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Mario and My Mother

April 18, 2018 Kelly Walker
Image by Tana Latorre.

Image by Tana Latorre.

CONTENT WARNING: graphic descriptions of death and grief.

When I found out my mother had died, it was almost lunchtime. I was playing Mario Kart in the dining room and had just gotten to a good part. So naturally, when my phone buzzed, I was annoyed. A croaky voice belonging to my nana said, ”It’s happened, Kel. She’s gone”, as if she’s rehearsed the words a thousand times in her head but still felt strange forming in her mouth. Secretly, I was also quite relieved. I was fed up with the twenty-five minute drive to the hospital everyday.

I remember not wanting to go in and see her blue body but just like wanting to boycott her funeral, people kept reminding me I might regret my choice one day. So I went in, just as my grandmother was about to place a rose on my mother’s no longer thumping chest. I saw the petals touch her hospital provided nightgown, then I turned around and walked back out the door. The corridors were full of the sounds and smells of death. The other patients and their soon to be decomposing skin, a sickly-sweet stench mixed with the ever-familiar smell of bleach. My senses overwhelmed with the melodic monitors, clicking buttons, and buzzing screens.

There were flowers waiting for me when I got home. My house soon turned into what felt like an endless supply of flora as if I suddenly decided to open a florist in my lounge room. Roses from family, lilies from colleagues, and random assortments of blooming buds from people I did not know. I remember thinking they were pretty all bunched together. I took a snap. I deleted it though, feeling my mother’s death was not the place to profit a pretty picture. Instead, the twenty or so boxes of flowers sat on the pool table waiting until they were shrivelled enough to be transported to the bin.

I regret not dwelling in the hospital room more that day; I should have parked myself beside my grandmother who was dying from the pain of watching her youngest daughter wither away, but I was preoccupied by the things girls in their late teens are preoccupied with: my boyfriend, expensive perfumes and trying whole-heartedly to eat away my feelings.

Eight years later, each day I wake up either a little less or a little more disgusted at myself, maybe a little less or more tearful, but always a little more in mourning. My mother, now only a memory wrapped in forgotten moments and self-loathing, lives within my body. She grows with me each day as I become a little more fearful of my body.  

I worry the cells circumnavigating my growing skin and muscles will do the same to me as hers did to her. And instead of rejoicing in the life of my mother, I fear her presence. I’ve dumped her in a back hole of my mind because she is no longer my sweet caregiver, the person who brought me into this world. She is nothing but a reminder of what will likely happen, and what I cannot control.

← Crying My Best: Public Places I've (Recently) CriedTHE BODY WILL REBEL →

Melbourne, Australia.

Girls Will Be Girls acknowledges the ancestors and traditional custodians of the land on which we stand, and that sovereignty was never ceded. We pay our respects to Elders both past and present and, through them, to all Aboriginal peoples.

Design by Carla Scotto.

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