Mom Stuff Part 1

My mom is dying. 

It’s been a nearly 15 year process, but we’re nearing the end. Someone I know described this as an “archetypal moment”, and that seems fitting even though I don’t fully know what that means.

I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting, I’m really averse to calling it “nostalgia”. There is very little, if any, longing for the past. There has been very little “home”. What “home” there was, invokes a sense of dread and despair. What I’ve been experiencing in my trips down memory lane is much closer to nostophobia. 

But really it’s engaging with the mythology of my life. The mythology of my mother’s life. The mythology of this thing we called “family”.

I used to be so ashamed and embarrassed of my past that I’d do anything to avoid talking about it. I rarely ever had friends come over to my house. As soon as I could drive, I got a job. As soon as I had access to a car and money, I tried to be home as little as possible.

I don’t feel the way I used to. For the first time in my life, I actually want to talk about it. Them. Her. Myself. 

So here we go.

I grew up in a conservative, fundamentalist Christian household. That sounds a bit redundant but I want to stress the level of ideological restriction. We didn’t believe in evolution. We believed all other religions were the product of Satan trying to confuse people away from God. Disney movies were barely allowed in our home. Harry Potter? Forget it. Although Tolkien was allowed. 

These groups aren’t exactly known for their consistency.

I didn’t start reading about other cultures, religions, or myths until I was in college. One of my first English courses was on “World Literature” and we were assigned Gilgamesh. I’d expected to feel more stress and anxiety about reading “ungodly” and “secular” stories, but I was able to comfort myself by calling anything outside of my religion “fiction”.

I’ve tried to locate the version I read, but with little luck. So I’m relying on the Wikipedia pages to help flesh out my memory, what follows is based more on my emotional recollections rather than any faithful facts or interpretation of the story.

I still have a visceral memory of being barely 18 and reading some brief lines describing the hall of Ereshkigal.

I had this immediate visual of a Miss Havisham’s parlor but on an Underworld scale. Long tables of dust covered dead, sitting at a decayed feast. Unable to move, but not dead in the sense of being released from existing. Waiting on drips of libations from descendants to bring some relief to the film that coats their mouths and throats. 

That’s my house. That’s my family.

I thought about the havoc depression and other mental health issues had wreaked on the house my single mother worked so hard to buy. Dust covered most surfaces. Food is often rotting in the fridge. Dishes festered in the sink. Film clung to the tubs. Cat boxes went uncleaned. 

Every once in a while I wouldn’t be able to stand it anymore and I’d clean in a frenzy, but the dust, rot, and film would always quickly return. It was demoralizing.

I don’t want to be a corpse.

I don’t want to just eat dust.

So I stopped here on 4/2/2025. I kept wanting to come back to it, to flesh it out more. But I never got around to it. She died on 4/5/2025. It’s now 5/3/2025 and I received her ashes in the mail. Her dust.

I keep having dreams about spilling them, trying to decant them into different vessels but it doesn’t work. 

I’m back to dealing with dust.