Angie

Some people come into our lives and fill them with wonder and inspiration. Sometimes, those people also bring us into the world so that we may do the same for them. From a very young age, my mother told me I had saved her life because it was my arrival that put her on a better path as she had someone else to live for. I never got the full details or grasped the full depth of the stones that were laid on that path, but what I did know of her leads me to believe that she would have been fine regardless of birth.

Angela Marie Kalafut, then Church, then Kiesgen, was brazen, bold, brash, beautiful, and a litany of adjectives that start with the letter 'b' that culminates in her most fitting title; a Bad Bitch. The woman who would one day grow to peel the skin from grapes for me because I didn't like the feeling of my teeth puncturing the skin of taut green flesh, had endured a tumultuous childhood and teenage years to conceive and birth me at the young age of 19.

At my age, 28 at the time of writing this, she had five of the six children she would come to adore with her whole heart, yet I don’t even feel confident being responsible for myself as a solitary person. Despite several miscarriages and heartaches, I never knew her to dwell on anything for she had too much to celebrate with every finger painting and burnt breakfast-in-bed my small tribe would bring to her.

She was always working on something, making connections through risque parties with Pure Romance (memories I only wish I could shake from my head), selling candles or purses, Pampered Chef, pretty much every pyramid scheme a middle-aged suburban white woman could get her hands into. That is to say, every scheme except for make-up or beauty products. Whether she knew her natural beauty didn't need makeup, or she truly didn't care for such products, I couldn't tell you, but it ultimately just wasn't her thing, and if she knew anything for certain among the myriad of skills she would adopt, it was herself, first and foremost.

She was also wise enough to know us, my siblings and I before our minds developed enough for us to be ourselves. I can vividly recall plenty of times throughout my life when she would carefully push me with words of encouragement to come out as gay, no matter how adamantly I refused it and buried myself deeper within the closet and away from everyone around me. I didn't want to be anything other than left alone and she wanted me to be nothing more than happy. I found out all too late that denying myself and constant avoidance of any sort of connection only kept me further from what I was ultimately looking for; that happiness she so desperately wanted for me. Thankfully, due to her support, I accepted myself and found happiness in small doses.

My senior year of high school, her 37 years of struggles, filled with swathes of joy and her infectious laughter, came to a thunderous head. Like a bolt of tragic lightning, her liver began to completely shut down without reasonable explanation. A five-year storm of hospital stays, confusion, transplants, and frustration took our family by the shoulders and refused to let up, but neither did she. Every visit to the ICU was met with her dark humor and inappropriate jokes. Every surgery faced with a mask of confidence. Every biopsy bared through gritted teeth. Every triumphant return home was celebrated with a new task she would undertake. Never once did I consider how much effort it took for her to keep those hokes coming, that mask on, those teeth shown, and those projects accomplished because, like everything, she just made it look effortless; a true, incomparable dragon.

The last thing she wrote to me has become such an immense part of my life, I have it tattooed across my chest and is the foundation of all the characters’ consciousness in my fantasy world of Rhyonis. “Life is yours for the taking” is something I will never forget because life is both the first and last gift she gave me. These words were spoken by the dragon Goddess of Sentience within Rhyonis, Angehlah, to free the clouded minds of the First People who were lumps of clay waiting to be molded by Her influence. So, for the rest of my life, I will work to inspire others because it is what she would want for me. This is the happiness that she dreamed I would find all those years ago when I was hiding from it behind the closet walls.