Sometimes when I’m sitting at night, winding down from my day, I start a conversation with my mom.
Like last night, with Press Your Luck on in the background.
“You never got to see someone win $1 million in the Big Bucks Bonanza.”
“I don’t want to be here anymore.”
For those two utterances, she doesn’t have a response. I imagine that last one would have her pulling me close, arms wrapped around my back, my head resting on her shoulder as she maybe, maybe whispered: “I know, Michelle. I wish there was something I could do for you.”
“I took two red peppers out of the crisper drawer, stood in front of the refrigerator with the door open for a minute and then put them back after thinking about cutting them and an onion and stir frying them together while rice cooked. Air frying a few french fries seemed like less trouble, and I had left over chicken from a salad I made.”
“Stir fry?” she’d say, her nose wrinkling. “I wish I liked all the different foods you do. But the french fries sound good.”
“I rejoined Hungryroot in an effort to do something about my lack of energy for cooking. I’m going to get my first box after the holidays, and hopefully that will help.”
“I thought you didn’t like how they delivered?” she’d ask, remembering why I quit in the first place.
“I know. I don’t. But they seemed to have some good recipes and I just need to make things easier right now.”
“I hate cooking!”
“I know you do, Mom. I don’t like it much right now, either.”
She would inevitably ask me about Ben. She’d want to know how we were doing.
Here is where I wouldn’t have a response.
“What’s wrong?” she’d wonder, noticing my eyes welling with tears.
“I don’t know. Things are just … different. We are just not communicating well and I’m scared I don’t really know him anymore and maybe I never did. Maybe what I have is a kid who takes everything for granted and can’t see beyond himself. Death changes people. Death changes relationships. When you first died, not only was I afraid of what losing you would mean for my life, I was so scared that Ben and I would somehow lose ourselves and not be able to be there for one another and now I feel like that’s true. He doesn’t know how to be who I need him to be and I don’t know how to let that go.”
"Michelle,” she’d say, “you know Ben. You two are so close.”
“I don’t think that’s true right now. I don’t know if that was every really true. You could never see anything but your love for that kid.”
She’d go quiet because she’d understand the truth in those words. I wouldn’t push because I’d understand her blinders are beautiful.
“Most mornings when I wake up the first thing that comes to mind is ‘My mom is dead.’ I listened to a snippet of Anderson Cooper’s podcast on grief—All There Is—where he was talking to Tig Notaro about the loss of her friend Andrea Gibson. ‘I don’t want my kids to be taken by surprise by my death,’ she says at one point. I realized then how surprised I was by your death. How wholly unprepared I was, not just in its suddenness, but in the fact that you dying could happen at all. I knew you’d die and yet your actual death still feels unbelievable. I always talk about not having any regrets around how I loved you and the time we spent together. What I do regret is not talking to you about what losing you would mean to me. I regret not talking to you about your own death. Maybe I’d feel less lost right now if I’d allowed you to give me some roadmaps for life without you.”
“I know,” she’d tell me again. “I wish there was something I could do for you,” she’d repeat. “Believe me, I didn’t want to die!”
“I know Mom. I know you didn’t. I know you wish you were still here.”
Staring at the TV stand, I tell her how I was looking on Wayfair for something simpler for this space. I want my life to be simple. She’d notice the hummingbird painting.
“That looks really good there,” she’d tell me.
Maybe we’d laugh at how long she spent painting that bird. Maybe I’d tease her about the three other paint by number sets she has sitting in her closet.
“Don’t you worry,” she’d tell me. “I’ll get to them someday.”
“It was always someday with you, Mom. It was always someday.”