Mother's Day without a momma to call

     Tomorrow is Mother's Day and I should be so happy that I am a mommy, the one thing I always prayed I would be. Don't get me wrong, I am ecstatic about having the day with my beautiful little boy, but my heart also feels a deep longing to call my mom and I can't. It has been five years since she died and some days it feels like it was yesterday. I fall asleep and I dream that she is holding me and telling me that everything is going to be ok and I wake up without her. I don't know what is harder to handle, the sadness or the pure anger I have that she is dead. 
     I remember that phone call in November 2007 telling me that my mom was just rushed to the hospital in critical condition, her liver and kidneys had shut down allowing toxins to reach her brain...she was in a coma. I didn't even know how to respond when I got the phone call, I just went numb. My friend and roommate took me to the hospital to see her the next day and I will never forget what I saw. The woman laying in that bed couldn't be my mom, I couldn't accept that she had done this to herself. She was so swollen from all the fluids building up under her skin, she had a tube down her throat, was strapped to the bed, and kept fighting the nurses. I didn't even know how to talk to her, all I could say was, "I ate dinner mommy" because my calorie intake was everyone's biggest concern at the time. I held her hand for a little while and kept myself together until it was time to go. I didn't think it would be the last time I saw her alive. 
     On December 8, 2007 I was awoken by a phone call from my grandma telling me that mom had died. I knew they had taken her off life support, but still couldn't believe that she would die. The next few days were a blur, I would cut and starve and put on a face for everyone who was around. I had to hold it together at the funeral, someone had to go up there and read the eulogy. I led my five year old little sister around the cemetery, she held my hand as I read the poem my grandmother had selected, and she clutched me tighter as we said goodbye to our mom. I think a part of me never left that cemetery. 
    The following days were filled with me going through her things, cleaning up their apartment, and pushing back all the memories and voices screaming that it was my fault she was gone. I kept it together, went back to Columbia and tried to keep moving forward. Then the sadness hit me and I remember having my cell phone in one hand and a razor in the other...I used the phone instead. I called my best friend and fell apart, spilled all the thoughts that were screaming in my head, how I could have prevented it, I could have done something, and I never should have left her. She didn't mean to hit me, it wasn't her it was the whiskey. She was hard on me and expected perfection because she thought that was how you make someone the best they can be. I cried and cried until I eventually fell asleep on my bedroom floor. 
     The sadness lasted for a little while, everyone tiptoed around me thinking one false move and I was going to slit my wrists or something. I was cutting myself every night even when my friends searched my room for razors and sharps to stop me. I couldn't feel it anymore, the pain had to come out somehow and it was the only thing I knew to do. Eventually, the sadness began to shift to anger and anger embeds itself deep inside of you and eats away at your mind. I've spent all these years trying to rid myself of that cold anger inside of me and just forgive and accept that she was sick and couldn't get better, but I can't.
      I no longer have a mom to call on mother's Day, Damien never got to meet his grandma, I will get married in nine days and she won't be there to fluff my hair and annoy me about minute details like moms always do, and she isn't here for me to call when I'm scared and sick. All of this is because she couldn't put down the bottle, or wouldn't. The doctor's warned her the first time her pancreas gave her problems, they said she had to stop drinking or she would die. She told us she wasn't an alcoholic and for everyone to leave her alone. The only one she kept in on her problem was me, just a teenager trying to figure life out. She would bang on my bedroom door at midnight telling me I needed to listen for my baby sister because she had to go to the store. She would bring me back diet soda and junior mints to keep me quiet. It sickens me that I always kept quiet.
     No one knew what it was like at home, she would drink and go from being our mom to something else. I would hear her getting frustrated with my one year  old sister so I would go out and provoke her. That thing that replaced her when she was drunk was awful, telling me that I was a worthless person that no one would ever love besides her, I wasn't good enough, thin enough, and she just might send me away to school. I took it until it got too crazy, I would smart off which led to a swift smack to the face, push me against the wall, or whatever else. Eventually she would pass out and I would put the baby in her bed. The next morning I covered the bruises so she didn't have to see what she did. I loved my mom, I hated the thing she became when she was on the whiskey. I wanted to save her and protect her all at the same time and when I couldn't I started on myself...I quit eating because she always wanted a thin daughter and I would cut so I could keep that smile on my face all the time. I didn't want anyone to know what was happening because she was my mom and I loved her.
