I can't sleep. For some reason I thought pouring my heart out to this glowing screen in the wee hours of the morning would help that. But now that I'm here I don't know if I have the words. All I can think of is my mama, lying far away in a hospital bed, hooked up to machines. I want to hug her waning body, tell her I love her. But I can't. I can't do anything now so I lie awake and try to put my heart in hers from far away.
Despite the endless blood tests and MRIs, a team of doctors just can't seem to figure out what is breaking the body and spirit of my steel magnolia mother. What terrifies me is that I think I know: I think we did this to her. I think we took and took and took and now she just can't give anymore. I hate thinking of all the times she rode silently in the backseat while my father and I flexed our intellectual muscles in the front. All the times she bit her tongue to save our egos. The things she gave up to support our dreams, letting her own fall by the wayside. I'm scared that her painful deterioration is the tragic but inevitable consequence of our selfishness. For all my bullshit rhetoric about feminism I was never able to elevate the one woman in my life who needed and deserved it the most. And now, I want to be there with her, not because I think she needs me but because I can't assuage the guilt that's coming in heaps. I want to somehow erase my misdeeds against the person who only ever tried to do right by me. I want to repay my debt to her, to take care of her like she has taken care of me. But nothing can be done tonight. So I will lie with my guilt because for now that seems like the only fitting punishment.
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