My Maria

T Minus 7 Days and Counting.

I don’t know what it is about October, but since my Mom’s death a year ago, it has brought immense change in my life. This year the month marks the terminus of 15+ years of fear. My Dad is leaving for Mexico on Friday and will return with his other family in tow. The fact that the whole process has been delayed to coincide with the anniversary of my Mom’s death is karmic, the fact that my Dad’s arrival in Mexico and my Mom’s deathversary happen on Yom Kippur is poetic.

I’ve been dreading this moment for the entirety of the lives of these other children. I think I dreaded it more for the fact of what it would mean for my family than for any other reason. I had imagined it happening amidst the haze of mourning for my father. Would we allow this extra family to mourn their vacation Daddy? Would that force our hand in having to tell Emily about the whole ugly situation? How would she react? She just lost her Father and now she has to find out that he was an adulterer with extra children? Would this woman fight my Mom for an inheritance? I always knew Emily would learn the truth over someone’s dead body, never once did I think it would be my Mom’s. So in a way, everything I dreaded has already happened. Now I dread what I could never see coming, a world without my Mom and the tables turned on us. Do we have to fight for an inheritance now? This woman and her children, as much as my Dad denies it, are coming to take our place as First Family. He’s going to marry the woman and move in with them. He plans on splitting his time between households for the sake of Emily, but is he just kidding himself?

The audacity of their existence has always wounded me, but the chorus of “It’s not their fault” always stung more. People forget that I have just as little fault in the situation but expect me to be the bigger person because I was born before them. That’s beyond unfair. My only salvation is that I have decided to stop fighting it and accept the inevitability of their coming. This past year of mourning my Mom has taught me a lot in accepting what I cannot change and changing the way I let it affect me. I no longer care if this family replaces me in the eyes of my father, as much as he swears that we are loved and cared for equally. I refuse to feel hurt on behalf of my Mother. She is removed from the situation and all hurt feelings, I can’t do it for her anymore. I hope the rest of my family comes to that conclusion for their own sakes. This other family has no place in my life. I do not wish ill on my Dad. If this is going to make him happy, God bless. All that concerns me is Emily’s well being. I won’t lie and say that I’m not worried about the future.

I have a lot of scenarios in my head about how the next year will play out. Most of them are negative, but one thing is for sure, I can no longer deny that these children exist. So what is there left to dread? The snake already woke up and bit us in the ass the way I knew it would. I sucked the poison out of the wound and let it go. We’re still here. I’ll continue to be here until I’m not.

My birthday is next friday. What if we had exit interviews every time we had a birthday, as if each year we were being promoted and HR had to interview us as a formality.

HR: If you could sum up “32” in one word, what would it be?

Me: Sucked.

HR: What are you looking forward to in “33”?

Me: Well, my Mom’s not going to die this year, so it already has that going for it.

sick

sometimes I get so sad that I want to vomit. I’m just not a fan of this reality. 

Papers

I decided to finally clean off my desk, which meant the time had come for me to go through my Mom’s papers and the bag she was carrying the day before she died. 

Seeing her handwriting kills me every time. She had the best handwriting. She hated it and loved mine, so I guess we had that in common. I’ve decided to keep anything with her handwriting on it. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but there isn’t more where it came from, so I need to hoard it for now.

I wasn’t surprised that most of the papers were printed pages from her online calendar, she was notorious for doing that. I lost it when I found the page for the week she died. She was supposed to work a football game that night. Then I came to a brown paper bag from Kinkos. Inside was a small sampling of the tickets she had printed for a fundraiser dinner for my sister’s soccer team. Stuck between the sheets was a receipt. It was dated 10/7/10 just before 10pm. She called me at 10:30 to check on me and that was the last time I spoke to my Mom. 

I stuck the kinkos receipt on my fridge to remind me that my Mom lived for her kids up to the last minute. The last thing she ever did for me was make sure I was safe. I miss those calls the most.

