The Shame of Death.

And how I wanted nothing to do with my Mom's illness even before she was dying.

While my Mom was dying all I did was feel shame.

I didn’t want to have anything to do with the situation I was thrust into. I didn’t want to have my vacation ruined by the news of her illness, though the vacation already had been reduced to hiding out in an Airbnb. Ryan and I pretending, like we always did, that I was just tired. Or needed a break. Not that, once again, our lives were reduced to staying underground because of my anxious and depressed brain.

I didn’t want to be in the hospital room with My Mom. I didn’t want to see her sick. I didn’t want to talk to her while she was her…but she wasn’t her. She would get this look of confusion on her face that reminded me of a child. I wonder how long the cancer had been eating away her brain.

At one point, when I left her phone with her, she tried to buy a car. She remembered none of it.

My Mom was, in so many ways, the closest person to me in my life. We had many many many differences, yet when I tried to engage my Mom as me, she accepted that. How did I not recognize this connection while she was alive? Or did I? Is that why I just can’t accept she is gone? I wonder…did she watch me struggle or did she see what I showed everyone else.

Did she know my despair?

I feel shame now about how I treated my Mom. Not only because I didn’t see her as person as much as I saw her as “Mom,” but because she really needed a supporting and loving daughter. She needed help. This was made more than clear to me as I cleaned out her overly soiled and neglected apartment. I knew my Mom often lived in filth, but this was on another level. A level that made me burn with shame.

Her shower, overflowing with junk and surely unusable, had a p-trap so dry the whole place smelled like sewage and musty water. There were dirty clothes piled high on every surface, unopened and opened boxes strewn on counter tops and across the floor, candy and crumbs smashed into the folds of her mattress, molding - and I put that lightly - containers and spills in her fridge, and the list goes on. As I sat among the trash and foul smells¹ I imagined my Mom living there. “Someone could not be ok and living here,” I thought at the time. I’ve never stopped thinking it.

I wonder if my Mom felt trapped. I know this feeling well. I’ve often felt trapped. In my brain. In my family. I think my Mom might have felt trapped in that apartment. I know she didn’t want to live there but she also most likely couldn’t leave. She wasn’t capable of cleaning that mess up on her own and she was probably too embarrassed to have even a stranger inside. People tell me all the time that having kids means you’ll be taken care of when you’re older²…but that wasn’t the case for my Mom, was it?

Not to say I don’t have some compassion for myself. I now understand that it’s hard to help someone who has had unspoken or untreated mental health issues their entire life, when you, yourself, have had mental health issues that have gone unspoken and untreated. Also, she was my Mom. I don’t think I was prepared to swap roles with her. To become caretaker. I don’t know that I would have ever been prepared considering my issues with attachment and the need for a safe, foundational, parental figure in my life. I’ll never know.

More than once I’ve been told that I have a soul agreement with my Mom. That before our births, when we were just souls, I agreed to join my Mom’s family. I think about this a lot. I wonder what the agreement could be for. Why am I here with this family? I obviously didn’t help my Mom, so what is it? Would she have been worse without me? Is our contract over now that she is a soul once again? Did I fail to uphold my end of the contract? Did she?

I realize part of why I am filled with shame is that I recognize my Mom loved me unconditionally like any mother should love a child. I know that doesn’t happen for all adoptees. The fact I feel shame - not guilt- is indicative though of something deeper. Something inherent in me. Something like - I don’t think I deserved the unconditional love of my second mother. Instead of feeling guilt over how I handled the situation with my Mom and learning from it, I feel deep shame in how I treated someone that I feel I didn’t deserve.

My white mother attempting to relax my hair. We had been taught by a hairstylist at a Black hair salon that operated in my hometown for a few years. When the salon closed, my Mom and I went to work on our own doing my hair. We had incredibly mixed results…mostly bad.

My Mom was obviously not perfect. Loving someone unconditionally rarely looks perfect, I imagine. But did she shove a suppository up my ass when I was 17 years old and couldn’t keep anything down³ for weeks⁴? Did she drive my brother and I from Cheyenne, WY to Atlanta, GA in a 1988 Toyota Camry for a kick-ass spring break on a budget? Did she drink rum and cokes out of a can on a bus with me in Costa Rica⁵? Did she consider me an artist before I ever did? Did she yell at some asshole teachers for me over the years when they did me dirty⁶? She did. She showed up for me, a lot.

When I think back on how I showed up for my Mom, I am instantly reminded of the time my sister, my brother-in-law, and I tried to have an intervention of sorts about what we saw as my Mom’s hoarding issues. The thing is. My Mom wasn’t a hoarder in the traditional sense. Instead, she was depressed in the absolute traditional sense. She bought things to give herself a desperately needed hit of dopamine. So the items piled up but she didn’t care about them or even think about them afterward. Our “intervention” was more of a witch hunt than a loving gesture. We didn’t understand her and we didn’t try. I spent more time vilifying my Mom’s actions than understanding them. I mean girl’d my own mother⁷.

