Unexpected Wisdom From A Little Black Book

It was a bitterly cold day when I left my mother's recently unoccupied, two-bedroom apartment. I carried a box of decorative owls that were on route to Good Will before I made the hour and a half trek back home. Trying to balance this awkwardly packed box on my knee as I fumbled with frozen fingers with the trunk key proved to be ineffective, as the box, and most of its contents, crashed to the ground. "Goddamn it!" I snarled as I saw shards of shattered beaks and large, seemingly disapproving eyes scattered about. I could almost hear my Mother chastising my clumsiness as I rubbed my temples from the day's emotionally and physically draining activities.

Thankfully, it was not as bad as I feared as I picked up the broken pieces of my Mother's past (you'll realize just how apropos this is as my story unfolds), though I still found myself cursing up a storm as I cleared the mess away from the ground. As I started to get back up, my eye landed on an object near my back passenger tire. Not wanting to have to stretch out underneath my car in the dirty snow, I almost opted to just leave it there, but my good conscience couldn't just litter like that. So, there I was on my belly, cursing some more, reaching for this thing that I could now see was a small, black notebook with an owl on the cover.

After rolling my eyes and grabbing the book, I put it in my coat pocket without looking inside. I knew that it wouldn't be something I could drop off with the box, so I decided to take care of it later. At this point, I was so exhausted and cranky that all I wanted to do was get home and drown my irritation in a hot bath and half a bottle of Cabernet.

Fast forward about 3 hours to a happily warm and slightly tipsy version of myself lying on the couch, I pulled the book out. The first few pages were a few numbers and addresses of friends and family with random notes only decipherable to my Mother's mind. It wasn't until I got towards the middle of the book that I saw it became more of a diary.

Just then, in walked in my roommate, Anya, smelling of cigarettes and expensive perfume. "Hey, beauty. How’d it go?” I gave a half-hearted smile and responded “Eh…owls, Anya…so…many…owls.”

Anya smiled in that sympathetic way that I shy away from when anyone focuses that kind of empathy on me and said, "She still had them, huh?"

I sighed and replied "Of course. You know how obsessive she'd get about anything she'd focus on. Anya, it's literally every single room, sans the goddamn ceilings, that are filled with them. It's going to take a month just to get rid of them all."

"Why not just hire one of those junk-hauling companies to come and clear it out?" she inquired while pulling her hair back in a ponytail.

I laid my head back down on the couch arm and said "I thought about it, but honestly, I think it may be cathartic for me to just do it myself. Like, clearing it could help me process it easier? I dunno. It's all very daunting and annoying, but something just tells me I need to do it myself. I'll just go down there daily, and get it done. I can sell some stuff that’s worth anything, and then buy myself a little vacation to the Indiana Dunes or some such luxury vacation destination." We both chuckled at this because we once ventured to the Dunes with our boyfriends at the time, and it was a disaster for reasons I won't go too far into. Let's just say it involved a very angry Anya and a sexual experiment gone horribly awry with her mate because Icy Hot was mistakenly used in the dark instead of KY jelly.

“Well, ok then. Do what you gotta do to get the closure you need. Losing your Mom, no matter what the relationship was like, is not an easy thing."

I smiled and responded, "I suppose that's true, isn't it? I thought I'd be more apathetic about it, not having spoken to her in years, but begrudgingly so, I admit I'm still human."

Anya and I have been friends since 7th grade, so she knows me probably better than anyone else. We're vastly different in many ways, but no matter what, have been there for one another during all the phases in our lives. While I went on to college after high school for a degree in Psychology, Anya was content with working at her Dad's restaurant for all the perks it afforded her wild child ways.

Being an only child, I was more a parent to my Mother than she was to me. Stepping in between her and my alcoholic Father after she'd provoke him with her passive aggressive comments became a skill that I could now put on my resume as being adept at "conflict resolution" and "crisis management."

After my Father passed away from cirrhosis of the liver when I was 16, my Mother let loose because she no longer had to hide her love of men at the supermarket, and so brought them home often to feed more than her appetite for food. You see, my Mother was blessed with beauty and thus had no issues attracting almost any man she wanted. She was visually striking with long dark hair, ivory skin, gray eyes, and a classically curvy figure reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe. Unfortunately, another thing shared similar to Ms. Monroe, was my Mother’s battle with depression.

