My phones ringing again, goddammit! I have been gone from the house for an hour for work and yet it’s already ringing.<\/p>\n
\u201cHello\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you have any idea what your son just said to me?\u201d<\/p>\n
It’s always \u201cyour son\u201d when she’s mad. As if it’s all my fault and mine alone that he’s said something to her. As if the things he says are baseless and born from my failing as a father. She leaves it all on me to solve the problem because swallowing her pride and saying she was wrong or playing a part would simply be too out of character for her.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did he say?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe called me a bitch and stormed off to his room? Can you believe that? You need to talk to him and make sure he apologizes to me; I\u2019m owed an apology.\u201d<\/p>\n
What does she think I can say to make him apologize? I\u2019m not even home and I won\u2019t be home for hours, my night shift just started. What is a phone call with him going to solve? I\u2019ll never know, but it’s hardly worth voicing that to her, choose your battles.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe should never call his mother a bitch, I\u2019ll give him a stern talking to.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGood, make sure he remembers that I\u2019m dying and that he\u2019ll regret what he said.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWill do. I\u2019m going to hang up to call him now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFine, call me right back.\u201d<\/p>\n
What a fucking mess, it’s going to be another long night of back and forth between those two. Why can\u2019t they just sort it out themselves? For all her \u201cI\u2019m the parent you’re the child\u201d talk, she sure is goddamn childish sometimes. What ever happened to the woman I married?<\/p>\n
\u201cHey, dad?\u201d<\/p>\n
I knew he would call; he always calls after we fight. She always turns to dad to \u201cdiscipline\u201d me, like she’s scared of me. Like I\u2019m some alien to her that she cannot recognize as her son. I wonder if she realizes how deep that cuts me.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour mothers terribly upset, and I’m tasked with giving you the business. So please just tell her you are sorry and that I gave you what for. And after that just stay out of her way, I\u2019ll be home in like 4 hours so\u2026 just do what you can.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll try\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI love you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI love you too.\u201d<\/p>\n
That’s how every phone call goes, he tries to appease us both. He loves her, he loves me, but nowadays he can\u2019t do both. I don\u2019t need him to pick a side, it would be pointless. It would just lead to more yelling. I just want to stay in my room and mind my own business, that’s all I ever want. Yet, I hear her coming up the stairs. She’s going to rub it in, like dad calling me is some sort of victory. As if there’s a winner in a screaming match. I\u2019m already crying. What more could she want from me?<\/p>\n
\u201cDid your father call?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything you want to say to me?\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sorry dad, I can\u2019t do it. I\u2019m simply not sorry, that smug grin on her face pushed more over the edge. She is a bitch, the stupid woman who brought me into this world. Who was the best goddamn mother a kid could ask for. Who would go to bat for me for anything and everything. The woman who knew I could do anything and expected everything of me. The same woman now looks at me with that smug grin. Like she won a fucking medal. I\u2019m sorry dad, I just can\u2019t say I\u2019m sorry to her. Not to this woman who just happens to look like my mom. Not to this woman whose brain cancer seems to have taken everything from, even her relationship to her son.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing in particular\u2026 bitch!\u201d<\/p>\n
I just had to say it didn\u2019t I, I mean what did they expect from a 17-year-old, whose mother is dying? I\u2019m sorry.<\/p>\n
Another phone call. Now she’s hysterical. Demanding I come home from work right now, that I drop everything I\u2019m doing to deal with \u201cyour son.\u201d Work was supposed to be my break from hysteria. A reprieve from the creeping madness that has become my wife. From constant arguments and screaming matches. A moment of some peace and quiet. Yet, this phone keeps ringing and she keeps screaming. Why do I get punished for his actions? Why is it all on me? We had a kid together, wasn\u2019t this to be a team effort? I don\u2019t ever remember signing up for a terminally ill wife. For a son who can\u2019t keep it to himself. I didn\u2019t sign up for any of this. What happened to the woman I married, who could handle anything and everything. Who made loving her so easy? Where did she go off to? Cancer hadn\u2019t killed her physically, at least not yet, but it has certainly done a number on her mentally. I still love her, but I wish she could make that easier, I wish my son would make it easier.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll call him again, I\u2019m sorry I must not have been harsh enough on him. Please just avoid him and let him work through it. I love you\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI love you too\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s okay. Please just avoid her I don\u2019t expect you to apologize to her, I told her to do the same\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks, dad\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease just don\u2019t make things worse for me. Please just stay in your room till I get home\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI will, I love you\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI love you too\u201d<\/p>\n