Destiny’s Orphan

I was just thinking about life and how intricate it is. I know I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, but it makes me sad that it couldn’t be a reality that included my Mom.

I was driving around town yesterday and it’s amazing that I have a memory attached to every nook and bump of it because I walked it all. They’re memories based in a time where I had my Mom. Fresh memories that were only created a year ago. And life is now completely different.

A couple of weeks before my Mom died I remember sitting in a crowd and looking for my Mom and marveling at the power of recognition. Being so familiar with a face that you could scan an entire mob of people and lock your gaze the instant you found her. 

Remember when…

All those times that you would make me let you kiss me on the cheek. I would always fake that I didn’t want them, but I secretly liked it when you did. I just couldn’t let anyone know.

I think you always knew that.

-Gina

Fear and Loafing in San Pedro

I’m scrrrd. Mostly of leaving my sister without a cheap knock off of a mother. Apparently she’s scared of that too. At least she stopped saying “Don’t die” whenever we hugged goodbye. Damn, mourning is a mind fuck and a half. One second I’m fine, the next I’m inconsolable, or terrified, or anxious. My future is up in the air. The future that I just said feels oddly shorter than my past.

I tried to work according to plan today, 1 hr working on my tour script, 1 hr on my $$ ideas. Instead a friend of mine, who I’m trying to recruit to do the tours with me, walked in to starbucks and we talked for over an hour. I guess that counts as working, but not really if I can’t convince her to join me. Aren’t the self employed supposed to work tirelessly for themselves? I feel like such a loafer sometimes. The three weeks I was sick I indulged myself by sleeping til 10. Who am I, a teenager on summer break? I could barely tear myself away from my pillow by 8 this morning. It kinda sucks that I work for such a giant pushover, the kind that makes excuses as to why you’re not going to work out today, but Tuesday thru Thursday. I’m like the Wimpy of workouts- I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

Go ahead feel sorry for yourself

There was a trunk show at the Corner Store where me and my Sunday girls meet. Kelley Hart was selling her homemade clothes and super cute/awesomely delicious cookies. Coco pointed out that Kelley offered a cookie gram for Valentine’s Day and that she wanted to send one to her Mom. Thalia chimed in about how she should send her Mom one since she already received a card from her. Then Cherie remarked about how sending her Mom one wouldn’t be a good idea because her mom is diabetic. You know what, I get it, people still have Moms and I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t want people to tip toe around me or never mention their mothers around me again. It was just a slow realization for me this afternoon. I didn’t even think anything of it when Coco talked about sending her Mom a cookie gram, when Thalia said she should send her own Mom one because she felt like a bad daughter, I thought about how my Mom would LOVE a cookie gram, then when Cherie mentioned the diabetes I just felt like shit. It was like, “oh how nice of you to think of your Mom like that Coco, of course your Mom would love one too Thalia, my Mom would’ve loved it too, aww I miss Mom, what is that Cherie? Your Mom is diabetic? So was mine, that’s why she died. Wah!” So yah, I felt bad about myself for a minute.

It doesn’t take much for me to realize that I miss my Mom. I fucking miss my Mom. But at the same time, I still get shocked about the fact that she’s gone. Not in a denial type of way but in a “I swear I just saw her” type of way. I get hints of my Mom. I want to think that my subconscious talks to her all the time. And thankfully she makes frequent visits in my dreams. Not necessarily starring roles, but she’s there, as if she never left. I was afraid that I’d never dream about her because a couple of friends told me they had either only dreamt about their lost loved ones once since their passing or they make appearances but are always just out of contact.

A lot of times when loved ones die, you say “Oh, how am I going to live without them?” I don’t know if this is because I’m still in the early stages of mourning, but I don’t really think in those terms. To me, and a few people I’ve said shared this with, feel like my Mom’s death was the beginning of the end. I don’t know if I’ll live more years without my Mom than I lived with her. I don’t feel like I have my whole life ahead of me. I don’t think I’m going to die soon either. I just don’t feel like it’s going to be that long. I don’t know. I feel different every day.