Love you, Love you

The first bite of a marijuana cookie is always a shot in the dark. You may feel a slight buzz… You may get violently high and have to convince yourself you don't need an ambulance...

My mother was the one who sat nervously beside me every ambulance ride of the way until the staff at the psych ward told her she couldn’t come with me any further. The same one who picked me up at those same double doors a week later cultivating solemn, worried silence on the way home. That night, she dashed to get me the puke bucket when I said I might yak the tomato soup she warmed up for me. As my stomach emptied, the new show I had been dying to see blathered on, despite my mom's aversion to its explicit language and violence. When the chunks had been fully blown, we sat and watched together.

Her car still smells new three years after purchase. When I ask her to take me somewhere, she drives. And pays. And never mentions it. Her favorite song comes on the radio and she softly sings along. “I hate country music,” I say.

“Oh, okay. You can change the station if you want.” And I do, knowing our tastes in most things are like night and day. My songs blare as she sits beside me in silence, no longer singing. No longer reminding me that she’s there.

She doesn’t like that I smoke weed. “I just don’t understand why you have to do it,” she’ll say before I walk out the door to partake. My response is always the same.

“I don’t have to, I want to.”

When I walk back inside, I breeze by her as she quietly sits on the couch. Past the sink, past the washer and dryer and into my room. I hear the muffled clatter of plates and silverware and cringe, knowing my mom hates doing the dishes. I do too.

My mom was just a kid when her mother died of cancer. She’d often tell me how she only remembered her mother as a sick, bedridden woman, unlike her older sisters who were fortunate enough to know their mom when she was healthy. Now, dirty dishes pile up in the sink, clothes spill out of the laundry room, and amongst it all my mom sits, not speaking or looking up at me as I come out of my cave for snacks. Before I retreat again, I stand in my doorway and call to her. “Goodnight, if I don’t see you again tonight.”

“Goodnight,” she says, mustering all the warmth she can gather for her reply.

“Love you.”

“Love you.”

Months and weeks later I lay in my bed, shaking and vigorously chugging water as the THC from this edible ravages my body. Too much.. Eat less next t!me.,, I’m going t0 be fine 2m0rrovv, my inner dialogue tells me. I make a head spinning dash for my trashcan and drag it to my bedside in case of an upchuck emergency. A mental checklist of comfort appears in my hindered brain.

Tr@sh <an., .ti$su3s, ...bl4nke+’’, m3ds… 0h f \_/ck.,-

No water. I reluctantly realize what I need to do and breathe deeply in preparation. Suddenly my hand is on my doorknob and high as a broken kite in a hurricane, I step out the door and poker face my way to the pantry. My mom sits in the living room watching the shows her mother watched when she was alive. I recognize a buoyant-tuned theme song that constantly rings through our house at night. She seems to not notice my little stoner escapade, allowing me to slip back into my room with ease and two full water bottles.

Time soon melts away. Memories take control as my brain becomes a warped, darkened theater featuring replays on a thirty foot tall cerebellum screen. I can see my mom’s smile that fades into her gray hair that she definitely got from the rest of us. I see her talking to the dog as if he's the only true friend she has in the house. I see her downcast expression she unconsciously displays while she sits alone in the living room watching her mother’s favorite shows. I see her wishing she had a better relationship with her daughter and wondering what she’s done wrong.

Hot, briny tears burst out of my eyes as the brain theater drips and fades back into the walls of my room. Years of guilt come pouring through my sobs as I realize she deserves better from me. She never watched my explicit, violent show or listened to my shitty music or spent hours beside me in the hospital because she had to.

She wanted to.

The weight of the emotional cocktail served by the edible propels me to my feet, giving me the courage to walk out to my mom, tears and THC and all to tell her how much I love her. I open my door expecting the couch, the TV, and my mother. Instead I open it to blackness. Somehow, hours had passed me by and she had shut the lights off for the night and gone to bed. The dark seemed to reprimand me.

One day she won't be here to sing her favorite songs or send you pictures that make her think of you. One day will be the last day you ever hear her voice. Don’t let her wish things were different with her last breath.

The command left me altered...persistent with a new objective. I didn’t get to tell my mom how much I loved her that night. But nowadays...

I keep the sink spic and span and cabinets stocked with fresh dishes as often as I can. I keep dirty laundry in my hamper. I always say yes when she asks if I want to come with her to get groceries and we chatter the whole way there. We goof around in the stores like there’s nobody else around. I listen to her frustrations with work. We discuss what design our matching tattoos will be. I help cook dinner, sometimes telling her to sit and relax while I finish up. I whistle the Hogan’s Heroes theme song when I hear her watching it late at night, and I always call to her from my doorway,

“Goodnight. Love you.”

Over a long and sometimes arduous twenty two years, I had come to find that the most important lesson she taught me wasn’t spoken during failed math quizzes or rocky teenage friendships. It wasn’t spoken at all. I’ll be forever grateful for the darkness that set me straight that night, and unlike my mom’s smile, her painted rock collection, and the old pictures of her mother…

I hope I never have to see it again.