The Unfair Hole

 It's been nearly 8 months since my mother died. Nearly 11 months since my father's demise. I haven't really written a thing about them in that time. Why? I haven't wanted to embrace that reality. Writing about it seems to make it concrete, real. 

  But here I am writing about it. Hoping that will somehow fill the hole that is left. The truth is nothing will ever fill that hole. Because it's been there forever. It's in all of us. That thing that keeps us wanting more. Trying to fill it with sex, drugs, booze, power, money, food, religion, more, more, more. Things, how many things can we buy to make us whole? Not nearly enough.

  What happened to my parents was unfair. In my humble opinion. Not their deaths, but their lives. They never had much of a chance in this world. I suspect mental illness played a major part in both of their journeys. My father didn't know how to be a father because his dad left him as a child. His mom was too selfish to be a good mother, although there was a great love in that relationship. Love and money. My mom did the best she could, given the circumstances. Her father was a monster and repeatedly beat and molested her. She was raised in a home painted with alcoholism and depravity. This is the singular point where her problems with men began. 

  So why do I bring that up? They both died in misery. My father in excruciating pain with a tube down his throat. My mother on the floor, alone, in a diabetic coma for days with a rat nibbling at her toes.  When I cleaned up his apartment, I found his works. The old man had been freebasing for sometime and finally over did it. As I have been cleaning up my mother's house, I discovered her diaries describing the horror she went through.

  Seems I have been doing a lot of cleaning over this past year. Discovering many things about my parents and their histories. The trauma was too much for them to relive by ever telling me these things. So, I am finding it all out now. Awfully late in the game.

  I go back to that word: unfair. It's not. But that's life. I don't know if I can ever right the wrongs, I'll try. I'm not quite sure how to move forward with the hole in my heart. But I will. We will all move forward and continue doing our best to fill that hole. Binging shows and buying clothes and driving fast and telling jokes and drinking wine and cheating on our mates. It's really the only way humans know how to cope with the emptiness. 

  But there is beauty. There is more.