A Masterpiece

Note: This kind of just spilled out in pieces over the past three weeks and is completely unrelated to my beat. I’m not sure what it will turn into, if it turns into anything at all but I figured that since I didn’t know what to do with this piece, that this blog might be a good place to start.

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It’s Friday afternoon, and I’m navigating my way through the back roads of a small town just outside of Worcester to get to my lawyer’s office. My mind wonders off a bit while driving and I ask myself why I chose a lawyer whose office is so damn far away from everything else in my life (easier to avoid him)? And why I am so damn incapable of doing things in a timely manner (because I’m skilled in avoidance)?  Sometimes, when the lawyer needs something from me, life finds a way of postponing whatever that immediate thing is. “Life” is what I call the mundane daily routine that I could easily work around and these past two weeks were no exception.

When I arrive, I ceremoniously swing open the door and step inside and find myself about two feet from his face. He smiles a smile that displays an equal amount of amusement and aggravation. I know the rules…knock before entering. I have never been much for rules that I consider arbitrary and today it doesn’t matter as much. I’m far too proud of myself for showing up to take care of business to concern myself with what he thinks about how I made my entrance.

“Do you know whose file I have in my hand?” he asks.

The answer is obvious.

“Mine?” I replied with an intonation that bordered annoyance. I wasn’t in a mood to waste time. Friday afternoons are generally reserved for lunches downtown, trips to the art museum, or just near anything but meeting with this guy.

“You’re right” he responded, flipping the file folder open for a quick scan of the top document.

“Did you bring the letter?” he asks.

I had. I opened my folder and took out six copies of a letter that I neglected to mail out two weeks earlier. He inspects each one closely to make certain that I filled it out properly and then tucks them in the file. I’m left to assume that they are satisfactory.

“What about the bank account?” he asks.

“Next on my list today…also going to get rid of that car” I reply.

“Good. I’ll contact you as soon as I get a response from the mortgage company.”

He turns away, as to say that he’s done with me and that is fine. I’m done too. My business with him is an exasperating necessity that my life would be easier without. I operate along a fine line of having just too much to do at all times and my mother’s unexpected death in November tripled that load and pushed the threshold to a whole new level.

My mother and I never really got along, and we butted heads from as early in my life as I can remember. There were some stand out moments, like refusing me the opportunity to study in England when I graduated high school because she never got to do it…her attempts to passive-aggressively turn my brother and I against our father by telling us that he didn’t want to spend time with us. I found out much later, that he was working three jobs to pay his child support because she threatened him with additional court dates and the idea of potentially having him jailed. She dated a man that had such racist blood coursing through his body, that he referred to my best friend and our closest neighbors (a Lebanese family) as “the terrorists next door”.  I never understood what she saw him other than he had the money to take her on fancy trips to tropical locations, things that she never had access to growing up and things that she never managed to prioritize for herself or her family. Honestly, I can safely say that I never felt like I was of a priority in her life – but I won’t defend that presumption here.

Now, she’s gone and being the oldest of her two children, I’m left with the immense responsibility of cleaning up her mess – literally and figuratively. I hadn’t entered my childhood home in over ten years, and on the night my brother and I found our mother, I found out that she was a hoarder. There were signs of this developing while I was growing up, but nothing prepared me for what I saw that night. For ‘Stranger Things’ fans, it was as close to having a real-life “upside down” experience as I hope to ever have to experience again.  When the funeral director and staff arrived in the middle of the night to collect her body, they couldn’t even move a gurney into the house.

The lawyer, the house, the car; these are the easiest parts I suppose. It’s dissecting and deconstructing her life that continues to be difficult. It’s having to ask myself how anyone could live like this…how someone could be so proud, that they refused to ask for help…so unwilling to see that the house was destroying her and any chance of having a normal life or normal relationships. Photos of herself taken 40 years prior are taped on the cupboards, yet not a single picture of her grandchild – my daughter, to me, some minor proof that her reality wasn’t all that it seemed. It’s revisiting so many awkward and hurtful moments from my own life, and seeing that maybe, it was her festering illness to blame and not a personal affront. It’s looking in the mirror, suddenly and acutely noticing our shared features and wondering if I could ever allow myself to succumb to such an illness. It’s convincing myself that I am my own person and not an extension of her instabilities.

This is “life” – the things you can’t quite see, but are still able to materialize in the back of your mind. Life is the questions we ask ourselves and the answers we provide; the things we want to say, but can’t find the words for. Life is wondering if you’re a better mother to your child than she was to you.

Everything else? They are just the slight instances that make up our being – compartmentalized microcosms of our experiences…proof we existed. The line between the tangible and intangible draws a fevered sketch of what we want to show others and what we can show others about ourselves and our lives.

Caricatures on the outside, masterpieces on the inside.

Not every masterpiece is beautiful.

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