The day my Mother died |
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The day my Mother died was what seemed any other normal day.I did what I do, and thats be a mom, and manage our tattoo shop. My mom was not a conventional mom by any means, and what I mean by this is well she wasn't much of a mother at all.There was a line that she crossed I can remember as far back as five.She never treated me like a child,but more like her friend.I am sure now as an adult that my mother was unstable mentally.What normal women teaches her five year old daughter how to roll a joint,and then put her on display for her friends like a party trick?Yay thats what I thought! I was so jealous as a child of all my "normal" friends.I wanted a mom who took me for picnics, and put me on team sports.Instead I got to see the east coast complements of what ever correctional facility my step-father was in. I was three years old when she married him.I can still remember her telling me she was going to marry him like it was yesterday.I was sitting in the bedroom we shared because we lived with my gram.She says"you know how I have been writing that man in prison?" I was thinking WTF? I am sure thats really what I was thinking."We are going to get married, and he is going to be your new daddy!" Oh,yippy! My new Daddy,I don't even have an old Daddy? This was the begining of the end for life as I knew it. Through out the next fifteen years my mother managed to end up in prison on, and off,find the darkest sides of addiction,and leave my grandmother to raise me.If she was alive till this day would argue this fact.Lets remember here I was the sober one,and do not have a selective memory. I moved out three days after I graduated high school.My mother had at this point already moved out two years prior to move in with my "newest step daddy" If it wasn't for Gwen I would have never finished high school.She was, and still is my best friend, and we had plans to take over the world. I took a one year break to follow the grateful dead, and then was off to frisco to start college.The day I was leaving she called me collect from prison yet once again crying"How can you do this,how can you leave your gram,whose going to take care of her while I'm here?" Was she fucking kidding me? I say "That is your job,she is your mother,and I love her,but I am going to college!" How dare she still put all her shit on me. I called my gram everyday I loved her with all my heart.If it was not for that women I would have ended up in the system,and believe me children,and youth tried a few times. I spent the next few years finishing school.I then came home. My mother started getting sick about 7 years ago.I am surprised I don't know the exact date,because from this point on some how she managed to make me feel like it was my fault??? I am not the one who starved themselves to be skinny,or used drugs for years on end.This is why she became so sick. I really tried to be there as much as I could,but I was so angry.It was always my turn to take care of her. I wanted to walk away so many times, and never speak to her again,but I couldn't.She was my mother.The only mother I would ever have, and I believe she mothered me the only way she knew how. The day she died I knew she died.When they called me I remember feeling relieved,and crying not because she was gone,but because she was done punishing me for things beyond my control! After all this being said, and done she was still my mommy.I loved her, and have come to terms with all the shit I was put through as a child. I wish I could talk to her one last time,kiss her cheek ,and tell her I love her no matter how fucked up she was.At the end of the day we all do the best we know how to do it.   
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