i’m reading on the road, again. like i do every december, mom. i was reading it the day you died. at 4 am on christmas morning, because i couldn’t sleep, because i somehow fucking knew.
earlier that night, around the time of day you can’t label either today or tomorrow, i was sitting in the living room by the tree thinking about how fucked up the world was. it was completely unrelated to you. i didn’t want to think about the tree in the living room or about how we had opened presents on christmas eve instead of christmas. i wanted to love everyone and not hate everyone for what they had done to each other, and what i deemed we would all be doing to each other constantly forever and ever. i wanted not to believe that people were really shit, who had falsely decided their reasoning & language put them above all the other animals. i was really really angry, which is rare for me. and so to stop my terrible terrible mind i decided to replace my thoughts with another’s.
standing at my bookshelf i picked out on the road, because you had given it to me exactly a year before. christmas 2008, do you remember it? i barely do.
and so i read it, every year. because i didn’t actively remember christmas 2008, and it’s gone. but christmas 2009, i’ll never forget. i will do my very very best.
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i’ll remember my anger at all the christmas changes. i’ll remember my unhappiness. i’ll remember not having that feeling of present-getting satisfaction for the first time in my life. i’ll remember i couldn’t sleep. i’ll remember hearing the phone ring in the middle of the night; dad & ruby’s whispers. i’ll remember i didn’t sleep. i’ll remember the phone ringing a second time. i’ll remember instantly knowing.
how did i know?
it was just a regular trip to the hospital.
and, then, i will laugh at the ridiculousness that is my existence. & yours, & everyone else’s.
because,
when i think about how many things had to happen for everything to be the way it is, my mind boggles. this is true for all of us.
i’ll remember watching the sun rise in that little hospital room they put the families of the dead in, laughing as i told adrian how everything had somehow come together so perfectly. it was like we had opened presents early so that we could open them without grief; so that we wouldn’t have to deal with the joy of christmas in the aftermath of death. i said, ‘it’s like we knew’.
i’ll remember that everything is, in that way, intrinsically bittersweet.
my friend whose mother is sick’s grandpa died the other day. when his roommate told me, i laughed. he looked at me like i was crazy, and cruel. but the truth is that the kid just can’t catch a break. sometimes we can’t help but ask ourselves - does all the shit always hit the fan at once? have the billion variables of what could happen to each of us somehow aligned to fuck us over, all at once?
and so i laughed.
people who haven’t experience this kind of thing, they don’t often get it. the situation just makes them profoundly sad. or, worse, it makes them want to pity you. or, the worst, it makes them think that you want their pity. i want no one’s pity, ever, for anything in my life.
what i want, i want people to not make a sad face when i mention something about my mother. when i tell you my mother liked cabbage rolls, too, i don’t want you to change the subject. when i say being a teacher is an awesome idea because, like my mom, you’d have the whole summer to hang out with your kids, i dont want you to awkwardly nod your head and go silent, frowning.
for some reason a lot of people seem to think death means that all your memories of a person will be tinged with sadness. that is not true. it’s not that simple. this is something i want people to understand.
and i sure as fuck don’t bring up my mother to remind everyone that she died. i bring her up because she was, and she did funny shit and she lived, like everyone else. death is neither here nor there when it comes to an anecdote.
i want to be permitted to remember my mother like anything else, like anybody else remembers those in their lives who are still living. remembering doesn’t make me sad. writing this doesn’t make me sad. because i don’t want to forget. because even though death changes some things, the good must always outweigh the bad or else life just wouldn’t be worth living.
i want to talk. i want to write. i want to communicate. not because i’m sad, or crazy, or hung up on it. i need to remember to remember, because it’s too easy to forget. this is true for many things.
so feel free to feel sad. but do not do so for me, my story, my life or my inevitable death.
i’ll remember that, despite the overwhelming sadness of death, that even on that day i was not overwhelmingly sad.
because death is bittersweet.
jack kerouac is bittersweet.
and, christmas, christmas, too, is so so bittersweet.
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mom, i do what i do because of you. the billion variables of however many things that had to happen for you to exist, and for me to exist, and for any of this to exist, they all fell perfectly into place. i laugh at the improbability of my life, & the certainty of my death.
and so continues the yearly tradition, the book that i love so much.
