JOURNAL, Wednesday, April 24th

The world breaks everyone, and afterward
Many are strong at the broken places. (Ernest Hemingway)

Well, that’s it then.

I’ve just reread the last letter to Jean: seventeen years summed up in eight or nine pages – wasted years that needed to be borne to get from there to here. When I mentioned this to Jean, she says not to judge those years too harshly, that there was healing going on under the surface, years of preparation for the work of the past few months.

Q: How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: One, but the light bulb has to really want to change.

I didn’t know it when I stumbled, figuratively speaking, into Jean’s office and her care seven months ago, but I did want to change – and I was ready for it. What called me to her? How did I know that I was ready?

Whatever. . . – as the kids say when we ask them a redundant question, or questions without answers. The origin of the change isn’t so important as the need to stay on course. I can continue to feel valuable, and strong, and peaceful. Now I have tools and new memories of healing to sustain me.

So much has passed between us, I’m surprised at what I didn’t tell Jean of the years after Claire’s death: the events that added to the confusion and made me close in further upon myself. The Protector in me is still in full command of what I share with others. I show the letters that I write to Jean, Sophie and Danny, the people I trust, but I’d never show these, my journal pages, to anyone. Here my Protector allows me to look at those events that stand behind the deeper levels of pain.

Here I can remember the shock and revulsion I felt when I heard of Dale’s diagnosis – Did any young, gay men survive the eighties and nineties? His dreams, so firmly within his grasp when he left Vancouver for the National Theatre School in Montreal after High School, were as crushed and mangled as his body was by AIDS. Dale – the most beautifully dazzling butterfly of all - flew right into the bug light. I’m so ashamed of how I couldn’t bring myself to visit him in his last few months. Where was my so-called courage then when he lay dying in the arms of such a monstrous disease?

Here in this journal I can also feel the horror of the last time I saw Ariel. She had arrived unexpectedly and waited for me on the sidewalk in front of my High School. It was a beautiful day in late spring with nature in full explosion, and she stood there, dark, like some menacing specter come to claim me once more. I know how a cat feels when she arches her back and extends her claws in a defensive posture. I too bristled – a reflex action in response to threatening stimulus.

“Hello, Starla,” she said. It occurred to me that until then, I’d never heard her speak my name; we were always just “the kids”, Claire and I.

“What do you want?” I asked, my tone cool and even. I’d worked hard on even tones.

I remember noticing that she’d let her hair grow a bit and the dark and silver waves did much to soften the lines and angles of her face, which had aged.

“It’s your mom,” she said. “She asked me to come and see you. She’s been looking forward to coming to your graduation next week – planning it for months now…” She hesitated a moment, looking away from me and down to the ground.

I was stunned – What did this mean? Who had invited her? Who wanted her?
No. She couldn’t come and spoil my day. NO!

“You’re mom’s in the hospital again. That’s why she can’t come next week.”

You’re bloody right, she can’t come! I wanted to scream at her. But then I saw, through the shield of my fury, Ariel’s eyes, so tired, almost defeated. And I realized that she had used a softer tone than I had ever heard from her, asking for understanding – probably not forgiveness.

“What’s wrong with her, anyway?” I shot back, knowing the answer.

“They’re having to rework her meds; she’d been doing so well with the Lithium, it really saved her life. But now it’s not working as well as it used to…Maybe it’s her hormones. I don’t know.”

And though I wanted to spit on her and slap her face, at that moment I could see that Ariel loved mom. She worried about her and had stood by her.

We had heard stories, Bill and I, of how Ariel had called the police and an ambulance one night when they were visiting friends in Victoria and mom flipped out, grabbing a kitchen knife, threatening to cut herself. She had finally stepped over the line where help was inevitable. Ariel cared enough for her to wrestle with her madness and her petulance all these years. The diagnosis of manic depression or bi-polar illness came as no shock, but for me it carried with it a toxic mixture of relief and terror – relief that it had a name, terror that it might someday become my name.

But on the sidewalk in front of the school that day I just wanted to get away from Ariel and all the memories that she brought with her. I turned and started to walk away from her, fast and urgent. “She loves you very much,” Ariel called after me, following behind as I threaded my way along the busy sidewalk. “She misses you.”

At that I stopped dead, turned and looked full into her eyes as the passers-by flowed around us. “Fuck you,” I spat. “Fuck you, and fuck her too.” I delivered this parting phrase deliberately, seething yet holding in the full power of the explosion that I wanted to unleash: “I don’t ever want to see either of you again – Leave me alone.” I turned my back on her and left, determined never to look back again, not at Ariel, not at the times when my mother played a role in my life.

But much as I’ve wanted to excise my mother from my memory, she haunts me – yes, haunt is the right word, like a spirit that lives its life on the edge of my consciousness, close enough to make its presence felt yet just out of sight, so the presence is always a surprise when it shows itself. And I’ve still no idea what to do with her.

Today Joan came to visit the school with her new baby; I remember how tired and immense she looked at the shower we had for her last fall. Now here she is with her four-month old baby, looking so peaceful and happy that they can spend some time together, just the two of them, before she picks up her other kids from school. I marvel at the power of a baby – or a puppy or a kitten, for that matter – to call forth tenderness and awe from the crustiest among us. Her students surround her in the hall, they want to touch the baby’s fingers, brush his chubby cheek. And I have a flash of mom – whole and happy – playing with Claire on her lap when Claire was this age. And my heart melts at the memory, and once again I ask sadly: what am I to do with my mother?

I can’t love her; I will never trust her; I want to ignore her but her memory will not be ignored.

I swear my life has a musical soundtrack that pops in now and then, to emphasize or punctuate something that I’ve been thinking about: on the Oldies station the other day, they played Boy George singing his old hit: “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?…Do you really want to make me cry?” … And I realized that, once again, just like in the old days, George had something to say to me: No, mom didn’t want to hurt me – most of the time she probably didn’t even know that I was part of her world.

Is it forgiveness that I’m supposed to offer her? What would forgiveness bring to a relationship where it has never been sought? Does she even recognize that there might be something in our history that requires forgiveness?

If not forgiveness, then perhaps release is what I’m seeking – release for both of us. I would like to have the power to give all of those memories the freedom to allow “mom” to simply become “Sarah.”

Sarah would no longer be the mother who wasn’t there for me, or who was there to hurt me. I want to release her from all the expectations that were left unfulfilled, and all the responsibilities left untended. I want to remember Sarah.

Sarah – wounded, gifted, broken, complex.

Sarah – bewildered at the enormity of the waves in her emotional sea.

Sarah – who was so immersed in her negotiations with life that she never thought that others might need her to help steer their own ships.

And in that release, I pray that we might both find peace.

Meanwhile, I listen to Danny getting ready for bed: the comforting sounds as he turns down the blankets, my side as well as his. I hear him brushing his teeth, then talking softly to Pussywillow as he takes her from the bed for a little nuzzle before he puts her on the floor, and I realize how much of Sarah’s life was stolen from her; all the small pleasures of giving and receiving were taken away by her urgent need to devour, or be devoured by life.

And in complete peace and assurance, I go to bed this night knowing that her life will not be my life.

Daylight falls upon the path, the forest falls behind.
Today I’m not prey to dark uncertainty. (“I Think I Understand.” Joni Mitchell)


Copyright 2003