Eulogy
My mother died yesterday at 2:30pm. She had several inoperable tumors, bone cancer spreading through her body and the doctors had given her 6 months to live.
I am not sure what I feel about it. She was my mother, the woman who gave me life. Yet in all things she was petty, cruel, spiteful and hateful by turns. Being around her was like working with nitroglycerin, you never knew what would set her off.
She told me I was never wanted... an abortion that didn't happen and would've if it had been legal in the day. She told me I was the reason she had to marry daddy and be stuck in a horrible relationship. She told me she didn't love me. She told me of the three of us, she only ever loved or wanted my youngest brother.
My earliest memory of these statements was somewhere between 6 and 8. I didn't understand much of what she was telling me back then. Only that she was angry and I was at fault somehow.
As I grew in the household and became a Cinderella of sorts, I understood more of what she meant.
When I left her church to never return, she told me that I was going straight to hell and raising my children under the wrath of God.
Until two weeks ago, I hadn't heard anything about or from her, even though I've written her a few letters, called a few times.
Then my brother's wife called to let me know she was doing poorly. My brother didn't understand why I wouldn't drop everything to fly back out there.
Now she's dead.
I feel sorrow. I wish death was not so inextricably linked with life. But it is. It is the doorway we must pass through before becoming whatever it is we were meant to become.
I wouldn't want anyone to suffer the pain she was going through, so at least her pain is at an end.
I think the greatest sorrow I feel is for a relationship I wanted, but never was and can never be.
Please rest in peace Mom.
Love,
Cheyenne