me well-tended. A solar system of sister/brother planets that spin around me like tiny ringed Saturns. The Irish Catholic gift that keeps giving.That matters, too.

So does finding ways to love what I have. To love what she made. To keep practicing this beadwork of words—the only thing that feels remotely like she might still be listening to me. I’ll make beautiful of me what I can. For her.

Until I say her name that last time, and finally—finally— she answers.

This is where I’m at on day 12,045.

And counting.

Mary Frances ❤️ Sept 1920 - April 1993