How does one forget a deathday?
You don’t.
You just subsume it into the geological layers of life, something that sits down deep and serves as foundation for everything above it. Most of the time you are just walking around the landscape, but sometimes, a fracture brings the past back into the light of day.
And, much as with natural disasters cracking the crust of the world, you’re never really prepared for it.
My mother died exactly a month after her 51st birthday in 1994. So, that makes it 32 years gone by, much longer than I had her in my life (I was 25 when cancer nabbed her). After all these decades, I usually roll past anniversaries like this with a nod and a broken heart, as if noting the marks left by an ancient volcanic eruption.
This year something stuck. Maybe it’s all the work I’m doing on myself. Maybe it’s because I’m repacking so much of my inheritance and putting it into a storage unit. Maybe it’s because of the political situation in the USA, which might have on its own sent her to her grave. Maybe it’s no reason at all.
By the 13th, I was in the doldrums, feeling listless and distracted. I could not concentrate. I woke up forlorn, as if I had somehow misplaced my sleep. Where was it? Why was I so tired?
The advantage of age is experience, so I immediately checked the calendar, wondering what anniversary I was tripping over. You’d think I’d put it together without having to check the day of the week but something about seeing “September 15” in writing does the trick, clicks the connection in place: Ah, it’s that time of year; I forgot.
Less like forgetting, and more like walking around with a blindfold on.
I don’t want to remember, is the thing. Mother was a difficult woman, wracked by mental illness, health issues, and a vast unfathomable intelligence. She was also generous and creative and, in the end, my mother. I love her. I always will.
I’m not glad she’s dead, but on the other hand, chances are good we’d have gone “no-contact” by now if she continued behaving like a narcissist. (Was she a narcissist? She was never diagnosed with it, just a lot of other stuff, but the traits were there.) She would have hated everything I’ve become because it reflects so poorly on her; I would have hated a life deep in her shadow. We were both Leos, so maybe we were elementally born to clash.
She was cheated of her glory by the era and the body she lived in. The older I get, the more I think of her as some kind of benevolent Eldritch Horror. She was inescapable and traumatic while also being a profound force of nature that you love despite yourself. She was beautiful and gruesome in turn.
She loved her family and she loved her daughter, but I wonder how deep her incandescent rage about her life clawed through her soul into the ground at her feet.
The land I walk was blessed with her cursed blood.
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