Amanda Sutherby (2010)

((AN:// On September 2nd, 2010 a special girl I know needed help with an autobiography for a class in highschool. She sent me a message and asked for help. So I told her to tell me about a memory she had of something important that affected her. This is her story written by my fingertips.))

Momento Mori

Rest In Peace

     “When life gives you lemons, make beef stew” – Andy Milonakis.
     When I returned home to escape the reality of the day, I went into the kitchen to at least get something solid into my stomach, since I neglected to eat much all day. It is difficult to have an appetite for anything, when you just returned from your mother’s funeral.
     I grabbed a few crackers and sat in one of the wooden chairs that gave off a squeak when sat upon, in the kitchen. I wiped some of the crumbs on my nimble black dress. Oddly, I noticed there was a DVD carelessly sitting on the kitchen table. I read its title, and I honestly didn’t know whether to cry, or just laugh. I saw sitting on that wooden counter the movie Death at a Funeral.

     How ironic.

     I quickly averted my eyes from the DVD and my gaze floated across the poorly painted room until they fell upon a mirror facing me.
     It was, and still is, hard to look at myself in a mirror without seeing a little bit of myself dying, and a little bit of her growing in my features. We have the same hair, although she bleached hers since she was about my age. I have her eyes, a golden shade that's never quite brown but that no other color can compare, that is, until we cry. Then our eyes turn green, bright green. Mine were looking greener everyday and the bags under my eyes kept getting darker. Maybe the bags helped my eyes to look greener. With the summer wasting away, so did my tan, but the ever so prominent freckles were still there. They were her freckles. I felt like they polluted my face; a never-ending toxin that would not let me forget my pain.

     I like to imagine what more things we could have possibly done together. There was so much more to do. She had so much to do in life. A woman in her forties still has much life to live. Her wedding would have been yesterday; married to a new husband. I would have been her maid of honor. I glanced over to the calendar on the wall, and a cheetah gleamed at me from a branch somewhere in Africa.

     My mom loved cheetahs.

     Her wedding would have happened yesterday. I'm losing track of the days passing by. But now, instead of a happily ever after, there is mourning and melancholy at this once planned event turned sour. It is hard, but sometimes I imagine how her fiancé feels, about standing over his beloved’s grave.
     I stopped living with my mother and little brother in Tennessee, after she got arrested, when I was about thirteen. I had to live with my father in Florida, and I quite enjoyed it there, much more than with my mother in Tennessee. My mother and I bickered tremendously, and I realize now she was only trying to give me some life-advice, but I basically lived a solitary life not run by anyone but myself. I guess I see now how close I can compare my mother to myself, just from that. I used to feel so isolated and alone in her house. She constantly had to work or sleep to support herself, my little brother, and me.

     I did not have a bond with my mother. I did not console to her, much less give her insight about who I am as a person; what I think; what I feel, unless we are arguing. Maybe the reason I did not go back to live with her was because I did much less arguing with my father.
     The only times I felt somewhat at peace around her was when we went out on car drives in downtown Clarksville looking at the old architecture. I think that is when I grew a love for stick-shift cars. I have not realized how much I craved her affection and attention until now.

     Too little too late…
     If I could change something in the past, it would be that I would actually listen to her more, and maybe abide to what she had to say. I am positive I am walking in the same path as she did in her youth, and as a mother she only wants the best for me.
     I picked up the binder full of all her paperwork off of the table. I had been avoiding going through it for the longest time, I guess it is now or never. I turned the binder sideways to look into the never-ending contents. I did not quite understand how that much paper could fit into such a small binder, but that's my mother for you.

     Unattached to any legible piece of paper, a silver star fell from the contents, I picked in up and stared at it. It was a small star pin with a carved heart and the word “Service” carved just below it. This was the pin she was given after her time spent as part of the U.S. Army in Germany.

     I broke down right there.
     I just wanted to truly make her proud of me, and she is not going to be around to see my graduation from high school, leaving for the Marines, getting married, having children, and most importantly of all, bestowing upon me her genuine grace of approval, and love. I could give up just about anything to have at least one day with her. To fix this gap filled with problems, I feel I created, between us.
     After mourning for several days, I was still depressed and just a complete wreck. I could not accept the shock that my mother is dead, and there is no sugar-coating that fact. I learned I have to know the consequences of each choice I make. Now, I have to live each day with no regret, because life is too short and nothing can be expected not to happen. I feel closer to my family than I did before, and now I truly value the extreme importance of family. I feel so lucky to have them.