How many days has it looked like this to me? Crying by myself in this room, in this prison, in this sanctuary. I don\u2019t know, I do know that I\u2019m sick of crying over the same shit. The same cold-hearted woman and her offhanded comments. I wish I could just stop loving her. I wish I could forget all the happy moments and only remember the bad. I wish I could leave behind the word mom and start calling her given name or whatever else, but I can\u2019t. I simply can\u2019t just stop caring, I wish with all my might that I could. But I love her and that’s why this hurts so much. That\u2019s why every comment cuts me to ribbons. That\u2019s why every comment leads to a fight. That\u2019s why I wish she were dead. I know I\u2019m not supposed to say that. I know I\u2019m supposed to cherish every second, every minute, every hour, of every day she still breathes. But I\u2019m out of tears to shed for her, how long does it take to die. I was told 2 years ago she was going to die in a month. Everyday I\u2019m told it could very well be her last, and yet she keeps kicking. What am I supposed to do? I can\u2019t keep loving a walking corpse, at least that’s how it should be, but I do. I love you, but somewhere along the way we forgot how to say I love you too. How did it happen mom? How did it happen?<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t remember when I started to think she would be better off dead, or that talking to her was just too painful. I don\u2019t remember what set me off each time I saw her, Christ I don\u2019t even remember what set me off the first time. Maybe it started with a lie… \u201cI can beat it\u201d. Those words intended to bring hope to the bleak reality of her death, to protect me as much as herself, was probably where it started. The first lie she ever told me, that she believed just as much as me, was what set us on that downward spiral. From there it was the little things: a couple more cigarettes a day, a little less smiling, a little more gloom, a lot less laughing. Then the little things turned into large things: joy to sorrow, optimism to bleak hopeless cynicism. She changed little by little, till it was a lot by a lot.<\/p>\n
I think when little things started shifting to big things, that\u2019s when the yelling first started, when I could no longer see mom as my mom. Suddenly she was changing, she was dying. So, I yelled hoping she would stay the same, that the little things would stay little things. I was hoping to glue her back together, surly me her one and only son could do that. But it failed, she kept changing… kept dying. And I hated her for it. I hated that my words, my actions, couldn\u2019t save her or keep her the same. I hated that we were drifting away and that I was the reason why. So, I kept yelling till I started yelling about yelling. Then one day I realized that my anger was an amalgamation of reasons so tangled in one another that I didn\u2019t even know where to start to untangle them. So tangled that I was ready to yell for any words she said offhanded or not. So, I gave up and started thinking, wouldn\u2019t it be better if it just ended here? Wouldn\u2019t it be better if you could just die while you’re still my mother? Wouldn\u2019t it be better if you perished before all these changes made you completely unrecognizable? Wouldn\u2019t it be better to die while we can still apologize?<\/p>\n
We like to say that we are logical creatures. That the human brain loves finding patterns, of making sense of things. Well, where is the sense of fighting with my mother repeatedly? What is the sense in calling my dad a spineless coward? Well, there’s a simple answer to that: there is no sense to it. Why did I call him spineless, the one ally I had left in that house and even he wasn\u2019t safe from my ire? I did it because I was sick of seeing him get pushed around. He would attempt to mediate every fight we had with those phone calls. She would demand the world of him. To fix our broken bond for her, to make the world make sense for her, and to make her a goddamn sandwich. And the crazy part he would do it. My father would work a 12\u201315-hour night shift, come home and my insomniac mother would immediately demand food and entertainment from him. He would give it all with a smile on his face. I couldn\u2019t even stay in the room with her for longer than an hour without storming off in a huff. Yet, he could spend an entire day cooped up in a room with her, watching \u201cWheel of Fortune.\u201d Was it because he was her husband, while I was her son? Where did we differ? How could he so easily swallow his pride and suffer through the endless requests, the endless demands, the endless unreasonable expectations?<\/p>\n
