forgotten file
Every year, right after Christmas, I invariably feel the need to clean something out. Maybe it's the overwhelm of the mess; the pine needles littering the floor, wrapping paper and fabric gift bags in crumpled piles, new books that need a space on the already crammed bookshelf.
This year I started in the homeschool cabinet. Space is tight in this little farmhouse. The children, instructed to clean off the dining table (a French-country style beast that doubles [triples?] as a schoolroom, craft area, and my office), shove piles of papers and workbooks into any cabinet that has space.
The homeschool cupboard cleanout turned into the printer cabinet cleanout, and finally, the broken plastic file box full of stacks and stacks of obsolete paperwork: tax returns from 2009-14, unused checks from three moves ago, creased birth certificates, incomplete immunization records, the stuffed folders of two divorces, and a manilla folder of my nursing school and licensing paperwork.
That's where I found this photo.
Me, flanked by my parents. Both of them. The first time since I graduated from high school.
I'd just graduated, Valedictorian of my nursing school class.
I wore a vintage-style poplin shirtdress under my white lab coat, and too-high 3 and a half-inch black patent Steve Madden heels - a poor choice. Terribly clumsy to begin, I was terrified I was going to fall during the ten steps between my seat and the wooden podium I was about to speak at. I didn't.
Standing at the mic, I could see my family a few rows back - my husband, children, mom, dad, grandparents. My husband was whooping, my kids jumping up and down, my dad doing that high-pitch whistle you do with your fingers, my mom clapping, crying.
I was 33 years old.
This photo was probably the last time I saw my mom sober, and probably only because there was no alcohol available.
2 years after this was taken, I'd be divorced.
A year after that, I'd have another baby. A year after that, another.
10 years after this was taken, my dad would disown me on Facebook,
4 years after that, my mom would be dead - two handles of vodka too much for her frail frame.
The thing that struck me the most about this photo, besides the fact that I forgot I’d had braces then, was how frightened my mom looks.
Her eyes are bloodshot, maybe from booze, maybe tears. Her front teeth still have the telltale gap she was so known for. This was a year or two before she had all of her teeth pulled, gums eroded from cigarettes and booze, replaced by bright white dentures that made her look like a different person altogether.
She was still dyeing her hair then - Clairol Nice'n Easy, shade 4R, dark auburn. She loved turtlenecks. The summer I turned 15, I got caught with a hickey on my neck, she made me wear a turtleneck until it was gone. It was 107 degrees.
I don’t think anyone wants to be an addict. I’m sure my mom didn’t want to be an addict. She just didn’t know how to be anything else.
The glass best foods mayonnaise jar you see in this photo is full of what’s left of my mom.
My mom’s remains arrived via USPS express mail (signature required), HUMAN REMAINS stamped in red all over the outside of the box.
Linda, the daughter of the man who owned the mortuary my mom was cremated at, asked me if I wanted an urn, part of the package, I guess. Then told me I should just buy something at hobby lobby, “much cheaper, really just fine for what it needs to do.”
I said no, I didn’t need an urn. I figured I’d scatter her in the garden, plant sunflowers on top of her (her favorite flower).
My mom’s remains arrived via USPS express mail (signature required), HUMAN REMAINS stamped in red all over the outside of the box.
She was in a plastic bag held closed by a blue twist tie.
Something they don’t tell you about HUMAN REMAINS is that pieces of the human remain. Bones too big to burn all the way. There’s no way to describe it really, other than to say it’s chunky.
Holding that bag, what was left of my mother, in the front seat of my minivan, I just couldn’t yet bear the idea of tossing her into the dirt.
I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. She loved mayonnaise so much. It was the logical conclusion.
If you’d told me when this photo was taken that 14 years later I’d be sitting at a monstrous dining table just east of Austin, Texas and my mom would be on my bookshelf (self-help + spirituality section) in a mayonnaise jar, I’d have called you a liar.
My compassion for my mother has expanded over the years.
She did her best. It was a really terrible job, but it was her best.
For most of my life, I wished she could get better. I wished she could be a mother for me - loving and gentle, soft and empathetic, someone you could call when you had no one else to call.
She just couldn’t be that person. Even if she could have shaken the alcoholism, treated the mental illness, the shame of her mistakes was much more difficult to bear.
Seeing her in this photo, I remember her brown eyes, just like mine. Her thin eyebrows, still sparse from the over-plucking of the 60s. The little nick from her right ear, a matching puzzle piece to the point on mine. Her genuine smile and her forced one. The way she laughed, loud and bold. The eyeshadow she wore — usually L’oreal, always shades of brown. Waxy-smelling, Colour Riche lipstick in number 762, Divine Wine. The men’s button-fly 501 jeans she always wore. The smell of Marlboro light 100s, of tequila and Budweiser, on her breath.
Her addiction killed her but her shame took her life.