This is a repost of a story I did a while ago. As it wasn't too popular I decided to repost it and hope more people would read it. So I hope you enjoy it and review please :)
It was a shock, I admit that. It was ironic, I admit that too. I won't admit that it upset me because it didn't. When I found out my mother died, only 2 months away from being released from prison, I didn't cry. She lasted 20 years in that prison only to be killed by other inmate 8 weeks before she was to be released.
The phone call was brief. California State Prison didn't disclose much about my mother's death, and I'm glad they didn't because I really couldn't care less. Think of me as a selfish bitch if you must but I didn't know the woman at all. 20 years since I last spoke to her, 20 years since she was my mother, 20 years since she took away my childhood. But I'm past the stage of blaming her, she did what she did, can't change the past now.
Sitting here watching my mother's body lower into the ground makes me think. As the cheap, pine, box disappears from my view I can only imagine my own funeral to be like this is 30-40 years. Will people come to my funeral? I doubt it. I have no friends, no family. Nothing. Just like my mother.
20 years ago, on the night my whole life changed, I promised myself I would not turn out like her. I broke that promise long ago. So maybe I am not in jail for murdering my abusive husband, but I'm more like her than I am willing to admit. It's the small things I remember she did when we were a family, I now notice myself doing them too. It was funny the little quirks she had that I now do. Every night before going to bed she would scrub the kitchen clean until it was spotless. Every night she would do that without fail, and now I do too. I remember one night I was looking through some old drawers when I came across a photograph. Looking into the faded picture I was saw a woman smiling back at me, and a baby held in her arms. I would have thought that the woman would have been me, but looking at the age of the photograph and the baby I knew it wasn't, it was her. My mom. I couldn't be sure if the baby was my brother, or me but it was without a doubt my mother. The only difference was her smile, she didn't have the gap that I did, but everything else was the same, right down to the hairstyle.
Once a week she would take my brother and I down to the beach and we would sit on the sand and feel the waves surround our toes. It was usually a Sunday, the day my father would be in the house all day, so we would go to the beach to escape him. For a few hours we would be a normal family, just having fun and bonding, but it would always be short lived. If I still lived near the beach I would go every Sunday. Instead I drive to the desert. I take off my shoes and walk through the sand, with my eyes closed imagining the sound, smells and the sight of the ocean. Then I would open them, and I would be in Vegas again, away from everything. Alone. Sad.
Even my own brother wanted nothing to do with our mother even after she died. I lost touch with him after the night. It didn't take long to track him down to tell him about the funeral. The phone call was shorter than the one I received from the prison, there was not much point catching up after all this time had passed. So he didn't come. It was just me, standing alone in a deserted graveyard, grieving for a mother I didn't care was dead.
No tears were shed, no words were said. I was emotionless, a quality I learned from all the years my father abused us. It was another feature I learned from my mother, she took every punch in silence, learning from experience that if you made a sound it would only result in more hits. It wasn't long after, my father turned his attention to me. My mother's advice was just to take it in silence. But I don't hate her for that. She did what she could. Without even a high school education, no money, no job, no family- the only thing she could do was deal with it.
I went to my father's funeral 20 years ago. A lot of people turned up. I hardly knew any of them but they all looked at me and pitied me. To them, I was the grieving daddy's girl who had just been orphaned because of her evil, selfish mother. I hid my true feelings like I did the bruises covering my body. They didn't need to know our business. People cried at my father's funeral. I didn't, understandably. I didn't want to be there, but I went. I wanted to prove to myself I was not afraid of him anymore. And I'm not.
I stayed for a little while after the funeral just staring at the basic wooden cross. I didn't see the point buying an expensive, elaborate tombstone when no one would even know who she was. I decided there and then I would be cremated. I don't want a pitiful wooden cross to symbolise my whole life like it does my mother's.
I left the cemetery feeling depressed, alone and miserable. I had not thought about my family in a while. When I worked in San Francisco, my workmates had asked about my family. Foolishly I told them how my mother and father lived in California, retired and very happy. My brother was a successful businessman happily married with a few kids. I was Aunt Sara, and I would go visit them all every Christmas in California. Truthfully, I took a week off every Christmas and spent the time watching daytime television and eating Ben and Jerry's Cookie Dough ice cream. I always spent Christmas Day lying in my bed only getting out to go to the bathroom and getting more ice cream. When I was asked to come to Vegas it was my escape from the lies I created, pretending I was in California every Christmas and an escape from creating conversations about how my family were doing. For CSI's, they weren't very good at seeing through the lies I had created.
In Vegas I didn't bother lying, I didn't bother answering the very few questions they asked. Here, we all have our demons; we all had our right to privacy. Maybe I have more secrets than the rest of them, maybe I don't. I am not willing to share them to find out.
After her funeral I went straight to the store and picked up a litre bottle of vodka and drove to the desert. Chugging back gulp after gulp of the strong, liquid, it didn't take long till I was light headed and unable to drive back home. Instead I watched the sunset, the oranges and reds all fuzzy because of my drunken condition, but nevertheless it was beautiful. The last thing I remember was darkness overcoming me, and me dreaming about happier times in my childhood before the fights, before the pain, before I became my mother.