On Losing a Mother
the shadow play, chiaroscuro of light and shade.
One afternoon you will find that you are standing, staring at the yellow names flashing on the phone ringing to voicemail and you will not call them back, and you will realise that it is days since you spoke or left the house, and that you almost wore shades and a hat to buy smokes.
One nightime you will find that you are sitting staring at the TV and your racing mind will project lights and squares and colours all around the room, off to the right, in the corner of your eye, and even rubbing or closing them will not remove the dancing lights and you will think you are having a turn.
It is 3 months since my Mother died.
I type the word "died"and my stomach flips.
Her quiet breathing over the days of her leavetaking became the soundtrack to her end-of-life, and in my diary I wrote only the following line across the entire page -
"She is in labour with her unborn self, back into the collective consciousness She arose from" -
After I opened the window to allow her soul to leave, I raised the sticky bottle of Jameson used to make endless Irish Coffees to be fed to her on a spoon, and drained it.
"Jesus Christ, there's floaters in that" says the Quiet Leitrim Man and I shrug.
I open the door by accident when we are waiting in the hall and see the undertaker place a chinstrap on my Mother.
There are some sights that can never be unseen.
At her wake, when the hot sobbing has ceased, I spot a madman smoking by the door.
"That lad is either a friend of yours or he is at the wrong funeral" say the children between sandwiches.
The Blonde Boys in Black Suits.
The Hyacinth Mouths whispering condolences and clichés almost reversed me in on top of her as they clamped my hand and crushed my ringed fingers.
"lads, will yee mind the flowers, will yee?"
A week later, the frost bitten bouquets, the soft wet clay that clings to my red boots as I tamp it down.
Stilnocht became my lover.
Again.
Bouts of crying, spontaneous, unheralded.
I write her Obituary and then dance in the kitchen, alone, with Northern Sky blaring so loud a speaker falls off a shelf.
Diary Entry - Monday February 9th
Feel very calm today, as if am slowly moving towards new beginning, fundamentally organically altering.
I take a call at 2 am to tell me the pups are born in Drumeela.
My mood varies between flatlining or visualising myself giving an acceptance speech at the Oscars for best screenplay, where I have to be played off stage, still forgetting to name the people to thank.
A woman stored on my phone as Mary Meat walks my dogs.
And now we dream of her.
My sister dreams that my Mother is driving all over town, parking anywhere she likes and flouting all the basic principles of motoring.
My father dreams that my Mother is in the kitchen at home, cooking, and that the house is full of visitors she is serving up meals to.
And I dream that I am throwing a party in my kitchen and have run out of shot glasses for vodka and when I ask her to wash some, she hands me a block of HB Raspberry Ripple Ice-Cream.
As loth as I am to engage, I need to be near people so leave the house and sit near humans to hear them talk.
I wear a hood in the house, and eat crisps, and peep out the spyhole ignoring the bell.
I cry when my father tells me his back hurts from bending at the grave, his small figure crouched over the wet clay, balancing rocks in the jug he puts the flowers in, so the wind cannot blow them away.
My Mam blew away in the wind though.
Mood = Numb.
I google the side effects of opiate abuse.
On her birthday I tell my family I cried more at her chair than I do at her grave.
The house looks like Beirut or The Hoarder Next Door, but I can't seem to muster the ability to care.
I dress in what falls out of the hotpress.
Even the buzzing of the fridge gives me a headache.
My bracelets feel heavy on my wrists.
I stand in corners of rooms staring at nothing for minutes.
I snap out of it and sit staring at the screen for hours.
I cannot write.
I sit staring into space like a pig pissing.
Diary Entry February 26th.
I get up at 4am and write 12,000 words till 9pm.
I send a Bio and some features to Press.
A firelog falls out of the fire onto the mat but I am alerted by the dogs barking.
Thank Christ.
My Mothers clothes are in bags and boxes in my sisters house and we cannot open them.
