Painting by author
So what happened after Mom’s death?
I guess I expected that, like after Dad’s death, I would feel relief…or maybe more correctly, peace and serenity, given how it all ended.
While his aftermath was the relief of a threat finally extinguished, hers was the completion of caregiving done honorably. Though we parted with many unresolved things, I felt such peace at her transformation at the end…a kind of redemption from the rest of her life.
So I expected something more like: “It is done.” With both parents gone, and it being the end of that whole era, I should be able to “get over it,” “move on,” and “leave the past behind.” All those things people say, as if just the fact it is finally done means it is “over.” But nothing was further from the truth.
Instead, there was an intense explosion of a whole mess of emotions, ranging from love and grief, compassion and confusion, to anger, disappointment, abandonment, and back again to grief.
Splattering the canvas
Choking on it all, I pulled out my paints and tried to capture what my insides were feeling. Color splattered out onto the canvas, nothing like my usual style, and certainly not mild pastel hues. There were light areas, but they were shoved into the background, almost obliterated by the hot, raging sorrow that filled my heart.
I was caught totally by surprise. Where was all of this coming from? What was it really about? And where had it been all those years while caring for Mom?
The dam bursts
It was at that moment I realized that the other side of caregiving is not necessarily a satisfied peace for a job done well, or relief for a job I could finally shed, but instead, the cracking open of a dam I didn’t even know was there. And that dam was holding back the millions of gallons of toxic waste from my past, toxic waste that was now a torrent of fury barrelling down the hillside and leveling anything in its path.
Mixed with that past poison was the primal anguish of: “Mommy was gone.” It doesn’t matter how old you are, Mommy is primal. And whatever she had been or not been, she was gone…and what did that mean now?
So the end of this certainly didn’t mean it was over. As the poet said, it was just beginning.
Tags: abuse, anguish, family, grief, life, loss, love, sorrow, unresolved-issues
Soul Mosaic 
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