I never met the woman who was the mother to my mother. Her death is largely what inspired my birth- a deliberate order to bring the next woman into this world, because one had been lost tragically. Grief could’ve killed my mom. She poured every drop of herself into her new tiny vessel. She showered me with love, and the sort of fierce mothering that found me embarrassed from time to time. She stood up. She stood strong. She was in the principal’s office fighting for her kids. She nurtured in a way that a motherless mother does. She’s a precious, raw realist and her depths make the ocean look weak. It was 1988. It was an Econo Lodge. Shots were fired out of desperation. Wounds never healed. She must have thought that ending it all was the only exit from pain. I wish I could look into her eyes for the first time and tell her it would all turn out ok. That she didn’t have to escape. Her family is beautiful, and flawed, like every family. But the thread is a precious one. It weaves from her, into my mother, now into me. I miss what I never had, a grandmother.