I dream that she and I are in the piano room in the Nursing home, and that she wiped her hand across her face, and smiled and said - I am not gone anywhere.
One day you will try to tidy the house and you will realise after 12 hours that you have only moved stuff from one room to another, and you will eat left over chicken, cold, from out of the tray it came on. One day you will open your diary and realise that you cannot read your own writing and that there are several blank pages in a row.
On my sisters birthday we talk about the photo and verse for the Memory Card.
We talk about Buddha, and the fable of the man drowning carrying rocks, and the man who fell over the cliff and said - Is there anyone ELSE up there? when God shouts down to tell him to trust and let go.
On her Months Mind on Mothers Day I make my Father drive me back to the graveyard in the evening, to take the photo I forgot of the flowers with the pink pegs and the prayer flags fluttering in the breeze, and the men watch from the car as I kneel on the wet clay to get the exact shot, and they think -
"She is losing it"
Diary Entry March 17th Patricks Day
Wake at 5 am. Spend an hour de-tangling dreads from hair with bottle of coconut oil. Eat a biscuit. Wonder how my Father can go to Mass in the Nursing Home every week, passing her room, without seeing her bent head in the chair, sitting there, the empty space by the piano where She was wedged in. I walk on the Quay taking photos of children in bumper cars and huge grey skies. I meet my dogs brother. I buy a reduced box of Black Magic and a firelog and watch the worst Irish Film ever made. I give my Father a book called The 10 things that happen when you Die, and implore him to read it.
I cry in the Quiet Leitrim Man's car all the way to town while he carries on talking about politics and ignores me wiping my nose on my sleeve. My Father telephones to say he is making stew. I tell him I am going out as I cant talk. He rings while I am on the street outside a restaurant smoking to deliver it. At the restaurant.
"It's in a bag" he says as if that is important.
Diary Entry April 1st
I inhabit my grief like a coat. It has turned down my mouth and the dogs don't know me now. They bark and bark and reverse away from me in the hall. It rains and rains and rains. One of the pups from Drumeela takes a shit in the kitchen and we laugh when my Da says it looks like toothpaste. The Quiet Leitrim man throws a spoon in the sink. And I am furious and hiss "HE didn't do it" and have to go into the jacks to bawl. I see my Mother look back at me from my God-Sons eyes, the pale blue of the bottom of an upturned boat, a porcelain sky.
My Sister tells me it was too soon to go back on stage and that I was too vulnerable and upset to do the show, to perform Kidney Punch for an audience while we cried. She said she had nightmares all night.
I dream my Mother is sitting in the back of the church, wearing a lace blouse, smiling. I tell my father exactly which seat when he asks. I do meetings and calls. I do a radio interview with an Australian Channel where the Interviewer burst out "but you're MAD" in the middle and another man described it as like listening to someone after doing a bag of coke.
Or several.
Diary Entry April 20th
Got up sometime. Did some stuff. Ate some stuff. Washed up some stuff. Took some drugs. Slept.
I watch endless episodes of Tipping Point and The Chaser with the curtains closed.
One day you will wake aching but you will experience a sea change and a cosmic shift in one morning, when one of the tiny cogs in the racing brain fires a different synapse. You will still your mind with meditation and EFT. You will try to remain present and aware and you will cold-turkey yourself off the Stilnocht sleeper, and so you will do a week long retreat, alone and silent. You will be easy and gentle on yourself and eat only what is in the house, whether it is an egg or rice. You will become a character you admire from a Claire Keegan Short Story who washes her body and throws the feet water out the back door, and cleans the house from top to bottom. You will clean your house from top to bottom in your nightdress. Your new mantra will not be "Do it first lads, and then we'll work out how" - it will be - "Do it like you mean it", and so you will carry furniture up and down the stairs, and borrow a hoover and your soul and your home will be washed as clean as your mind, and you will remember you can write.
I am clean.
I can write.
I'm getting there.
MDM May 6th 2015
(The author wishes to affirm she has never actually taken cocaine, she's bad enough without it)
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