Poetic License

This is our most thoughtful time of year, no matter your stripe. For pagans, Samhain encompasses Halloween evening and November first. For others, it is either a time to be feared, shunned, or enjoyed with abandon. Many Americans don’t do anything for All Hallow’s Day/Samhain, but there is a beauty to remembering and honoring our ancestors, as well as our descendants who have preceded us in death.

It’s a time to let ourselves melt into the memories and nostalgia, to send love their way, and to celebrate everything they meant to us in life. I certainly have enough people in my life who have preceded me in death, not the least of which are my parents and my daughter. Each one of them presented me with challenges and struggles.

Part of grief, for me, was accepting the good as well as the bad, and accepting the relief I felt when each of them passed away. The fact that I was relieved brought me such guilt. For my parents, it lasted about a year before I began to see that was a normal part of it. That rush of relief that we would never have another fight. I would never get another nasty letter. I would never again have to hide who I was. With Stephanie, the guilt lasted much longer. It isn’t until about the seven-year point that I was finally able to exhale, forgive myself all my shortcomings, and forgive hers, too.

My struggles with my father were legendary, but man, I loved him. Even though he tried to send me to reform school because he thought I was a lesbian (I was, I am, I stuffed it down out of fear), even though he knocked me on my ass more than once, even though he became a monster during his morphine addiction, I loved him, damn it. I loved my mother, too. She could be a nasty bitch, though, especially when she was going through menopause. She used to write me these mean, horrible letters that I have shut out of my mind. What I remember is that they would leave me devastated. It got to the point at which I would leave the mail for Paul to collect — at his request — so that he could read the letters and report anything of note to me after he destroyed them. Yeah, so I had to let all that go so I could love my mother again. She became sweeter in her old age, but I never trusted her.

Parents who have their own battles, as my parents did, and who have mental health issues, leave a lot of damage in their wake. But I’m okay now. I have nothing and no one to fear.

Stephanie had mental health issues as well as addictions. We worried about her all the time. On a grief board for parents of kids who died of substance abuse that I follow, a mother asked, “Is it wrong for me to have felt relief when he died? I no longer have to worry about him dying somewhere and just disappearing.”

I could relate to that so strongly. That was really the core of my guilt, because one of the first things I said to Paul after the police left that day was, “Well, we won’t have to worry about her anymore.”

If you haven’t lost someone to substance abuse, you won’t understand, I think. But hell, I’m writing a whole book about what Steph brought to our lives and the post-apocalyptic wasteland she left us in when she died. Her brother worries he’ll forget her, so we talk about her all the time. I could never forget her. She came from my body. She was a part of my soul. She was the light and the dark in my life. I wanted to be the kind of mother I never had.

I failed. But God how I loved her. How I still love her. So today I honor my daughter. Stephanie Nicole Pavlichek. In my heart and in my mind, every waking moment, and in many dreams. Mommy loves you forever, sweetheart.

Blessed Samhain, all.

Jude

(Not a perfect sentiment of my feelings, but the music is lovely. Someday I might find love again, and that love might enhance the good life I have for myself. I’ve made many mistakes, but on this Samhain, I’m forgiving myself.)