Dear Mom,
You would be 69 today. That would be a hilarious joke, if we were all sitting around the creaky dining room table and indulging in some cuisine from a country we’re not quite sure is known for its cooking (I’ll just say Armenian, and anyone related to me will cringe).
Happy Birthday. I’d like to send you flowers, make you laugh, take you to lunch. I know I can’t, so I’ll write to you instead.
I must tell you that there’s a little girl in my life, who bears a striking resemblance to you and I. Looking at her now, as she edges closer towards her eighth birthday, I see so much of the girl you raised, who stares back in the mirror at me. And I see so many expressions that this small person, somehow, got from you. It’s a strange lilt in her voice, her determined ideas and expression of them, her arched eyebrow when I ask her a question she’s not entirely certain she wants to answer. I see you in her sadness, sometimes. When she hurts, it’s as if I see your hurt.
You used to laugh at me when I told you how I’d raise her. I said “oh but mom, I’ve read all the books and, you know, you can sleep train them!” Oh how you cackled at me. Some times, in the very early morning, I awake and remember that you used to love the early mornings with me. How you’d talk about the shadows cast and little cuddles.
To be entirely honest, I would not “cope” with you being gone, were it not for her (“cope” is a joke. Nobody ever “copes”. They just learn to live with something). She’s the constant reflection of you and dad. Yes, there’s some elements of her that sparkle of her dad. And there’s parts of her I see you, in full technicolour. She’s the reminder that I’m not some weird adult orphan, even when I feel like that on a bad day. I see you in the children you left behind, and I see a ribbon of your essence in the future to come too. I see you throughout it all.
And then there’s me. I can sum it up like this – sometimes when I open my mouth, my Mother comes out. I hear you in my own voice, every single day. I hear you in my intensity and my laugh. I hear you in my sometimes unbelievable obstinance. I see you, every day, in my very own name. I see you, sometimes, in pictures of myself. The first time that happened, it shocked me. Now, it’s a comfort far bigger than a blanket on a cold day. I can see you in my turn of phrase, as I write this.
I was asked the other day why I write. So intensely, prolifically, and determinedly. Even when my eyes can’t handle it anymore and I’ve got callouses on my fingers. You said something to me, once, when I was smaller. You said:
“You must live the day until you run out of words. Then, you sleep”.
I guess that’s why I do it. You told me to live my life, to see the world – whether it was from the top of a mountain or through my kitchen window – either way I chose would be the one for me. You told me not to compromise. When you were really sick, you just talked, to get the words out…you desperately ran through them, forgetting pace and focusing on attention.
It’s funny. When people are sick and dying, doctors and carers often tell them to calm down, to rest, to be quiet and still. Not you. You talked. Impassioned, and with purpose. When you could not talk, you’d wait for the words to form in your head and then jettison them out the moment they found their right place.
I don’t want to talk today about how sad you might be feeling, were you alive now. Looking at the world around us right now, I think you’d hurt as the Earth and all its creatures do. I’m glad you are spared of that pain. I’m glad I can think of you dancing, free. I’m glad I can think of you, with Dad, laughing. I think of you, as you are, here, in this picture.
I’m glad I can know, somewhere within me, that you’d look at my life, and finally, finally, smile.
Happy Birthday, Mom. I’ll keep writing until the words run out.