Did I not love her? Did he love her more than me? I can\u2019t say. So instead of trying to figure it out myself, I insulted him. I only did it once, and all I said was that \u201cyou’re spineless.\u201d He was trying to comfort me after another fight with mom, yet I lashed out. It pissed me off that he could be so mature when it came to someone he loved. I wasn\u2019t the problem. Maybe it was dad that didn\u2019t love her enough, and I just loved her too much to be rational. So, I used her words to hurt him. I had heard her call him spineless countless times growing up, so they just came right out of my mouth. The look, the shock, and the betrayal my father’s face showed after I insulted him, startled me. I realized at that moment that he wasn\u2019t mature, or he was only mature about it because I wasn\u2019t. Me losing my shit made it so he could keep his. He wasn\u2019t just my only ally in that house, I was his too. I failed to see the silent pact of suffering we had signed. I apologized immediately. The words I could never speak to mom always came easy when I was speaking to dad.<\/p>\n
That’s just how parents are. We come into this world because our parents opened the door for us. How could we not put them on a pedestal, how could we not love them for opening that door? Even if intrinsically, they have not earned that love and for some people even betrayed that love. We keep giving it to them, we keep loving our parents no matter how often they hurt us. How could we not, they only hurt us so much because we often love our parents too much. The secret we often don\u2019t realize till we are an adult ourselves, they love us too much as well. Both parent and child are so stupidly in love with each other that they are incapable of being rational.<\/p>\n
~<\/p>\n
It’s funny, he is always so quick to apologize to everyone except his mother. He was always so quick to forgive and forget. Took a real water under the bridge mentality to life. I like to think he learned it from me because he certainly didn\u2019t learn it from his mother. She never lets me forget anything, even shit I did back when we first started dating that pissed her off. But he was always quick to identify his faults and say sorry, that has never changed. But, with his mom now it’s like he forgives her just to be angered by her again in the same breath. It is like just sharing the same space with her is suffocating for him. How do I help him as his father, while still being a good husband to my wife? Is my only recourse really to tell them to stay away from each other? Is that healthy for him? Is that how she wants to die, estranged from her son? I doubt it, but what can I do? I can\u2019t just tell him to forgive her for dying, I can\u2019t ask him to forgive her for changing, I can\u2019t ask him to let water under the bridge this time because it’s his mother. I wish I had the words, the answer, a way to make things like they used to be. I\u2019m sorry I can’t do that. I\u2019m sorry son, and I\u2019m sure that your mother is too. That we couldn\u2019t protect you. I hope you can one day see she’s just as upset as you. Just as upset as you that she’s leaving you as you are to say goodbye. I wish she would just say that to you, but you’re both so damn stubborn, I\u2019m sorry.<\/p>\n
~<\/p>\n
I think telling dad he was spineless was the final breaking point for me. I realized that I was mad at everything, I realized there was nothing left to say to my mother. Nothing more I wanted to say, nothing more I could say without yelling. I just wanted to be close like we used to. Deep down that’s all I wanted. I just wanted her to see that. I just wanted her to see that I loved her. That I wanted to return to coming home from school and talking to her for hours about my day. Returning to rushing up the stairs, the first thing, when I got home because I was just so excited to see her again. So excited to talk to her, to see her, to hear her, to be around her, to love her, to be loved by her, to be with my mother. Where did those days go, how can I get them back? That was what each yell, each insult, each petty retort, and every underserved cuss was trying to achieve. How could hurting her ever get us closer, how would it repair the rift that had formed? Wouldn’t it only make it all that much harder to fix? Another layer of battle wounds, each one having to be healed so you could heal the next. At what point do they stop being wounds and start being scars? When do you stop trying to build a bridge to meet in the middle? When do you give up on saying sorry? When did we give up on saying sorry?<\/p>\n
~<\/p>\n
\u201cHi, Dad\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHey bud, I um\u2026 got bad news\u201d<\/p>\n
I knew it, your dad never calls you with good news at two in the morning. If that wasn\u2019t enough to tip me off, then his hoarse voice was. She was dead, four long years, and she was dead; she was finally dead, she was gone.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour mother\u2026 she passed away a little while ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2026 I see.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I\u2019m sorry bud, I\u2019m sorry\u201d<\/p>\n
What does he have to apologize for? It is not like he killed her; he had no part to play in her death. I know He’s just trying to say he feels how I feel, that he is just as sorrowful as I, that he empathizes. But why is that word sorry and not \u201cI understand\u201d or \u201cit will be okay\u201d or anything other than sorry. Maybe I just hate the word sorry?<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry too. I love you dad; I\u2019m going to hang up now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand, I love you too, stay safe,\u201d<\/p>\n
