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A wistful windfall

when the most supportive thing a person offered was in death...

By Sun MoonPublished 3 years ago 5 min read
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I often used to hypothesize about what I’d do if I came into a large sum of money. Every time I bought a lottery ticket I would ration out the estimated jackpot in my mind. First I’d pay off the mortgage, settle up the credit card debt, then maybe take the family on a nice holiday abroad - you know, in the old days when travelling was a thing, up until 2019 BC (before covid).

Depending on the amount of my windfall there might be new car on the cards, or a cash gift bestowed upon selected family and friends. Probably I’d replace all my underwear, with its failing elastic and sizing denial. Definitely I’d have a chef come round at 5 o’clock every day and make 5 different meals for my finicky family. Every time I didn’t buy that lottery ticket I would joke that I’d just won $6. I never picked my own numbers for this reason, always choosing the lucky dip instead. I couldn’t guarantee my own consistency and you can bet that the one week I forgot would be the one in which my numbers would come up. Always a fan of synchronicity I’d surely have to share my prize with 10,000 other fans of 11 and 22. Sometimes in periods of financial difficulty I would spend my last few dollars on a ticket, justifying that I had just as much chance as anybody else, and wouldn’t it be amazing if….

“The electricity bill is due” I’d announce to the kids, “but it’s okay, we’re going to win Powerball tonight!” Someone in my family did win a large sum once, it dug them out of a hole and they shouted me a pink suitcase with a matching makeup box, and a scenic flight on a helicopter to visit a cluster of icebergs floating up from Antarctica. All things are possible.

My mother passed away when I was 28 and she left me some money which I sensibly invested in a house. “Blood money” I’d reply when my friends were envious that I had entered the housing market so young and asked if I was dealing drugs. I’d much rather have a sitter for my kids, someone to teach them how to bake and tell me how to parent, and to not marry their father, but people who don’t understand don’t understand. I still couldn’t afford a nice holiday, and wherever I went there I was anyway, with my grief and a mortgage to pay. My mother’s mother still lived, pickled with bitterness, challenging to visit with small children due to the propensity of dropped medication and hearing aid batteries which littered the floor in her thrift-shop apartment. The difference between collecting and hoarding glaringly obvious in the absence of any organization. One time my toddler, enjoying the sensory feels of a sheepskin rug on a couch pulled out from the depths the largest pair of over-sharpened sewing scissors you ever did see. She proudly wielded like a weapon these great gaping jaws from 1960, very nearly slicing off a little pinky, Grandma all the while oblivious (we were never allowed to call her that though, because it made her feel old).

I rescued my daughter and once again lamented that my Grandmother fed the sickness which eventually killed my mother with her own narcissistic absence of any maternal tendencies. Yet I visited her dutifully, held her grief in my own, wished for her to have an epiphany but learned that you can’t change another person, only how you deal with them. I activated caller I.D. I stepped up whenever the guilt became overwhelming or the hospital phoned, but learnt how to set boundaries for self-preservation, always a little at arms-length emotionally to protect the gigantic well of rage and blame which swirled like a whirlpool within me. There was always a game and she had a way of looking out for number one while simultaneously expecting the earth of you. In the little black book that I used as my diary I wrote unchristianly that I wished God had taken her instead, but I bit my tongue and swallowed my shame because my mother had bought me up to respect my elders and to be polite.

My grief comes in a can. Every now and then I prise the lid up to let a little drain out but then I quickly put it back on because to spill the entire contents at once would completely flood my universe. We carry our ancestral trauma like a patchwork quilt we didn’t really want, but which was woven by a relative long gone, so we’d better guard it closely and pass it down the line. It’s in our DNA; my mother, her mother, my daughter, myself. Sometimes we don’t know why we cry, and this, I believe, is the why. What must have happened to her that she couldn’t love us? I cried for us all at the funeral. I can’t change any other mother, only the mother I am.

How can it be that the most supportive thing a person ever offered was in death? My mother’s share of what was left over after a life of over-spending to fill an emotional void. Shoes in every colour, clothes hanging in a closet with their price tags still attached, each garment worth a week of groceries for my family of 5. When the email arrived from the lawyer I finally felt cared for. Even though I had quietly hoped for something it had felt grotesque so I pushed it away. Never daring to dream of $20,000 deposited in my account overnight, right on the day when the council rates were due. It wasn’t a fortune, there would be no chef today, but it was a gift, an easing of the pressure and a little bit of breathing space. I took us out for dinner, and we laughed at her more endearing quirks and qualities as we raised our glasses to matriarchs. I bought myself the underwear, and a heat-pump for our living room. It helps to keep us warm like the love of a Grandmother should.

humanity
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About the Creator

Sun Moon

I am a woman, born in 1977. I live in New Zealand and write under a pen name so I don't offend my family more than I already do. It's a trauma response.

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