Pre-Hurt

The day before you died, I wished death on you mom

I cried but not for your future loss

You were dying and so were all of us

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t had enough

I feel shameful in the words but not the feeling

I know you felt like a burden, and damn did we all feel it

But not in the way you probably thought

Caring for you until your last breath wasn’t the cause

It was seeing you deteriorate and feeling grief before it blossomed

It was watching you become everything you never wanted

It was losing you in pieces not as a whole

If you had to leave, I didn’t want to watch you go

You left slowly

Daddy left in an instant

I didn’t have to dwell on knowing of the when

We knew the outcome and the knowledge pledged that it would get worse

Because somehow someway the now was not the purge

It felt like it

Until I opened your bedroom door

Saw you in your wheelchair because that’s where your decay really started

For a while there you could hold a conversation

But it was never a conversation to me

It was always “this may be our last”

And sometimes I would lash out

Saying things at the time,

I actually did mean

And it was mean but it was raw

You were leaving but I was already lost

No I don’t want to take you to the bathroom.. do it yourself

No I don’t want to brush your teeth you shouldn’t need help

No I don’t want to sit and watch Netflix until my eyes burned in my skull

I wanted to go on a Marshall’s spree with you and then get drunk at home

I wanted to hear your laugh but your face would only let you speak a silent moan

I wanted to be a better daughter but now I’ll never know that I can be

And if I am who does it please?

You’re not here to see me

If I could I would have closed your bedroom door and you would have never seen me again

You were not a burden my sweet mother

Death was

and it was slowly becoming you

I wished death on death

At least that’s what I tell the guilt

Because when you stopped breathing I can’t say that’s when I started grieving

That was my first sigh of relief and I knew I could finally be me again

I may be nothing without you, but you were nothing to yourself in those last years

So I actually won’t shed a tear for my words

Because all I wanted to be gone

Was not you

It was the anticipatory grief

The pre-hurt