Quote from DevonB on April 2020, 2:53 pm

“What do I fear, in the loss of others?” is my question.  

Having one’s heart snagged on grief is a tradition on my mother’s family’s side.  My grandmother mourned three deaths among her seven  children. They were out of order, before her own.  My mother was haunted by my brother’s death, when he was two. 

As for me, my mother’s death is spectre.  It shook me to my core. It gave me thoughts I didn’t want.  I avoided them, for the longest time. Now here they are, at the forefront of my attention, once again.

With today’s talk of coronavirus, barring physical goodbyes and funerals with fear of contagions, I’m reminded of her passing.  It came with no farewells. I haven’t stopped and let the feelings from that loss take hold of me, in quite awhile. They are the sort of memories that tense my spine until my teeth chatter.  The kind that I react to with resistance, even as I seek the solace of confession.

I didn’t attend the funeral that was held for her.  Notice the wording. I’ve struggled to say what happened, in a way that lets me understand my experience, with less judgment.  I’ve found that having no possessive “her” lets me breathe more deeply. Attributing that ownership feels congestive. Chilling.

It omits the heart of my reasoning.  The funeral that was held for her did not belong to her at all.  It was a duty, orchestrated by her mother-in-law, to restore the illusion that all was well among the family.  Clearly, it was not. My stepfather had just been jailed, on charges of her murder. Yet we were not to speak of this at all.  This was “code of honor”.

“Mama Doll” was his mother’s preference of name. It was apt; her blue eyes were as cold as ones of glass. Her perfect smile was just as artificial.  She didn’t speak to me directly. Instead, her instructions were conveyed by Mott, my mother’s sister. Mott battled their family’s control of the arrangements.

I looked to Mott to bring back order, the way she had after the last death I’d known.  My baby brother’s. The news that my mother’s body had been found reduced me to child again.  My heart broke in a million directions. I heard a sound emerge from me I’ve never made since. It was the animal of my grief, moving from my belly into heart, proclaiming agony.  

Mott lost the battle for control.  Whoever the officials were, in charge of releasing remains, they held to the bureaucratic custom of patriarchal ownership.  Even being identified as her killer was not enough to bend the rules into a less possessive form. Her remains were reduced to property.

I wish that Mott had gathered us maternal mourners for our own ceremony.  She didn't have the wherewithal. She was emotionally depleted. So was I.  So much had happened in the year and a half since I had left the suburbs of Chicago for the West coast.  Within six months, I had married. Five months after that, my stepfather called, asking if my mother was with me.  

With that call, I knew that he had killed her. On the day I’d left home, there was that moment when I thought he might kill me.  It was after I refused his advances, acting like it was a joke. In his eyes, I read it wasn’t.  

Then his stalking began.  I didn’t know it’s name, just that it felt awful.  Sometimes he would fly the 2,000 miles to Portland and talk to the neighbors about me. No contact.  Other times he’d show up at the door. It was not until years later that I remembered my earlier molestations.

I shared these details with the district attorney in charge of my step-father’s case. I felt that he believed me.  He said that I would testify at the trial. I was yet to learn that none would occur. 

I arrived at what once was home, two days after the funeral.  My husband and I stayed with his family. They were just as confused by everything as we were.

I went to the gravesite with my husband, only to find there was none,

The ground was too frozen for burial.  None of my school-friends knew how to reach me.   I was in no shape for reaching out to them. I felt betrayed by the church, for its following Mama Doll’s bidding.  I felt I had no community. I swallowed my grief, going numb inside.

This absence of collective time for conscious leave-taking has functioned as my heart-snag.  Part of my writing this is as exorcism. Part of it’s to say that collective support is so important during times of great grief, and people need a form of healing ritual.  

I feel as if I’ve made some sort of peace with the unsaid tenderness of my goodbye to my mother.  I wrote a villanelle as tribute to her. The structures of meter and rhyme scheme in the form provided what felt like containment for the words.  I understand them better now. These are the words that said themselves to me:

Selkie Song

My Mama was a Selkie furred in dreams
who, when she found her skin, would slip away
to Manawyddan’s depths, where sunlight gleams

through thick layers of water, trembling beams
of light that knows no time— no night or day
My mama was a Selkie furred in dreams

White-beaked dolphins swim among the sea breams
White-capped waves leap and splash their ocean spray
To Manawyddan’s depths where sunlight gleams

Dappled, dancing ,glinting —tumbles of streams
They froth and gimble as a form of play
My mama was a Selkie furred in dreams

Adrift in salty silence  were her schemes,
her watery visions drew her away
To Manawyddan’s depths where sunlight gleams

I watched her flee from papa’s sharpened fleams
His wish to net her, never let her stray
My mama was a Selkie furred in dreams
Of Manawyddan’s depths where sunlight gleams