1.
When our mother was dying, we did not do anything to save her.
Seemingly.
She was an obese woman in her forties, a smoker, an alcohol abuser, with hypertension, uncontrolled diabetes – and probably all the other civilization diseases she could get – so it was no surprise that she has had a heart attack.
We were just walking home from the store, she had been complaining about a stabbing pain in her chest for a long time, but it was not something she did not experience almost every day – and something she did not ignore almost every day – but it was not until with our bags we entered the path to our block of flats that the pain intensified. She left her bags on the ground and dropped onto the bench, panting. We watched her face change, panic suddenly appeared in her eyes. It seemed it was then that she realized this particular pain meant death. She reached out towards her purse, which we carried on our shoulder.
“My… phone…”. She panted before falling to the ground.
We obediently took the phone out of the purse and put it in her hand.
“Abu…lanc…” . Were her last words before she lost consciousness.
…
My mother was a horrible person. But we could not have known that. Because it would be dangerous to realize it. We did everything to make sure that she continued to take care of us, so that she would not abandon us. We learned to listen and obey every command, and to disappear from her sight whenever possible. Who knows, maybe even at that moment we were terribly afraid to do something contrary to her order; perhaps we did not understand that he was dying; perhaps we thought that if we started calling for help, she would stand up and punish us for drawing attention.
Perhaps we did not want her to live.
…
Our mother was a narcissistic woman, ready to use everyone to make herself feel better.
Often, when she was angry with us, she told us that she should have done to us what she did with the others. At the time, we did not understand what she meant. Years later, we realized that we were not her first “accident”. However, we were the first one she decided to keep. If I were to guess why, I would never say that her maternal instincts awakened. Rather that she wanted to keep her boyfriend, my father, with her. She forced herself into his apartment – the apartment we lived in for the first few years of our lives – and made him to stay with her. When my father finally left, it was a little too late for an abortion.
Sometimes I wondered why no one had found out about our suffering in all these years. In theory, medical professionals – doctors, nurses, midwives – should be invested in our case – why did none of them notice? Why did none of us say anything?
I suppose from the very beginning of her pregnancy, our mother’s ability to win over hearts of strangers granted her everyone’s favor. We often watched how safe our home became as soon as someone entered, we watched her smile and show kindness that she never expressed towards us. Perhaps because of that smile, none of us ever said anything. Perhaps the feeling that a pleasant face means nothing got rooted deep inside us. And when a stranger told us that we can trust them, it meant absolutely nothing. There was no adult in our lives we could trust.
Our mother never sent us to kindergarten. When we were 6 years old, she was forced to enroll us in an institution, so she chose a small, ugly and easily accessible primary school in our equally ugly neighborhood, with equally ugly people in it. With people who should not have taken care of the children, but due to the shortage of staff were hired anyway. And even those ladies, who were a bit nicer than the rest, could not understand us. A good soul once suggested to my mother we could have autism, and she started using that as an explanation for our behavior… And no one dared to delve deeper into our situation.
No one tried to see our world. Everyone was watching, but no one was paying attention.
And so we probably slipped through all the security measures that were supposed to save us from what happened.
But all this has left its mark.
And when my mother was suffocating on the ground, we did nothing.
Until someone ran up.
“I’m a doctor, everything’s gonna be all right”, a woman’s voice reassured us.
Nothing was right.
Our mind filled with an even greater fog.
We were sitting in the hospital, staring at the white wall. Some people came and went, no one was paying attention to us. Whispers hovered above us. The time ceased to exist.
Until someone sat next to us. A woman’s voice introduced itself. The monochrome outfit seemed to confirm the position of this voice. Again, someone tried to comfort us. Bring us good news. To let us know that we do not have to worry anymore, because everything is under control and our mother will be fine.
The pain seemed to crush our chest. I think all this time we secretly hoped that that time would be different. That something will change.
But nothing was changed.
Things were exactly as they always were.
Exactly as you would expect them to be.
So why was I so disappointed? Why did I feel like my hope died? Should we not have no hope at that point?
We must have looked terrible at that moment, because the voice next to us seemed concerned. She asked if everything was okay, she called us, and each time that only caused us more pain. The voice wanted us to say what was going on.
Say what was going on?
After all this, is there even a glimpse of reason in believing that someone would like to listen?
The voice did not quit, despite our stubborn silence.
Some other shoes appeared in our field of vision.
The woman’s voice and big shoes began talking.
The shoes wanted to know what was going on.
The woman’s voice expressed her concern about our condition.
“Do you recall that woman with a heart attack, whom we recently admitted? I suspect she might be abusing her daughter”.
Abusing?
A word that we have been looking for all our lives, but we were never allowed to know.
Abused?
No one is being abused…
A sudden sadness pierced through the fog that usually filled our minds.
We started crying. And we cried for a long time. We cried so hard that we thought we would not survive it.
With time, however, the crying began to succumb to fatigue and alternately sadness tore our chest, then we fell asleep again for a few seconds, until finally, cuddled in the embrace of that voice, we fainted from exhaustion.
