Why I Can't Write About My Mom Yet

          Ever since I've committed words to page on my re-discovered road to authorship, I've fallen into a compulsive loop, a variation of a theme, all focused on my father's death and the grieving process. It's become my Hamlet-esque obsession, to avenge my father's doubts about my writing abilities by making him the sole focus of my writings. It's also cheap therapy. A cathartic outpouring of love and resentment all projected onto a fictitious heroine.
     Yet, to anyone outside of my own head, it would appear that my father's death outshone my mother's. That I was closer to him, and therefore, more broken by his passing. And as much as I loved my father despite our rocky relationship. It's not the truth.
     My mother's death broke me. Except, my own impending motherhood forced me to quickly pull the pieces of my broken heart back together in whatever shape I could pound into submission. But they didn't all go back in the right order leaving cracks and misshapen ugly air pockets of suppressed breath. The kind you gasp in as you're dry-heaving on the floor while your husband holds you tight and cries with you. Yes, grieving was not a pretty experience for me. Absent were the angels and ethereal peace the Hallmark cards and well-meaning friends told me would come. Don't get me wrong, I'm Christian and believe my mother's happily in Heaven, peaceful and serene.
     But while she slipped peacefully into the arms of the Lord, a demonic spirit with a dull spoon scooped chunks out of my heart creating a vacuum for the ache to enter in. If you've ever experienced real grief, you know what I mean. After the never-ending stream of tears and snot dries up, and the reality of those awful words-"my mother's dead" have finally sunk in; a dull, pervasive ache takes over worse than the pain. A hollowing out, an absence because that's the thing that never quite goes away.
     I love my life. I love my kids. But the absence never leaves my side, sitting quietly in the background, patiently waiting for those days like Christmas, my birthday, Mother's Day, or the second Tuesday of the month when it reminds me who's not there. It picks at my brain making me feel like the shittiest person in the world as I watch a dear friend open presents at her baby shower resenting her and in turn resenting myself because she gets to sit next to her mom and share the bond of motherhood together.
     See these are only the words I've made some peace with. They barely scratch the surface of the feelings I've buried deep inside so I can operate on a day to day basis, and be the best mom I can be to my kids without my mom around to guide me and give me advice I won't heed.
     That's why I can't add her to my fiction yet. I can't fictionalize the grief or the memories without processing the reality and bringing it to the forefront of my mind. Someday, I'll get there. Then she'll flow from the pages of my books with her quirky, artsy personality dressed in her floppy Mickey Mouse hat, her rotund belly all but dwarfed by her green fanny pack, cameras, and purse.
     Someday, I'll write in the detail she deserves about how she was my best friend once I was a grown up, co-pilot of many transcontinental and international journeys, my drinking buddy, and fellow goofball. I loved her and love her still more than words can adequately describe.
     But that is why I write about my father's death. It's the one I can process for now.