yet another open letter to Nick Cave

Dear Nick Cave,

Word on the street is that you finally caved in and shaved that damn dodgy mustache; or rather, as you've apparently been spinning it: your wife shaved it off after she roofied you while you were sleeping.

Maybe now we can be friends again.

Love (maybe),
~tara

I wrote this last Sunday and never posted it.

Last weekend, the Engineer's brother got married. It seemed like there had been an enormous amount of years inbetween the announcing of engagement to now, but during one of the speeches at the reception, I realized they'd only been together about two years or so.

I am happy that he is happy, as he is a man who has always had difficulty finding his own niche in this world and someone to share it with. We have told him many times over the past eight years to figure out who he was before he went on any kind of journey to find love, but he never listened. Little brothers rarely do.

And even though I am glad that he has found apparent happiness (and it's with a woman I can stand being around for slightly extended periods of time, which is always nice), the wedding and subsequent festivities have left a feeling of uncomfortable disquiet in my person.

I couldn't put my finger on it all weekend; not until about fifteen minutes ago when I stood up from my aimless internet wandering and went into the kitchen for a glass of ice water. I couldn't place this unsettled, slight sadness and instead, choose to worry at it from all angles like a particularly stubborn hangnail.

And it all boils down to this: I miss my mother. It is September, the month of her birthday, and I am missing my mother terribly. She would have been sixty-five.

It was a vague sense looming so subtly in the background that I have grown so accustomed to that I almost overlooked it. This feeling of absolute loss has just become so intertwined with my normal day-to-day activity that it has simply become a fact of my being, much like the facts of my having blue eyes and crooked teeth. It'll have been five years this November. Five years since she died holding my hand. Five years since I heard her voice and felt her smile. Five years since I was swept under with an overwhelming mixture of heartbreak, relief, guilt, and liberation that hit me like a rogue wave capsizing a tiny boat. I always knew the heartbreak was coming; it is an imminent feeling for anyone close to one, or both, their parents. We are meant to be preceded in death by them, so it's generally just a given. But the other emotions? Therein lies the rub.

I knew my attendance at the wedding/reception would bring a host of things to the forefront of my brain; other people's family affairs always do, as I stand constantly alien within them. Consistently, I am uncomfortable at these gatherings and never know how to behave. My blood-family doesn't have them any more, at least not that I am invited to, and when we did- they were very different affairs. And I am filled with a bizarre envious desire whenever I see someone lavished with attention by their relatives.

This event was no different, in that regard. It was, after all, the first marriage produced within the children of the Engineer's parents and the parents of his brother's fiancee. So, freakouts were plentiful on both sides. I expected that. I did not, however, expect the fleeting shock of narrow-eyed hurt to course through me when the Engineer's mother gave a tearful speech at the reception stating how much she had always wanted a daughter and her joy at how she now has one.

I immediately tensed up (I've been around for eight years; what am I?), then grew very still at the realization that I have always held myself ever so slightly aloof from his parents and made it quite clear that I was not in the market for another mother. The Engineer's mother is a lovely woman who has never been anything but kind and warm to me, but I have always been fidgety at the idea of her, of anyone for that matter, claiming me as another child. I also recognized that this event was entirely about the Engineer's brother and his bride; of course their mother wouldn't be thinking of me. Ridiculous and shame-faced, I thrust my brief hurt away, silly and selfish, and applauded her when she was finished speaking.

I drank a lot of rum, made friends with an older woman who has known the Engineer's mother since high school and beyond, but refused to dance. Public dancing and I are currently not on speaking terms. I sang songs to the Engineer, smoked a metric shittonne of cigarettes, cringed at overly loud music, and accepted hugs from a variety of strangers. A normal wedding reception, essentially.

Throughout everything, there was still that weird little feeling in the pit of my stomach that took me until the small hours of Monday morning to figure out was the lack of my mother. It was uncomfortable; I was uncomfortable. Since my mother has died, and even for a short time before, I have been coping with her non-existence. Every day, I do not have a mother any longer. I am constantly reminded of this fact.

The interesting thing is that when she was sick, I had made a comment in my journal that watching her die of cancer was like watching someone being slowly washed away by the sea. The tide tumbles in, and when it rolls back out again- a small piece is missing. Over and over again, this was slowly repeated until there was nothing left and she was gone from my life. It happened again as I made the apartment into my home. Her belongings, the objects infused with her presence, were taken out in gradual increments. Her couch, her end chair that was hideous but I loved anyway, the bed she only had for four years, her elderly dresser. I put most of it out on the curb for someone else to take and every time, it felt like I was abandoning her on the side of the road. Another tide slowly taking her away, piece by piece.

Now, I've noticed a similar thing is happening with the hurt I've been carrying around with me. The ocean is slowly washing it away. It won't ever completely vanish from my life; the Powers That Be aren't quite that benevolent to give us such a great escape clause. But, over time the edges do wear down and things aren't quite so prickly. It's no longer an open wound; it's a trick knee that aches when bad rain is coming.

The pain used to be bad, so sharp within my chest that it hurt to draw breath. For two years, I walked as the blind undead. Everything I touched that belonged to her sent a hot spark through my fingers. I flinched away from all but the most casual of contacts and connections. It all just hurt too much. The third year, the pain began to slowly lose its hard diamond luster. Fourth year, I was finally able to speak of her death in practical terms and not bawl in the middle of a sentence.

Year five? It's not over yet, but things seem to be following the same pattern. The tide still rolls in as I watch it wash the familiar away.

Her birthday is next Sunday. I've been thinking of driving down to Cape May to where I scattered her ashes. I've gone twice already this summer, but only for pleasure trips. Never alone and never with the express intent to visit. I could drive down in the late morning and stand on the shore, smoke my cigarettes, and watch the waves.