Positively Glorious!

Saturday.

What is Saturday?

Saturday is a placeholder. Saturday is a schedule. Saturday is an opening in a schedule.

Saturday is a funeral.

You wake up in a room full of people telling you how sorry they are. You don’t know how you got here, nor do you know when you got here. Thirty seconds ago it was Monday and you were answering your office phone.

Now, you are speaking to a person you haven’t seen since you were 12.

“Thank you.”

Sounds issue forth from a person standing next to you, a person who looks just like you, a person standing so close to you that it almost seems like they might be you.

Almost.

“Thank you.”

A blur of people as indiscriminate as bees in a swarm. Faces as recognizable as leaves in a storm. They swirl around the tempest behind your eyes and blur your vision. You can’t even really tell who’s there, all you can tell is that there is a room full of people weeping for your loss.

There is a room full of people weeping for your loss.

There is a room full of people weeping for their loss.

There is a room full of people.

Weeping.

A room full of people.

There are people standing in the aisles, there are people in the hall, there are people sitting on the laps of other people.

There is a room full of people, a large room.

All of them came for your mother.

All of them are weeping for the loss of a person you ran away from, for the loss of a person that you don’t even know. All of them are weeping for the lost of a person you never wanted to know.

And then the stories. Of her making the choice to sacrifice so much to take care of your grandmother, of her taking care of people she barely knew. Of her being so kind, so loving, so thoughtful.

There are stories of her laughing, of her stripping down to her underwear and jumping in a stream “because you only live once.”

There are stories of a beautiful person, a person you never knew existed. A person that everyone loved.

You want to tell a story. You want to stand up and tell a story of your mother.You want to say something, anything, but you can’t. You have no story, because you left.

You sit in the front row seat that you don’t deserve and watch this procession of love that you don’t deserve to see. So many people. So many people, and they surrounded her and can tell her story. You don’t deserve a story. You don’t deserve it because you left.

You can’t tell a story. You don’t have the strength even to get up. After a while, you close your eyes and realize that any crying you’d done before was just a prelude. You didn’t know the pain of your loss. You couldn’t know how much you’ve lost until you knew the story.

Until you had a story.

And then it’s over. People are making plans and packing up. Everyone is leaving. You missed your chance. You have a story now, but missed the chance to tell it. Your one chance is gone. Your mother is gone, and the story you would have told is one of the life that you missed. The story that you can’t tell, because you had not the courage to tell it.

If you had the chance, if you had the courage, this is what you would have said:

“To truly love a person, you have to know the whole person. I stand here as witness to my mother, because I love her. I love her now, because I know the whole her.

“My mother was crazy. My mother did things to me and my sister that made both of us want to run away, or kill ourselves. I actually tried to kill myself once– not because I hated life, or myself, but because I hated my mother.

“I hated that I spent my entire school day worried who I would find when I came home. Who would be waiting? Nice Mother, Silent Mother or Crazed Angry Mother? I never knew, and that was dangerous, because expecting one mother, when the other was home was a very, very dangerous thing to do.

“Hell, to me, is not knowing which someone someone you love will be

“I hated her, because I never knew who she would be. And, in not knowing who she would be, I never had the space to know who I was.

“I hated when she threw away the dishes suddenly because they weren’t clean enough. I hated when she screamed, and screamed and screamed– about things I didn’t even understand. I hated when she sat in her room, immovable, staring into space. I hated trying to comfort her and having her ignore me, breaking the silence only to insult me in ways that made me feel vile, and worthless, and bad, and evil.

“My mother was crazy. Life with her was, to me, a living hell. I spent most of my childhood worried who she would be at any given moment, and the rest trying to think of ways to escape. And so, after more years of planning than anyone of you would care to know, I left.

“I tell you this not to insult her, but to love her. Because to truly love a person, you have to know the whole person. I want everyone here to know the whole her. I want everyone here to love her.

“I didn’t love my mother, because I didn’t know my mother, I only knew part of her. I only knew the part that I could never know.

“You have shown me part of my mother that I never knew, that I was never allowed to know, that I later became incapable of knowing. You’ve shown me a woman who was kind, caring, witty, even fun.

“I never saw that part of my mother. The part of her that hurt me also blinded me, and blinded, I left for life without her. I turned back to look, now and again, and thought I saw her. I thought I saw her, but all I saw was the image, burned into the retinas of my closed childhood memories. All I saw, were my own scars.

“And so, I never loved my mother, because I never knew the whole person. I knew only part of her. I knew only scars. I want to thank you all for showing me this other part. I want to thank you for these stories. I want to thank you for telling me of her kindness, of her joy. I want to thank you for showing me this part of my mother that I was too wounded to see. I want to thank you all for letting me love my mother. My whole mother.

“My mother wasn’t perfect, but she was a good person. The great tragedy I will live with hereafter is that I couldn’t see that. She was a loving person, she was a kind person, she was a fun person, and yes, she was a crazy person. She had problems, but she did the best that she could. She did the best that she knew how.

“Until know, I only saw part of what she did. Until now, I only saw the parts that weren’t good enough… to me. To her son.

“Thank you, everyone, for showing me the rest of her. Thank you for showing me these parts that were so filled with love.”

That is what you would say.

If you had any courage at all.