Happy (Bittersweet) Thanksgiving!
My mom died 24 years ago on the 24th (today). That year it was two days before Thanksgiving, but yeah.
I miss her. But I have a new thought about it at this moment, all these years past the deep, early grief, which is that my life has in many ways been [insert word here that means ‘greatly influenced’, but maybe with some nuance that indicates the complexity of that influence] by her presence, not her absence. And let me be very clear about this: she was often absent even when she was alive, and I don’t mean that metaphorically, I mean she traveled for long stretches of times, months and years, and yes I have abandonment issues up the wazoo, whatever, not my point here. Because what I want to note here is that her presence was so oversized, she was extra before extra was a thing, she was always in the room with me no matter what. (So yes, sometimes, AWKWARD, Mom.) I have more beef with not speaking honestly about the dead than I do speaking ill of the dead, and she was a complicated person with whom I had a complicated relationship.
And I guess I want to say this too, by way of gratitude: to a great extent I have somehow found the way to the life I want because of her. If you’re new here, she was an opera singer, driven by her ambition, and to put it very simply, part of why she directed me away from being an artist was because it was hard. So I tried to be anything else, which was all kinds of miserable, and I did what I wanted anyway, I guess I’m a rebel like that, just like she did. She didn’t live to see me make my work and put it out into the world. But I think, I think, she’d be proud.