I wish I had been the person I am now when my Ma was still alive so I could show up for her just a little more. I wish the trauma of my adoption hadn’t created such a shell of me. I am empathetic and compassionate and I don’t think I showed that to my Mom at all. At least not enough. It’s an interesting reminder that adoption doesn’t always serve the adoptive parent/family either⁸. I was too traumatized to be the daughter my Mom needed. And my (and my brother’s) presence in the home created a lot of uneasiness. Without adoption might my sister have been closer to my parents? Might my sister have been able to show up for my Mom if we hadn’t been in the picture?

It’s disingenuous to say I didn’t learn anything from this experience. I’ve learned what I want family to be and how I want to show up for people that I care for. I want to be someone who has at least moments of mental stability that allow me to provide support to others. I want to show up - how I can - and be strong for Ryan - or any of my chosen fam - if they ever find themselves on the wrong side of cancer or illness. I don’t want to feel shame and runaway or hide myself in some kind of service⁹. I don’t want to be someone who can’t share themselves deeply or only shares the parts that seem safe to share. I don’t want to so deeply fear rejection that I just never connect.

In an essay I performed earlier this year, I concluded by saying, “I am my own matriarch.” What I mean is: I want to be a powerful and positive leader of my own family. It’s been my experience that family…just…is. That no matter the effort to truly connect or support one another, “…we’re family…!” But are we? I want my family to contain effort. My Mom showed up for me - a lot - so I am taking her lead now and trying to show up too.

I will leave you with one last story. My Ma used to sew quite often. My family was poor AF so making our own clothes was something my Mom did to save money but, I think was also something she truly enjoyed. I loved her craft¹⁰ because I got one of a kind outfits and sweatshirts. I’d go to the fabric store with my Ma and she’d let me choose the fabrics or buttons and she’d make me clothes. One of my favorite outfits was a rainbow matching set¹¹ that I’d chosen crayon shaped buttons for. I was wearing this outfit on a ‘hot lunch’ day at my small Catholic school which consisted, every Friday, of a grilled cheese and tomato soup. As I carried my steaming tray to my seat, I of course dropped it and bright red soup splattered like a crime scene down the entire front of my beloved outfit.

Now I was 7 at the time and considering my ability to emotionally regulate now - I am sure you can imagine what is coming. FULL. ON. MELT. DOWN. I’m basically standing in front of everyone in the cafeteria, I am now covered in soup, and my favorite outfit is ruined. As I begin to lose my shit - which I actually can’t even remember because ya’ homie disassociates - out pops my Mom from the door to the kitchen. She would take shifts there - as a volunteer or a paid position - I don’t know, but she was there that day. My brain was already cycling through all the horrors I was going to face the rest of the day and into the future because of this incident¹² when she appeared and whisked me away.

My beloved rainbow matching set that was handmade by my mother. I chose the fabric and crayon shaped buttons myself.

I don’t remember what happened next. I know she must have helped me clean up. I know the outfit wasn’t ruined. But I don’t remember finishing my lunch or hugging or thanking my Mom. I don’t remember going back to class or going to recess after lunch. I don’t remember anything else about that day. What I do remember, is feeling better because My Mom was there. Like the moment she showed up I do remember feeling relief in the moment. I think I felt loved and safe…and I don’t remember having a lot of those moments in my life.

Thanks for that moment. Love you, Ma.

1. And lavender. My Ma had bought dried lavender and it was in a box. I opened it and spread it all over the apartment while we cleaned. It was like a gift she left for us to help. My Ma loved lavender.

2. Because I don’t have and don’t want kids…people enjoy reminding me that I will then anguish on my death bed alone and sad.

3. Stomach issues, the bane of the adoptee or foster youth existence.

4. She did.

5. Her idea!

6. Usually racist.

7. I did this in a desperate attempt to be close with my sister. And I am not even kidding. I wish I was.

8. I’ll say it again, we know it doesn’t serve the adoptee and adoption isn’t for the child!

9. I used cleaning my Mom’s apartment as a way to avoid her in the hospital. I felt like I was doing some for her so it counted. Sometimes it does count, I guess.

10. She made pound fucking puppies y’all! They were so cute. I still have one. I’ve lost my own puppy from childhood, named Licorice, over the years. All black, of course. But the one I have now used to belong to my grandmother.

11. My style has not really changed since childhood.

12. Thanks anxiety! I can still viscerally remember this incident and how my brain just spiraled.