That night was a blur for me. I went for a walk and made it back to the college dorms I was living in. The moments in between are a blur of tears and screaming.<\/p>\n
A day later I would truly be back home, surrounded by those mourning just like me. It’s crazy that the first word out of most of their mouths was \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d Again, what do they have to apologize for? They didn\u2019t kill her and it’s not like they could save her. What does \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d even mean when you say it like that. When you have no agency in the situation what does saying sorry achieve, what is the purpose? Does it wrestle away some agency from the cruel indifference of the world we live in? Does it make you feel better? Are you saying you feel bad because I feel bad? If so, where does that leave me? Where does it leave the person you apologize to? What I\u2019m I supposed to do, forgive you, forgive myself? There’s nothing to forgive. There’s nothing, she’s dead, and your apology, your understanding, your sympathy won\u2019t change that. So why does everyone keep saying that? Why do we say sorry, in a situation like this? What is there nothing else to say? When did sorry become some scapegoat to really attempt to empathize and understand? I never asked for your apology. I never asked you to feel bad for me. And I most certainly never asked for your pity. Frankly, I\u2019m tired of the pity. As if you could ever pity me more than I pity myself.<\/p>\n
I stand in front of her coffin. It was one thing to be told she was dead; it was another to stand over her corpse. She towered over me when I was a child. The woman I could always look up to. The woman who I could always look for and she would be there. The woman who no matter how far away I am was ready and waiting to help. My beacon in the distance who always made sure I was on the right path. Was now brought low, I had long sensed been the one to tower over her. But that was only physically, she was always above me and no matter how much I wanted to hate her. Despite all the shit I said to her, she was always my beacon. Now she’s gone and I\u2019m forever a lost lamb without a shepherd.<\/p>\n
I lay my hand upon hers, it\u2019s icy to the touch, the most poignant reminder that she is in fact dead, that this is not just some nap. I get down on my knees and finally I say, \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d I\u2019m sorry for everything I said, I\u2019m sorry I wasn\u2019t at the hospital more, I\u2019m sorry I didn\u2019t talk to you more, I\u2019m sorry I said I wouldn\u2019t miss you, I\u2019m sorry I wanted you to die. I\u2019m sorry, I\u2019m so sorry for everything, can you ever forgive me? But of course, she doesn’t respond, it\u2019s too little too late. The moment for an apology had long since passed. Just like her the moment had passed. The one apology in the whole damn room that means anything. The only sorry today that pleads for forgiveness, that demands retribution, and it will never get it. Afterall, there is nothing to forgive because it can\u2019t be forgiven. It is too late, it\u2019s too late to apologize. And I know that the cold lifeless corpse can\u2019t forgive me, she’s gone, and she will never hear just how sorry I am.<\/p>\n
~<\/p>\n
\u201cI will always love you\u2026 goodbye\u201d<\/p>\n
Those were my final words to my wife at her grave. Then I turned to see my son, Me a mess of tears and him standing there staring, not a single tear shed. Some would say he was strong for not crying. But I know the truth, he simply had no tears left to shed. Some might say he was being cold or stoic, but they weren\u2019t there for every fight, for every goddamn screaming match I was and so was he. They don\u2019t know how much he cried after every single one, they don\u2019t know how often he apologized to me, they don\u2019t know my son like I do. I still have plenty of tears to shed so I\u2019ll just shed enough tears for the both of us. I walk over to my son, to our son, and hug him. We just stay like that for a while because nothing needs to be said. I know he loved her more than anybody and that right now he’s hurt more than he can ever put into words.
\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry dad\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know\u2026 I know\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tyler D. Rasmussen My phones ringing again, goddammit! I have been gone from the house for an hour for work and yet it’s already ringing. \u201cHello\u201d \u201cDid you have any idea what your son just said to me?\u201d It’s always \u201cyour son\u201d when she’s mad. As if it’s all my fault and mine alone that he’s said something to her. As if the things he says are baseless and born from my failing as a father. She leaves it all on me to solve the problem because swallowing her pride and saying she was wrong or playing a part would…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"parent":100,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-468","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1069,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/468\/revisions\/1069"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/18-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}