a story for class
I sank with my heart as the last photo of her drifted to the body-less depths of the casket. The photos were chipped and cracked, distorted from time spent in hands clutched close to hearts and next to tear-stained faces. I had watched as my father sheltered himself with the hope of her return for most of my childhood; at seven I knew that hope without reinforcement was agony to the spirit, lethal if prolonged. I watched as her absence broke his spirit, and I saw it mended with hope only to break again. My father’s spirit died on April the second 1998, after a long battle with hoping in the impossible, the time of death was 3:28 p.m. At this time she had been missing for ten years and as an accompaniment to his soul’s defeat, we observed the death of her person, and I had hoped her memory.
He decided to bury a box filled with the tangible reminders of her existence, he had gathered everything he could find and could realistically intern. By necessity he left out the biggest reminder of her eight year place in his life. I had no ghosts of her to run from; as soon as I could form reliable memories she was gone, leaving me with empty spaces in all my photographs. She’s absent in all of the cubbies of my memory, places that will always be empty because there wasn’t a mother there to fill them. All of the unbalanced photos of my father and I, the perpetual absence on my left side, every memory incomplete, every event a scrap-booked reminder of our missing piece. I had no memories, so I ran from the absence of them, absence haunts more effectively than remembered presence anyway. We lit candles and stood with our backs to her casket as we took turns placing the distorted photos behind us and letting wind and gravity place them where they belonged. Before we left we observed the obligatory moment of silence, gazes locked on the photo-filled casket, surrounded by her absence. With a whispered “amen” we dropped her fractured memory into the past, blew out our candles, and went out for pizza.
The thought behind placing a lifetime of warped photos in a thousand dollar box was that we wouldn’t be able to cry over pictures that were so hard to get to, or rather he wouldn’t be able to. Within three hours of the “funeral” it became clear we were wrong, the absence of her smile on the mantel only served as a reminder of our fragmented existence. Life runs in circles, the past is always in front of you and behind you, the future, too. In those next few days, grief overtook him, he cried with a renewed fury, tears to rival those that had seeped into his pillow the day she left. He donated tears to everything near him in the days following the goodbye--his shirt-sleeves, fountains, the car steering wheel, his laptop, the earth.
Somewhere along the way I got the idea in my head that if I could meet my mom through photos, know her in images then I could feel what he felt, I could create my own pain in order to reach him in his. I studied her smiles, I read truths in her eyes that her bared teeth were meant to conceal. Her sadness slipped from behind her smile through the little gaps between the teeth of her lower jaw. I bathed in her curious smiles for months, smiles that tacked her image in my waking mind. Smiles so big that they could never be real. The effort she put into appearing happy at my fourth birthday party made me tired for her. I became as tired of looking at photos of her as she must have been of smiling. I was a long time into pensive reflection before I noticed that none of the pictures had dates, yet all of the photos had one thing in common, the string that bound them in their various states of make-believe-- no matter the year, or the time, or the place, her life was still unlivable. I met my mom through these few remaining photos I found stashed in books and the folds of old wallets, and the more I knew her the easier it became to forgive her.
In the end, I failed, we were all three left isolated in our anguish, and worse for the wear. She didn’t ask for a family at nineteen, few do; she just didn’t have other options. My mother lived a life punctuated by small defeats. And because I could find no peaceful way to salvage her, I had to let her go. I understand now that she didn’t stay away so long because she was dead, she didn’t come back because she was finally free.
it needs a title...any thoughts?