     Five years later and I just get so mad at her, why couldn't she stop, why weren't my sister and I enough, and why didn't anyone do anything...why didn't I do anything? A month after he death my step dad agreed to take me to the cemetery to see her...it was appalling. There was no headstone or plaque yet, some fake yellow flower she would have hated stuck in the ground, and it was dirt. I had the urge to just start digging, maybe she wasn't there, maybe she was still with me, but I knew the truth...under that ground my mom was there. With my bear hands I began digging into the cold ground, I had to leave her something, she had to have better than that fucking flower. As my hands became more blue my step dad brought me over an ice scraper to dig with, never saying a word or questioning my actions. Finally, I accomplished the whole I was working for and I reached up and ripped the necklace off my neck with a simple cross on it, I kissed it and carefully placed it in the hole. Once the dirt was all in place I carved simply her name, the day she was born and the day she died. I laid on that spot of earth for awhile wanting to be in her arms again. 
    Tomorrow is suppose to be the day we show our mother's love and how thankful we are for what they've done for us. I want to yell, I want to know what I did wrong, what could I have done to save her. I feel like an orphan despite having a father and step mom, it isn't the same. People talk so badly about her in her death and it infuriates me. I have a right to be angry, to be mad at that thing inside of her that took her away from me, but others have no right whatsoever. My mom tried to make me the best person I could be, she bought me brand new clothes for school twice a year, she laughed with me, cuddled me, and loved me. It was that other person that left the bruises, that spewed venom at her own daughter often saying she was never meant to be a mom, and it was that other person that forced me to lie to everyone. 
     She was suppose to be here still, we should all be meeting up for mother's day tomorrow with her spoiling her grandson, she should be at my wedding telling me how she can't believe my dress is black, and she should still be on the other side of that phone when I need her. I don't know how to let this anger go, others who fall into a bottle find their way back out...why didn't she? Some days I believe I killed her, I never told anyone what she was doing, I took everything out on myself and eventually that meant me leaving her home. When I left she got worse, maybe if I had stayed she would still be here. I've been so scared lately and hurting so bad I think about her all the time. She was selfish and picked a bottle over me and my sister, and now my sister will grow up never really knowing who our mom was, not that other person she was all the time in the end, but the mom she was when she wasn't drinking. She nursed us through sicknesses and cleaned up our messes. I always thought she was strong, but why wasn't she strong enough to stop?
     I miss being a daughter and I miss having someone to call when my world is falling apart. After I was raped she was the one who would talk to me about it and never once made me feel like it was my fault unlike other people. I know he shouldn't have been there while they were at the lake, but did I deserve for him to do that to me? Everyone but my mom pretended it didn't happen. There are so many things I want her here for now, so many things I'm scared of and have no one to talk to. I can't talk to my grandma because she is already dealing with so much and the parent's I have left aren't interested in discussing feelings. I'm scared I'm going to die from this disease, I'm tired of surgery, tired of IV lines and tubes, and just exhausted. Josh has told me when I wake up crying in pain I often ask for my mom forgetting that she is gone. 
     It has been five years, why can't I let go of the anger and the pain? I don't even know if she heard my pathetic attempt at saying goodbye that day in the hospital. Maybe I'm so angry and bitter because I think that is my future. My body is fragile and we've been told by docs that I won't live to be old...it will be my son that is writing this angry about all the things his momma wasn't there to see him do or help him do. I hated that thing the whiskey brought out, but I loved and miss my momma so much it hurts to breathe sometimes. I wish she would have fought, fought her way out of that bottle like I fought my way out of that dark ditch. Why is it that I could beat my anorexia and cutting but she couldn't beat that bottle. It owned her and no matter how much we loved her she just couldn't let it go and I have to forgive her for that.
    Well, it is after 12, so wherever you are momma..."Happy Mother's Day and I love you and I forgive you for the things that bottle made you do".