Remembering my mother's death

"Losing love is like a window in your heart-
Everybody sees you're blown apart
Everybody feels the wind blow."

My mother died of leukemia when I was in highschool. Losing her was what broke my family apart- it drove my father violently insane, and it drove my sister and I to the extremes of teenage angst... and into meeting all the characters who lurk around its fringes.

I sometimes wonder if she would be proud to see me now. We all let each other down after her death- my father, my sister and myself. She tried so hard to raise us properly, but I think the greatest disservice we did to her memory was in letting that go to waste. My father terrorised us and became a filthy hermit, lurking in the basement in fear of Armageddon... and I gave in. I up and left, selfishly, abandoning my little sis to his mercy. It's amazing either of us made it to semi-functional adulthood in the end.

Her actual death, all that time ago, came as a shock to us. She relapsed after four years in the clear, when we thought we could let down our guard. We spent two months living by her hallowed bedside, watching her deteriorate. When she finally passed it came as a relief- she had already been dead for weeks by then; just a body we couldn't mourn. She was bloated beyond recognition, and covered in masses of tubes like feasting worms.

I couldn't even touch her, and was asleep on the couch when they pulled the plug. Nobody thought to wake me- I was guilt-wracked for months. I felt like I'd betrayed her somehow, like beating myself up was my only distraction from how sad I really was.

It was just the tattered remains of our dysfunctional family who showed up for her funeral. We were all drinking and not sniping at each other for once- meaning that we just sat in awkward silence, listening to her favourite song playing over and over. That was the beginning of the end for us, when all I wanted to say was:

...I'm sorry, mum.