Wednesday, September 2, 2009

numbness

Today, my head is craziness and numbness. I wish for the release that tears would bring, but they don't come. I should feel something. There's only emptiness. It's as if I'm watching the world pass by in slow motion. Life is going on around me, though I hear no sound. For once, I wish for the reality of pain.


As I sat today at her bedside, I was struck by how much she looks like her mother. I never noticed it before. It was as shocking as the first time I realized how much I look like my mother. The same blood that runs through her veins ran through my mother's veins, runs through mine still. Then I realize the blood running through her veins belongs to someone else; several people actually. She's been running on borrowed blood for weeks now. I would gladly give her all of mine if it would change the outcome.


I try not to compare this to the last time I sat in a hospital room, but my mind inevitably drifts back to that day. If things had gone differently that day, my mother would be in this room today tending to her mother, hovering over her as we are all apt to do. It's a trait that's been handed down through the generations; we are caretakers, the women of my family. If things had gone differently that day, she would be here to tell me what to do and how to handle this. But she isn't here. She's been gone nearly six years, but I can look around and know exactly what she would be doing, what she would be saying.


She's the missing link of the chain that anchors me to this hospital room. I'm a generation unto myself...I'm no longer a mother and I no longer have a mother. Fathers are wonderful to have, but sometimes a girl just needs her mother. Today is one of those days. But if she were here, she would be feeling the same way.

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