The death of my mother

I've been asked many times to write my story out. The more  I consider the writing of a story at all, the more I want, also, to tell the story of those before me.

I will start small, with one story.

I was 20 years old when I got the call that my mother died. I was sitting in a Friday's parking lot. I had no contact with anyone in my family besides my mother and father, so when I saw my cousin's number pop up, I was confused. I answered immediately. Christina, my age, was asked to call and tell me. Other family members didn't want to speak to me, so they called her, to call me.

She said, "Remy? Hey..uh I have news."
"Okay, what's up T?"
"Aunt Terry's dead. They found her this morning."

I don't remember much about the rest of the night. The next day I woke up and drove to her trailer. The one she had asked me to move into with her not a month before this conversation. I walked in and looked around, seeing that my grandparents had come and taken everything electronic, or remotely valuable. Disgusted, I cleaned up the bed she died in. On the way out, I deleted her contact information from my telephone. I called and handled all the bills that needed cancelling, transferring , etc.

I called my uncle and grandparents. They told me, "Her will said you get everything. She wants to be burned. She said no funeral. Just forget I ever existed, was what she wrote." I drove to my grandparent's house a few days later. I was greeted by a terse 'hello'. A weighty, white box, containing the incinerated life of my mother inside was shoved into my hands by my grandmother. I wrote a check for her being burned. It was about 800 dollars. I looked around to see the two television's my mother had bought for the bedroom and living room a couple months prior set up in my grandparent's home. I asked for those, and everything else they collected. They said, "This shit is all you care about. You obviously didn't care about her. I bet you wanted her to die." I looked my step grandfather squarely in the face and politely told him to unplug the televisions, reminding him of her will. They demanded to keep the larger of the two. In the end, I left with the large television. The one my mother was watching when she died, her only entertainment. It had cigarette burns on the remote. It had been soaked with spilled drinks and smelled of vodka. Burn and alcohol, I recognized it as the smell of mom.

I told them I didn't want the ashes. No one reached out to see if I was alright. I called a lawyer, as my mother had told me to when she passed, to get the insurance policy.

I had no idea how to do this-no family, and I had lost the only person I was close to. She was burnt, laying in my backseat. I wouldn't touch those ashes for another 6 months. They sat in the back of my car, eerily heavy, covered, but omnipresent.

To be continued...

Cub

Ice

Slippery wet under paws made of warm flesh

Balancing weight from foot to foot.

All the while holding a cub, like a flame in tumult

Amongst fur

Weight shifting

Wishing from within to burst forth and become a part

Of the white epitaph all around

Both singular and universal

I tread

Holding still to light

As cracks break beneath me

 I fall

The flame left to tread the froth unkempt,

Untamed

Carefully

Spread out to match weight with a world of ice 

alone

Love-

Feeling motivated enough to write for the first time in a long time. There has been a lot of pain surrounding writing for quite some time. I digress.

I would like to write on love.

Not the metaphorical kind we all strive for dishonestly, either.
Love; the kind that comes up when we are at our most hateful.
The kind that pulls you,lazy-eyed from your mattress
as you hear a scream in the night from a neighbors home.
Readied for action at the next sound.
You heard the fear.

Love came to call.

Sometimes love shows up right on the tails of hate
That's how you know it's real.

Real love isn't rose-colored and beautiful
It's a dull ache for humanity that can
cripple the dull and castrate the passionate.

I give you more examples to illustrate just what I speak of here:

Love is what you find when your partner is desperately crying
you've said something that demolished their spirit
Filled with anger and remorseless hatred
(really, you're just hurt.)
You put it all aside and grasp the hand
that you might rather slap away.
Love is mercy when none is asked 

Love binds you to feel the pain others experience
When you would rather block it out.
It's expressly individual and universal.

A riddle unto itself.

It takes accepting authenticity in oneself and in the other
(be it whomever) to love truly.
Vying to love parts is to lust for wholeness in oneself.

Love is true and complete and we all share it.

I'm Okay.

When you say that you are okay
Is that a code for blind
Okay and blind are not the same thing sir

You see a man that is okay
Is a man that has faced down
unokay okayness
and bitch slapped it

He's faced down the demons
of both manic and depressive life forces
He's okay to be
fine. Alright. unfettered.

You are a blind man
Not like you can't see
But that you won't

You put out your own eyes
to screw on spiritual ones
that don't allow you to look inward
and see all the dark crevices
where okay hasn't made a home
It never will when blind eyes seek past it

I think the only thing you have seen
in a good long time
is your own self-righteousness
Self-hatred...
but interestingly,
no self.

So you can tell me you're okay
I'll tell you I'm okay
like I am supposed to
But until you lay down your disabilities
and turn seeing eyes upon them
it won't all be okay.

I'm a failure

I wanted to say that I tried
I didn't try
I really wanted to create a list of all
my overachieving achievements
But I didn't really achive
and I'm too lazy to make lists.

Success stories are boring anyway
Specially in the good ol USA.
I think I should be a failure story instead

I failed at being a poor
stupid girl.
I also failed at getting pregnant
I failed at getting abortions and bitching
about how The Man
Don't pay my birth control pills.

I failed at being submissive and soft spoken
I really failed at finding a man
who wants a woman who is his
equal
or his greater
.... whichever.

I failed at subdoing my ego, my intellect,
my intuitions, my ideas, my love

Eventually I failed at living in reality.
I failed at being a normal girl and instead
opted to be an open book.
Or series rather.

A couple chapters of a thousand page
fantasy novel
and you may get the idea.

In some ways people think these
equate to
success.

"They are stories of a woman who conquers adversity. "

I would challenge you to see
that these are still losses
of an identity
Of a lifetime
Of a search
I really wanted to succeed at, in some parcel of myself. 

Bread hunt

I know I want to hand you
A silver platter
with delicacies

With delicate arms.

The platter is lost, somehow.
I could have sworn I paced in the cubbard
Oh right, right behind all your things.
I can't dig through memories to hand
another thing to you.

I can't riffle through my 'things'
to organize yours.
I can-
I won't.

The delicacies are lost on your pallet

You couldn't smell the roses if I had you in a room of coffee beans
for a thousand years
and handed you the first flower of spring
You would smell a bread factory instead.

Your sustenance would always come before beauty.

puzzles

Impervious to bullshit
I got your voice on high
Turn down the airs ways
turn up the oxides

Your skin is melting
but I'm flying high

Did you see the sea arising
or did you find your spindle
prick the finger
and loose your fucking mind

Imperceptive of the essence
I heard your steps before you thought
I counted your heartbeats
to know how many a minute
to stop

I made sure it was sewn together
every line written to fight

I made sure all the pieces fit
I put it back in line.