How did Mom die, you may be wondering? Well, seems that she finally gave into the suicidal ideations that too often accompany depression, and ingested a lethal combination of prescription drugs. Due to the fact that I had cut her out of my life because her verbal abuse had gotten unbearable, I was thankfully not the one to find her. I instead got a phone call from the police after management discovered her body due to a neighbor’s complaint of a foul odor. As I am the only relative known to her, and somehow still listed as her emergency contact, the responsibility came upon me for one last time (thanks, Mom).

As Anya went to bed for the night, I opened up the book.

Journal Entry dated 12/4/20:

“I miss Alex. I feel very alone in this world, but she abandoned me. I almost called her today but she clearly wants nothing to do with me.”

Oh, selfish as always, huh, Mom? Never mind the fact that I had to cut you out of my life because of your toxicity and abuse. You missed me? Phone number is the same as it was 2 years ago. Annoyed, I go on to the next entry.

Journal Entry dated 12/6/20:

“Well, I sold the ring, car, and cashed in the 401K. I’m tired of being here. Sick of these men who don’t care. Sick of not being able to feel normal. These meds make me feel like a damn zombie, and that’s no way to live.”

Wow…I knew she suffered from depression, but had no idea she ever tried medication because she refused it all when I was growing up. The ring to which she referred I’m assuming is the diamond my Dad gave her. It had been his grandmother’s, then his mother’s, and was passed down when he proposed marriage. It was large, vintage, and worth a few grand for sure.

Journal Entry dated 12/7/20:

“Today’s the day. I thought about calling Alex to say a proper goodbye, but knew she’d somehow talk me out of it, or even worse, tell me to enjoy my trip to Hell. Doesn’t matter anyway. She can take care of herself, and she’ll find what I’m leaving her. I didn’t know how to express it, but I do love her. Just can’t take this shit world any longer.”

That was the last and final journal entry. I really didn’t know what to think. All I knew at this point was that I wanted to clear out her apartment, possibly find whatever it is she left for me in some distant hope that it could bring me some peace of mind, and move on with my life.

Back at Mom’s apartment the next day, I'd already made 5 trips to the Good Will down the road and gotten the same befuddled smirk each time from the employee taking in the boxes of never-ending owls. I had cleared out the bedroom and bathroom of all but the bed and nightstand.

As I moved the nightstand away from the wall, I saw an envelope marked “To Alex” taped to the back. I opened it to discover $20,000 in cash! “Holy shit balls,” I said out loud. So, this is what she left. Money was always her way of trying to either buy me off, or in her own twisted way, show me some semblance of care. Emotions inside me at this moment were a rampant cocktail of elation, confusion, sadness, and anger.

I mean, I definitely had use for the money, but I felt like once again, this was her cop out for being a shitty mother. How does one bring closure to a situation that ended with no meaningful discourse? No apology? No acceptance of accountability? I just felt like she left again, paying me off to clean up her mess.

After a few days of crying, swearing at her memory, and finally meditating about it all, I decided that a vacation courtesy of Mom would be exactly her way of trying to communicate symbolically what she didn’t have the ability to say. I know now that although she was unable to give me the verbal validation I craved, her leaving me the money was her way of showing remorse.

I’m using the rest of the money towards my Masters in Professional Counseling so I can continue my education in mental health. Although I’m still healing from the abundance of trauma to which I was exposed, I have accepted that her untreated depression played a large role in how she handled life…and motherhood. I know from both her and my father’s childhoods, that they too, endured painful experiences, and thus simply passed on what they were taught.

This is also how I learned that while too many of the mentally wounded continue the perpetuation of negative cycles, there are ones like myself who are destined to break the toxic pattern. We grow from muddy waters to willfully bloom into a healthier hybrid, striving to help others towards empowerment, and from drowning in their own murky melancholia.

One thing that helped me find some peace and purpose in all this chaos was looking up the symbolism of owls after wondering what prompted her obsession with them. After doing a quick Google search, I was suddenly emotional when I read the following on a site called Crystal Clear Intuition:

“Owls represent wisdom, knowledge, change, transformation, intuitive development, and trusting the mystery. They are tied to the spiritual symbolism of “death” which brings about new beginnings with a higher understanding and evolved perspective.”

Maybe, deep down, Mom was trying to transform, to gain wisdom through her pain. And maybe it took her death to open up this new beginning for me on my journey of helping others choose life before it’s too late. After all, who would I be if not for the first-hand experience of seeing how our trauma affects our lives, be it good or bad?

In the end, our truest wisdom comes from the pain endured, and for that, I’m choosing to be thankful.

*owl information taken from https://crystalclearintuition.com/owl-meaning/#:~:text=Owls%20represent%20wisdom%2C%20knowledge%2C%20change,higher%20understanding%20and%20evolved%20perspective.