One Year

What do you call the anniversary of a death?

An "un" - iversary, perhaps?

I don't know, but I can tell you it's been a year since my mom passed away in a fire. 

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I miss you, Mom. Still. I suspect I always will.

I started missing you long before you died, of course. We had those years apart, and then when we reset our relationship there was a lot withheld, mostly but not entirely on your side.

I understand that, now. Sort of. I've always wanted to be close to the people I'm close to, but we weren't close at all there, for a while, were we?
It started when I left home, didn't it? I was one confused teenager. I wanted independence, like any other teenager of that era....but I wasn't ready for it and I knew I wasn't ready for it. I'm not blaming anyone for this, least of all you...I had lessons to learn that I never could have learned at home.
I tell myself that my rootlessness, my obliviousness to any imagined future, stemmed from what seemed like near-constant moving around when I was a kid. I might well be wrong, there, but I don't think so. It's hard to feel stable when house-hunting starts the Sunday after moving day, you know? I wrote in this blog's distant progenitor -- my diary for 1988 -- that I felt like I was strapped to the nosecone of a guided missile whose guidance systems were seriously out of whack." That dichotomy -- unable to deviate from a course that didn't seem to be a course at all -- defined me from age 9-19. And when it came time to chart my own course...I can't say as I had the slightest idea how to do that.  Which meant, basically, that I did my best imitation of a balloon with a little hole and a lot of air in it: pppzzzzbbbbpppbbbzzzzt.
It was Eva that picked me up off the ground when the air had finally leaked out. You two circled around each other warily for a bit, but I know with a conviction borne of absolute certainty that you came to love my wife very much.  I know this because no matter how iffy your mind got towards the end, you always remembered her name.

That mental and physical deterioration...was another thing that came between us, like a gauzy curtain that added layers over time until it was nearly opaque. You didn't want me to see you. I get that, Mom, I really do. At the same time, you raised me to look past physical appearance...to discount mental acuity...and to see into someone's heart and soul. I wanted to see you, Mom, but not to look at you. Just to be with you. I didn't get to do that near enough and it still hurts. You had your reasons -- your reasons, as they always did, make logical sense...but mom, screw logic, this is the logic of the nerve endings.

I miss you.

The year since you passed has been...tumultuous. You must be happy to know I'm back on days. Eva's had ups and downs as well, but we're managing.

I never outed myself to you directly, Mom. Mostly because it was easier not to hit you with something you may have found incomprehensible, when there were an increasing number of days you found everything incomprehensible. I've been told my blogs on abundant love never reached your ears. I suspect that owes as much to the mindset of the messenger as anything else. Be that as it may, I'm convinced you can see into me, now, even better than I'm told I see into others, and you know my motives are pure. I was just telling one of my loves about you today...I think you'd love her, Mom. I really do.

Our family remains fragmented, Mom. Too many walls, many of which have been heavily fortified over decades. Every once in a while I will poke my head over one wall or another. I rarely, if ever, see anyone else do the same. There comes a point when further effort seems pointless. Maybe this was my lifetime to experience a family in tatters, I can't say. I can say this:

I feel close to you today, and on many days since you changed your state of being. And that, Mom, is what matters.

I love you. Still. And always will.

Your son,

Ken(ny)