I have moments of clarity.  Moments where I feel like things will be okay.  Small glimpses of truth and understanding. Seconds, where I let myself think that I don’t shoulder all of the blame and responsibility for what happened. Others played their part. Pieces of time where I feel so strongly to remember everything, to think about everything she taught me. Minutes where I see myself, the version of me when she was here.

I am my mother’s daughter.

I remember that the person I was, is the person she taught me to me.  She gave me my humor, my love, my laughter… my lightness. I feel so strongly in those moments that I don’t want to disappoint her or lose her more. I need to remember all of the songs that she asked me to download for her… the ones I didn’t like and would lovingly make fun of her for. Roll my eyes, when I would switch the radio in the car and one would be one and I’d have to listen to for her.  I want to listen to every song she loved. All of them.  Start watching the shows SHE loved.  The ones I didn’t watch because I couldn’t understand why SHE liked them.  To pull them all out and display them.  Put her pictures on display. Write down all of the recipes she taught me.  The ones I can’t cook anymore.

I don’t want to forget one thing about her.  I don’t want her to be forgotten by anyone. She deserves to be known.

I hold on to the songs that pop in my head randomly as her way of saying she is there. That each one of them holds a message from her. To cling to the vision of that little hummingbird, that stares right at me through the kitchen window, almost into my soul as another visit from her.  I try so hard to not wash away the truth of that with the guilt that fills me so completely.  The guilt always wins.  The guilt always fills all the crevices and pieces of my heart and soul to where I know with certainty that those songs are just the reminders of how I failed her.  That hummingbird… is just that.  A hummingbird.  The guilt reminds me faithfully that I don’t deserve the peace that comes with the hope in those things, because how can I deserve that when I am responsible for her death. 

but I am my mother’s daughter.

The daughter who grew up worrying from a very young age about her mother.  As a small child would sneak into her parent’s room and would sleep underneath her mom’s side of the bed.  The child who couldn’t spend the night away without having separation anxiety; so she stayed at home to be close to her mom; to be at her mom’s side.  The daughter, who watched her father try to strangle her mother. The daughter who remembers every time her dad would get mad and have too much to drink and would try to drive the car with her and her mother and brother and sisters in it…. off the side of the road. That girl, who was bottle-feeding a kitten one night and watched as everything crumbled down around her when her dad got mad at one of the cats and kicked at her, kicking instead that tiny kitten that little girl had just put down to feed another. That girl who was in the 7th grade, held that tiny kitten, whose neck was broke… cradling it… rocking it as she cried.  Staring into space, as her dad went crazy around her.  Barely hearing the yelling and crashing and sounds of things breaking as she whispers over and over that it’s okay… rocking and crying.  The same kid, who would have to talk to her dad, at all hours of the night… comfort him when he begged her to ask her mother to take him back. Who told her siblings, that she had always been his favorite. That didn’t phase them.  They already hated her for being her mother’s favorite…

I was just my mother’s daughter but things changed that night…

I stayed here and did the best I could to take care of my mom.  What they couldn’t understand then, was that I was more than my mother’s daughter.  That night my parents decided to divorce, I became the go-between for her and my dad, I became a friend… a confidant.  A parent – to her. 

I don’t want to be so deep inside my grief that 5 years pass me by and I am stuck in the same place and everything would have been for nothing.  Her death would have meant nothing. She means more than my grief, my guilt. She deserves to be remembered.  She deserves to have her music playing through the house.  Out of everything she and I shared a love for, music and animals was the most important.  Music always filled the room when we were kids.  She would play us “our” songs before we went to school or to our grandmother’s house. Every summer, all of the music.  The songs that I would so strongly associate with my separation anxiety that I would start to feel, even right beside her, as I would start to worry about leaving her to go back to school.  The same songs that bring that anxiety back now, along with the anxiety I feel hearing most music.  I have tried to listen and have thought about picking a show and watching it byt it  always feels so wrong.  She should be here to listen with me, to watch with me or tell me about or discuss it with me.  Everything stopped when she left me.

My whole world ended the moment she left me. 

I do have moments of clarity. Where I feel strong enough to continue on without her and then I put on a song.  Even just pulling up the video for the song I put with my post… listening to the first few notes fill me with such anxiety.  It will take everything that I have to get through the rest of the day without succumbing to the anxiety.  It’s a feeling I could never be able to explain but it invades everything.  My thoughts, my blood, my heart, my eyes, and ears. Clogs my throat and I feel like I am shutting down; my insides are dying but wanting to explode from within me. 

I am my mother’s daughter…

The daughter who as an adult still held all of those worries but also felt her life was going nowhere.  She worried about her mom and felt guilty for trying to have a life.  She told boys she would date that her mom was her life and that Sundays were always out and than one day her mom and brother would live with her.  It never went further than a first date because she couldn’t get past the guilt that her mom was at home while she was going out and having dinner. She couldn’t stomach the thought of any time being taken from her mom and she didn’t want her mom to ever feel like she was number 2 in her life.  She already felt that way with the rest of her children.  The daughter, who so much wanted to giver her grandchildren.  She would have been the best grandma, or in her words… the best mother’s mother. 

But I know…

I have to make it about her.  I have to do it for her.  I failed her when she died but I won’t fail her by letting her be forgotten because it hurts me too much to think about. She deserves to have her name spoken as often possible. Vicki Ann Rogers.  Her face deserves to be seen every moment of every day.  Her music should be flowing through my veins just as it did every day she was here with me.  I deserve the pain it causes me, she doesn’t deserve to be forgotten.