Bye Ma.
My mother, Cynthia Rose Neil, died this weekend at the age of 77, two days before I planned a surprise visit. That visit would have ended nearly a dozen years of having not seen her or my father in person. A self-induced exile resulting from childhood trauma and a myriad of unresolved issues. In lieu of getting to see her one last time, I wrote this letter.
Links for context.
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Hi Ma,
They say life comes at you fast. It appears that death comes at you even faster. The last time we spoke, I asked you how the garden was coming along. You told me that you couldn’t garden anymore. The stooping, bending, and kneeling were more than you could handle. You tended your garden my entire life, so many crops of tomatoes, eggplants, and zucchini grew from your soil. You even kept the rose bush I bought you as a young man alive for nearly two decades. You even managed to transfer them from our garden in the Bronx to your home in Virginia where you and Pop would spend your golden years. You not being in that garden set of a ticking clock in the back of my mind.
I got the news in the middle of your grandson’s football practice. Pop called and broke the news, “Your mother died today.” Ever the stoic he tried to keep his voice flat and strong. Instead, it was hollow and wavered on the tears that choked him. I only ever experienced this version of him when his mother died.
By now, if souls and the afterlife do exist, you know I planned to drive to Virginia today and surprise you and Pop. Bridging that physical gap between us was long overdue. Years ago I decided that as much as I loved you and you loved me that love managed proximity poorly. The last time I saw you in person you lashed out at my brother. Your words hurt me, so I know that he was completely folded. It was the last in a long line of holidays, birthdays, cookouts, and visits that in one way or another, were marred by arguments or worse. I decided that my presence was a trigger, and I owed it to both of us to not induce whatever thing manifested that ugliness.
If I’m being honest, my absence was also buoyed by at least some spite. After years of asking about a grandchild, I was excited for you and Pop to meet your grandson. Instead, I watched his mother’s parents coo at him, take photos and express glee over the tiny bundle. It hurt to not have my parents present at that most joyous of moments. I asked over and over when the two of you would make the trip from Virginia to Brooklyn. You both hemmed and hawed until I finally stopped asking. For all the trespasses I hold you and Pop accountable for, that one has been the hardest to let go of. But, even that bitterness withered on the vine when faced with the unstoppable march of time and the inevitability of mortality.
My visit this weekend was to be followed by the two of you meeting Cole, who is all of ten years old, full of all the love and stubbornness that comes with being a Neil. When I told him of your passing he sobbed. He never met you but he knew you. He knew that a piece of his word chipped away. Sadly it was a part he only got to experience in the abstract of phone calls and cards with cash that he was ordered to “only spend on junk.” One day he will ask why he never got to meet you. I rue the coming of that day.
By now, if souls and the afterlife do exist, you now know that I have been in therapy for nearly a year working up to what would have been today’s visit. My therapist believed that I could never truly heal without seeing you and Pop again. At best to talk about the physical and emotional abuse I suffered that still affects me viscerally to this day, at worst to simply be in your presence. I fought the notion as best I could. I forgave you both a long time ago. My goal, as I saw it, was to figure out how to manage the scars that remained. The anxiety, the over-sensitivity to anything remotely resembling conflict, PTSD in the form of terrible sleep, and the all-consuming need to know that the people aren’t mad at me.
I came to the conclusion that if visiting the two of you didn’t matter there is no need to resist the notion. I would either confirm that my healing was down to me and only me and, if I was wrong, the true healing could begin.
I was 48 hours away from knowing for sure.
Aliya joked that after years of both of us finding reasons for me not to visit, you managed to one-up me when I finally resolved to go. It’s funny because it’s true. If there was some divine way for you to get the last laugh you certainly would.
I hate that my therapy has been so cliché. I hate that all my issues come down to you. You are the fulcrum on which my mental health has swayed up and down. It seems that every person on earth is the victim or beneficiary of that same fulcrum. Even the faults of our fathers pale against our mother’s handling of those very faults. It seems an unfair curse of motherhood but here we are.
At some point, I realized that your life was one of inner struggle. More accurately I realized the effect that struggle had on your life. If you were born in 1985 instead of 1945 you might have benefitted from the vocabulary that surrounds our current understanding of mental health. You might have even been diagnosed with the disorder I long expected you of having. There would have been avenues for therapy that weren’t blocked by access and Black folk’s derision of telling strangers our problems (especially white ones). There you would have been able to unravel your trauma from that of your parents’ and the ancestors who came before them. There might have been a doctor who figured out medications to help you manage your struggle instead of vacillating between abject depression and spinning mania with a bottle in your hand.
When it comes to our relationship I have little regret. I don’t regret the time apart. It was the best means I had to protect myself, love you, and feel the love you had for me. I don’t regret keeping Cole away. I was never sure which version of his grandparents he would meet. His innocence and well-being trumped all of our wants for that opportunity. My missing getting to see you one last time by a mere 48 hours is a sad irony, though I do wonder if this grief would be easier if I made no plans at all, or if I made plans to see you last weekend instead.
As you know, my faith in God and heaven left me a long time ago. The years of going to Catholic mass every Sunday at your behest (and in your absence) set me on a journey of faith. Ultimately, before my first marriage, I would be plunged into holy water, emerging as a Baptist. The weathering of age and experience would slowly dissolve my faith. I looked at my friends and family who I was told would be denied entry into God’s kingdom because of their various “peculiarities”. I saw the contradiction between God’s will and free will with him getting the credit and us getting the blame. I felt the sadness and depression that became resilient against the hour (or five) spent in church every Sunday. I slid from “this God isn’t for me” to, “what is God” to, “there is no God at all.”
My distaste for religion, however, is hypocritical. Every time I’m faced with a sadness this strong I hope with every fiber of my being that I am wrong. Because otherwise I am left the curse of never again instead of the promise of until next time.
As per your wishes, you will be cremated sometime this week with no ceremony. You always said you hated the idea of your body being gawked at by friends and family. “They did such a good job. She looks so life like!” You were a naturally beautiful woman in life. You had no intention of being passible through artifice.
I will remember our early morning phone conversations. I will remember our debates, political and otherwise. I will remember you encouraging me to write and create. I will remember you for admonishing me for not doing it enough. I will remember your repeated declarations that I would be famous one day, though I wish you had the foresight to tell me what I would be famous for. I will remember you as a woman that despite all the internal and external struggles of her life never gave up. I will remember that during the last conversation with my brother, you said that you were
happy.
I will remember because I could never forget.
Bye ma.
