***Warning: The following contains a very personal experience that may trigger or cause others to become angry or upset. This is my trauma, my experience, and I am releasing it the only way I know how...to write.***
"Hang on, Mom," the voice whimpered. "Hang on."
It's the voice every child makes when their mother is dying. The first time I heard that voice it emerged from my own lips while I lay on a stretcher in an ambulance flying up I-15 through the Upper Missouri River canyon.
My mom lay on an identical stretcher but with braces all around her, tubes coming out of every facial orifice, and IV's crashing back and forth. Lights flashing, machines beeping and from somewhere inside me a wild animal screamed and clawed in terror trying to get to her yelling "Mom! Hang in there!!! Hang on!!! I'm here!!! Mooooooommmmm!!!"
Both my mom and brother were battered, bones crushed, organs bruised or burst...later I would be told the car rolled over my brother, my mom trapped inside with her head and left shoulder hanging outside of the car. How I walked away with nothing more than a few cuts and bruises, only the angels know that answer.
I saw my brother before the curtains were quickly pulled around him as I was wheeled at speed through the Emergency Room. He was already dead. I knew his spirit was gone from his body by the color of his face and the lifeless body being frantically cajoled and willed to come back to life by the nurses and doctors.
I wanted to die...needles were jammed into my hands and arms while curtains were pulled around me to protect me and others from the surrounding terror and horror. I was wild and uncontrollable. Sedated, I would wake a day later to confirmation my brother had died and my mom stable but in intensive care.
Adults surrounding me, unsure of what to say, what to do, calling it a miracle I survived, and a tragedy that my brother died, unsure if my mom would make it through the next few days. The angels heard my plea in that ambulance. She should have died. Her C-1 and C-2, the Atlas and Axis of the body broken, she defied every odd to live and to walk.
For years I questioned my worth and thumbed my nose at the world taking chances, risking my life, laughing in the face of death. I have seen death. We are old friends. Death has tried to come for me more than once but the angels' wings I ride upon protect me like Harry Potter's invisibility cloak gifted to him by his father.
The number of times I have considered taking my own life are too many to count. Why should I be here? What do I have to offer? Who cares if I am here or not? What is the point of this existence? For people who have never had their world completely ripped from them, they do not understand and will never understand until their world completely dissolves. More than once I have gone to sleep in one world and woken in another that I do not recognize. I am not alone. There are many of us who have lived through trauma and questioned our very existence as a result.
Guilt and shame consumed me. Shame for being the typical bratty little sister, telling on her brother for things he didn't do, to get attention and absorb as much of his attention as possible. Guilt for simply being alive.
I learned strength, courage, and perseverance from my mom. In the face of complete and utter tragedy, she persisted in her pursuit of happiness. At times it made me angry seeing her happy. How could she be happy when she lost her child? How could I be happy when I lost the one person who could ever understand our crazy family? People attempted to place blame upon her. How could they? How could a person possibly want that kind of pain and suffering to persist in the face of utter loss? I have no respect for those who find happiness in another's tragedies. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
When my daughter was born, I found purpose. This little being, so fresh, clean, and full of love, I have attempted to protect her from all that is evil in the world. This is not possible. The only thing I could do was teach her to love.
In high school, every fall, at least one, two, or three of her friends died on the roadways of Montana. In the spring, one or two would take their own lives, unable to cope with a cruel world of expectations placed on them by society and adults incapable of reflection, adjustment, or flexibility in thought.
I tried to be her strength, be her love, allowing her space, all the while terrified every time she left the house wondering if I would see her again. That laugh, that smile, that energy, that warmth, knowing full well there were kids who never returned to their homes. I still feel anxious when I see her face pop up on my phone in the fall on a weekend, wondering if another friend has been lost to the ether.
Like I said, death and I are old friends.
Today, my mom lives on the bank of the Missouri River, not far from the site where my brother's spirit left his body. She is the strongest woman I know, overcoming urges to escape her existence by numbing her mind to the thoughts that must play out over and over and over again. To know my mom is to know love. To be in her presence is to be in the presence of love.
She floats the river, every day. Most days lazily floating by a place that holds a great deal of pain. Her presence provides love to soothe that pain and thumbs her nose at death, every day.
She has a love for life that supersedes any other. She is my angel and she lived for me. For that, I will always be humbled to be her daughter.
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