If you were still alive, I'd probably be spending the next week planning a big 60th birthday party for you. Instead, I've been in complete inner turmoil thinking about you. To be honest, I'm really, really angry with you, and that bugs me. I feel like there's something very wrong about being angry with a dead person. Your birthday, the day I always write you a letter telling you how much I love and miss you, is in six days - and all I can think about is how angry I am with you for dying.
Yep, I said it. I'm angry with you for dying. I know, I know, you didn't crash the car into that tree, and you didn't leave the house that morning intending to never come home. And yet, your death was a direct consequence of your choices. Unfortunately, instead of your choices creating consequences for you, they created consequences for everyone who loved you. Your choices have also created so many questions I wish I could ask you. Why did you choose to ride with your friend that day instead of driving to work? Why did you marry a man who abused you and your daughter and allow him to do the things he did? Why did you choose drugs and sex over your child and your marriage? Those are questions that I will never know the answer to. Never. No one else can tell me those things. Those who knew you then could guess, or make excuses for you, but only you have the answers.
I love you so much my heart could burst sometimes. I long for just one day with you, one mother-daughter date with me as the daughter instead of the mother, one good, tearful shouting match. Is it weird that I want to fight with you? Everyone I know fights with their moms sometimes; I can't think of a single person I know (my own daughters included) who hasn't had a knock-down, drag-out, 'I can't stand you' fight with their mom at some point in their lives. And yet, when the fight is over and the emotions less heightened, the love remains. And the love...oh the love. A mother's love is divine. Unconditional, generous, endless, and filled with longing to give her child more that she herself has ever had. I love my children so much that there is nothing they could ever do to make me love them less. When they screw up, I just want to fix it and hold them until they feel better. When they do something well, I can't stop talking about it and my heart is overwhelmed with awe. When someone hurts them, I want to defend and protect them. When we fight, I cry because I fear that they'll never understand why I've done whatever it is that makes them so angry, and because I fear that I've done something wrong as a parent because they aren't perfect. Their success, their failure, their pain, their joy, I feel it all as if it were my own. There is nothing in this world I wouldn't give up for any one of them.
So what I really don't understand, mom, what I'm really, really angry about, is why you didn't feel all of those things for me. Why was my dependence on you not enough to keep you from choosing a path of drugs? Why was my innocence not valuable enough for you to protect? Why was my faith in you not enough to motivate you to make better choices? What was it that made me unworthy? Why was I not enough?
I'm still hoping and praying that by Friday, I'll be ready to write you a better birthday letter, one that isn't full of anger and questions. For now, though, this is all I have. I don't know where you're spending eternity, but I pray that was one choice you got right and that I will see you in Heaven. I love you, mom, and miss you always.
Meredith Lee
