Sky

October 4, 2024

I could feel the weight of it all melt away as a tipped my head back and looked up to the sky. It had been months since I had been home, and something about it felt so different this time; so final. Going to college half a country away had a been a very intentional choice, but it didn’t always feel like the best one. Now that mom was sick, it felt like I should have chosen the community college a town over, and saved money and time. One thing was for sure, though, I was not going to drop out. Not for her, not for finances, not for anything. I needed to be there, now more than ever, and this didn't really feel like home anymore, anyway.

Mom getting sick had made me angry. Angry with myself for moving away, angry with sickness for entering her body, but most of all, I was angry with her. I knew it was irrational, but this was so on brand for her - needing me the moment I finally got freedom. She had always orchestrated my life to fit her desires for it, and while that is fine when you are eight, it is not so fine when you’re eighteen. Losing dad when I was six was really hard on her, I get that, but since he passed, she had been suffocating - not that I really remember what she was like when he was around, but I know it wasn’t like this. I had to be exactly who she wanted me to be, and I felt guilty about it, but I was kind of glad she was sick. Now she would finally have something to focus on other than her only child.

I made my way into the hospital around ten am, knowing she wouldn’t be awake yet, so that I could talk to the nurses alone. She got anxious when I asked them questions when she could hear their answers. She told me that it put bad energy into the universe and that she didn’t need any more of that while she was trying to heal. I think it was more that she didn’t want to hear that she wasn’t getting better and that she only had a couple months left. Which I guess I can get. She cannot control me from wherever she is going. To this day, I feel guilty for these feelings, but she has been so controlling and so unkind for so many years, I was just ready for a break.

Before she got sick, she talked to me about how much I was like my father, and how much she loved that about me. It almost felt like she was trying to get me to live the life that he lost. She pushed my into running track in high school; just like dad, and playing the tuba in band; just like dad, and listening to the same (really crappy) music that my dad listened to. I hated it. All of it. I couldn’t understand why she wanted me to be him so badly, or why she pretended like it was what I wanted rather than what she wanted. When she was really sad, which was most of the time, she would verbally berate me about not living up to the standards that she had set for me and make me practice until my lips bled and my legs ached. I was the best in my class at just about everything, but that wasn’t enough for her - I had to be the best at the things my dad had been good at. She was obsessed with him and me filling his role as I got older.

When I told her where I was going to go for college, she was livid. My dad didn’t go to college there, why did I think that was going to be an okay choice? She had talked moving us to the college town of the university that my dad had graduated from, as soon as I graduated, and she had started showing me houses on Zillow that she was going to get us so that I could just live at home. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t want that. She felt so big and overbearing, even though I had, at least six inches on her.

But then, standing in the hospital room, seeing her hooked up to all these machines, she seemed so small and helpless. I felt almost maternal toward her; like I needed to protect her from what she was going through. When did the child become the parent? I sat down next to her, the room filled silence, where the beeps of all the machines had been. I knew. Before the nurse even found her, I knew. There was no panic, no attempt at resuscitation, just peace. Finally peace.