Quietus made

My mother is no longer alive. She is dead. She is gone. I’ve said that her absence is glaring, and that’s true. In some ways, we’ve filled in the hole that she left, but nothing has replaced her. It’s just that the everyone around her has collapsed into that space. It’s still empty, but it’s empty somewhere else. Empty inside us instead of around us.

It’s the converse of digging in the sand. Hannah and I spent hours on the beach last summer. We moved sand. It went nowhere in particular. Every time I dug into that wet grit and scooped out a fistful, more slid in. The hole got deeper, but the process was slow. For what I removed from that space, the hole should have been narrow and deep. Instead, it was wide. It was shaped like a disc. You couldn’t miss it for the world.

That was my mother. When she was first gone, it was big and wide. Everyone could see the hole she left. Now, that hole is so far inside me that no one can see it. It’s a sneaky hole. I never forget my mother, but I forget about that hole. I fall in it too often. Lately, I’ve been stuck.

I expected to see her or hear her or feel her. I expected my imagination to make her appear. I expected her to appear in mind or in spirit, but at this point, any kind of fabrication would do. She’s not supposed to be so gone. She’s not supposed to have just stopped existing. Her body is 200 miles away, and I’m afraid that that’s all. There have been promises made to me that are not being kept. Some of them were made by you—you, the person who is reading this. Some of them were made by people who will never read this. Some were made by those who are gone and aren’t coming back.

I have two choices. I can accept that my faith means nothing, that I’ve been lied to by my friends, my family, my church, and myself, that there’s nothing in the universe but atoms and molecules and the cells they create. Or I can accept that my mother abandoned me.

I’m still going to church, still praying, and I’m thinking about joining the choir again. I still have my faith.