I am going to resist the urge to apologize for my long abandonment of this blog. My only excuses being that I have been extremely busy, pretty tired since I ceased taking my anti-depressants entirely, and feeling a tad stressed.
I do want to say that during the course of writing this blog it is not my intention to paint my mother out to be this horrible burden of a person. It is also not my intention to make myself out to be the wonderfully altruistic daughter by any stretch of the imagination. She has to deal with a lot of crap from me, the most recent of which being a pregnancy scare which I am sure I will talk about further in another post (no I am not pregnant).
Like most mother daughter relationships ours is a complicated one, but I do love her very very much. It has come down, via recent tests results, that the cancer is further spreading, with the next possible destination being her brain.
Of course this news is devistating to our family. I can’t imagine life without my mother and struggle to even figure out how to write about it. I think often times when I write on this blog about the petty disagreements me and my mother are having it is my means of venting/ working through stuff, but it also makes me treat our life like things are normal and we don’t have this worry painting our daily lives. But you can’t be mad at a sick person, so I am working through ways of healing and moving on and valueing the time we have left. Most recently I attempted to write a poem about it. Without lapsing too much into disclaimers this is a draft and I am sure it will go through many incarnations.
milk
your mother licked her fingertips and made you new again–
polished your rough edges
even when you, howling drunk, said things wrong.
ignore each new fissure.
must learn how to cook and make something of yourself
must stop being a love spendthrift
you, Persephone, have stranded too many people in your winter
your mother guides you with tiny hands and waits in the wings
letting you star
young and vain, you take all the credit
time has snaked around your home
must be better
must be grateful for what remains
but you already have dirt under your nails,
from the last time you tried to keep something alive.
