My Haunting

On my Facebook post, I recently used the phrase, I'm being haunted. It might sound hyperbole, but in my mind, heart and spirit, I am being haunted. My friend asked me what is going on and commented, that sounds ominous. Well, she's right. It is ominous. Ominous things are menacing, threatening, scary, foreboding, and very unwelcome. For some, the word haunted might conjure creepy shows dealing with ghosts, demons and supernatural evils. Well, I'm not experiencing shaking tables and ghoulish spirits but there is something compulsively and excessively bothering my spirit to the point that it has at moments overcome me with deep despair, and a feeling of oppression in my soul. I know what it is. I'm familiar with it because I experienced something similar to it about ten years ago. Since, I've been used to it coming and going like an occasional high wave washing up on the sand. It hasn't stayed for long during those times. But for the past week and a half, it has been lingering. I'm at the point of annoyance. It has occurred to me that perhaps the best way to allow it to float away is to stop enabling it to linger in my mind. Maybe the pen will be my sword. I'll warn you that it's not the most uplifting story, nor will it be easy for some to read. The following images are the ones that stand out most. Together they form a story. I know not a complete one because they are only based on my view of the situation. Everyone in my family would have something different to say, but these are snapshots of moments that I experienced. The span of time was seven months, and I don't know everything. Much was never talked about. But it was real. My mother's unexpected illness and painfully lonely death is my haunting.  


SNAPSHOTS

• Walking in the door to see her head on the bar not knowing why she was crying.  
• Hugging her trying to think of words to console her as she cried on my shoulder telling me she wanted to always be here for me.  
• Her looking at me while talking with a friend on the phone saying she knew I was the reason she should fight it.  
• Holding the syringe while she became annoyed at my timidity to give the shot in her hip
• The horrifying image of her strong body slowly turning to a bloated frail skeleton.  
• My grandmother's understandable forcefulness trying to get mother to eat peaches even though she felt sick and weak from her chemo.  
• Seeing her try to wear a wig but give up wearing a handkerchief.  
• With tape bounded around her wrists from being poked so much with needles for iv's, she sat at the table putting puzzles together to give her something to do.  
• Watching her cry and agonize how hard it was for her to handle it all while my grandmother made her recite the Serenity Prayer.  
• Not knowing what to say to my grandmother when she sat at the kitchen table crying knowing that her daughter was not getting better.  
• Getting yelled at for attending a grief support group with my boyfriend at the time's mother who loved me through all of it.  
• Crying on my aunt's bar because I was tired of being told how I didn't love my mother because I wasn't spending every moment by her bedside.
• Not knowing the answer to the question of why my mother was sick because she was so young.  
• Sitting next to my mother hoping she might have something special to pass down to me only to listen to her apathetic voice saying it doesn't matter who ended up with things, because none of it mattered.  
• Watching a woman begin fighting as hard as she could, only to end up laying in a hospital bed after receiving radiation. Listening to doctors convince her to take medicine even though they knew it probably wouldn't heal her.  
• Never hearing her tell me that she was going to die. That the medicine wasn't working, but overhearing it in conversations my grandmother was having. Watching my mother despair knowing her life was finished.  
• Watching Hospice come to the house during the final weeks. Telling us what to expect and how much longer.  
• Entering her room one day, and in a moment that seemed both chaotic (as I watched my grandparents cleaning up the waste the body releases before it ends its existence), and surreal, I sat at her bedside and watched as her chest began to move in a sharp, shallow way. I watched her breathe her last breaths, while my grandparents were oblivious that their daughter was leaving. Seeing the sadness, and hearing my grandfather ask me if she was dead, I got up and left the room to call my aunt. Mom had died.  
• I don't remember crying. There were people, plants, caskets to go pick out, rides to the church, the cemetery. The awkwardness of wondering what my aunt and grandmother would feel that my dad had brought my step-mom to the funeral.  
• Wondering where I would live now. My dad lived in a different city, but all my friends and family lived there. I was fifteen. I was self-absorbed. Looking back, I was completely detached and in a foreign land of confusion with no guide. It was survival. It was unexpected tragedy in a disconnected and messed up family.  

Why does this haunt me today? That's easy to pinpoint. I'm healing from a surgical procedure. It was nothing serious, in fact, when I'm all healed, my quality of life will be even better than before. And it was great before, so realistically, I should just be enjoying my time of recovery. Instead, as I lay here with my feet propped up, and my daughter and son have to help me with even the smallest of tasks, I hate it. Not because I don't think it's good for them to learn how to serve others, but because I'm still being compulsively and excessively bothered in my spirit by this haunting. I transfer my fear that my children will have an image like I did singed into their psyches unreasonably, and I despise it. As I sit here I face the fact that even twenty-one years later, the past still has a hold on me. Yes, there was tragedy in my life, but I desire to be as Joseph and see that what was meant for evil or despair, God meant for good. My life is not anyone else's, it's mine how He purposes it. I am His and what that promises me is liberty under His grace, abundant love from a powerful, loving Father and a promise that He will never leave or forsake me. That is a power and promise I never saw nor heard through my family in our time of tragedy. It's a horrible and terrifying way to face suffering. But may the Lord allow it to be different with me. May I be a faithful servant through suffering, hardship, and blessing. I swing my sword and may the haunting go away.