Love Can't Save Her

I don't know how it happened. I don't remember many of the details, but somehow I arrived at school for the fall semester. I unloaded my car into my new "home away from home", the big plantation style home on Sorority Row at LSU known as 'the house'. I didn't even really know my roommate. We had been introduced a short time before the room selections last spring and decided to give rooming together a shot. It was a leap of faith in the moment that led to one of my longest and most supportive friendships.

Somehow, amidst the mess and confusion of an ongoing Bid Day and Sorority Rush experience, I managed to unpack my car and set up my room. I was one of the last girls, if not the last one to arrive at the house. I hadn't been a part of rush week, which is a huge bonding experience for the current sorority members as they work together to host themed parties to get to know potential new members. I hadn't been there because of what was going on at home and what was going on at home was weighing heavy on my mind today.

I finished moving in and the heaviness I was stuffing down bubbled up almost instantly. I had never felt sadness, loneliness, and my heart aching on this level before. I wanted to vomit my heart out onto the floor because it hurt so bad. I couldn't escape the welling tears and the need to hide from all these women in the house that I barely knew. I wanted my heart to explode, but in private. I was so afraid that this intense emotional reaction and the story behind it would scare away anyone around me.

I quickly left the bright and bubbly room I was standing in and ran across the hall to an appropriately empty and dark room to ugly cry it out. I screamed out the tears and no sound came out. My head ached with the tension in it and my eyes were swelling and glassy with tears. I looked up and noticed that I was coincidentally laying under a picture of the boyfriend I had left 4 hours away. He was in a photo with mutual friends, two girls who lived in this very room I was breaking down in. The boyfriend that I loved intensely and wished with all my heart was with me now. The distraction from the pain and fear in my heart.

He was a part of my heartache too. We went to school 16 hours away from one another, so going off to school after a summer together was always so hard.

And yet, he was also a reminder of the other piece of my heart that was leaving me behind. The tears came rolling out full force again as I remembered the conversation, "Evie, your mom is dying." I couldn't bring myself to tell anyone or say it out loud yet. I couldn't imagine my life without her. I loved her. How is death even possible? The stone in my throat swelled and exploded in uncontrollable sobs.

Then the door opened. I tried to pretend to be asleep, but I couldn't stop the sniffling, the tears, the ridiculous amount of liquid coming out of my face. So she noticed me. I didn't even know her name and I don't think she knew mine, but she stopped dead in her tracks and just asked "Are you okay?" I shook my head but couldn't audibly answer.

Before I knew it there were more girls, my sorority sisters, surrounding me, pouring into the room. Hugging me, letting me cry, helping me remember that I can still laugh, walking with me, holding me up, reminding me that I'm not alone. My mom had been one of them once. She had pledged the same sorority at my age and now, I, her legacy, was going to learn to navigate the immediate world around me with them and without her.

Mom died three weeks later. Everyone at the house knew. Some even came to the funerals we held in two different states. It is funny how the brain works in the immediate aftermath of dealing with a traumatic loss. The brain can't access everything at once so it hyper focuses on the matters at hand: the details of the funeral, the people to involve, the dress to wear, the arrangements, the travel, and so much more. It's almost cruel that we live in a world that makes such a production of the burial, and largely ignores the real impact and depth of the loss.

After she was buried was when I felt the stone in my heart return. It was like the weight was filled with thousands upon thousands of little stones that each had a weight to them. Stones of anger. Stones of an indescribable loss. Stones of memories. Stones of words I'll never hear again. Stones of sadness at the loss of memories I'd never get. Stones of love that now felt so useless.

My life now had a before and after. That was stone too. One that I never wanted. Before mom died, it never occurred to me that someone you love with every fiber of your being could leave you. After mom died, I could see just how fragile and fleeting life and love truly are. That stone hurt too.

Love couldn't save her and now love is all I have left for her. Love with no place to go. Love with no physical manifestation. Love that survives in my heart and slowly fading memories. Love that clings to grief as the only evidence that it existed.

Before her death I had no concept of what true loss felt like. After, I became a sinkhole of anxiety, sadness, anger, grief, frustration and I could also still see the light. Petty arguments didn't matter. The beauty in a sunset did. The inevitable drama that comes with living in a sorority house didn't phase me, but the cool breeze of an approaching fall did.

I grew up too. My mom's death left me with an emotionally abusive father and no one to intervene, to temper his emotions, to shield me from his demands. I had to take the reins on my life or be subject to his manipulative, narcissistic wrath, abuse and shame. I knew deep in my gut that the less he knew about and was involved in my life at school the better it would be for me.

I secured my own financing for school from the day forward. I stayed at school as often as possible. I invested in my little sister's start at LSU and with our sorority. I made sure my brother and sister were at important events. I became the mom to them.

And in my effort to maintain some level of normalcy for everyone else, growing up, distancing myself financially from my dad, investing in my siblings, and finishing college, I forgot who I was. Mom gave me grounding to figure that out. She was emotionally validating, encouraging, supportive, and carried nothing but unconditional love. Now, that was gone. I was a leaf floating in the wind. I had no one and I was trying to be everyone to everyone else.

This began a nearly 20 year battle to reclaim my life from my family, from my toxic father. A life I was complicit in sacrificing to keep them happy and moving forward. My real coming of age had only begun when my mom died. I had to lose myself to find me again. I had to learn love again. I had to learn that my love for her was an echo of the love she had for me and that it was possible to love myself in that way as well. Real love couldn't save her, but it could, and it would eventually save me.