Reading Poetry to Ghosts

I have a complicated relationship with God.

I used to be Catholic, but I don’t claim to be observant any longer. I’m in devotional limbo, just enough to call myself forgiven—not quite forgiven enough to be sure I’m going to get in.

Truthfully, were it not for Taylor, I would have punched my ticket years ago.

I know when the call was the strongest—the night her father and I lay with a bottle of Xanax between us, with her funeral the only concrete agenda we had left. Everything else we ever had has now returned to dust. All the promises life made us were simply ash, and a lock of her hair my mother had turned into a pendant for me to wear.

Over the years, I’ve tried to fold my hand and leave the table more than once. A betting woman would have placed the odds much higher; I wouldn’t be sitting here today.

Time started healing everyone except me. I haven’t spent the ensuing time fixing myself; I simply faded into the background as life passed me by. I have stayed long enough to see her father and his alternate ending come to fruition.

Another family, another daughter. I’m glad; he’s good people. I wouldn’t have let him ride the gondola back in with me if he had chosen this life. Couldn’t. I only had my two cents for the ferry.

Many years ago, when the loss was still new, I read Annabelle Lee to her and talked as though I was having coffee with a friend. Beside a grave the size of a shoebox, the mourners coming and going, I laid down under her lantern and told her of a love that was more than a love.

Years later, it was Warsan Shire, determined she would know what a fighter she would have been. I told her of horrors she would never know, as though her hair smelled like war and running and running. I assured her I would go in her place, that I’m still here on the front lines, trying to be the woman I know my daughter would have been.

I know now, 22 years later, that she wasn’t there in that place when I would lay down and cover her grave with my body, so afraid she would be cold, afraid she would be cognizant. It was just the process; I had to come to terms with loss.

She wasn’t here, missing me; she had gone forward without me, and I was reading poetry to ghosts.

I told myself it was best I found another way to grieve somewhere around the tenth anniversary of her death. People looked at me with pity when I recounted where I’d been and what I had been doing, so I started writing stories that danced around the crushing weight of losing her.

I remarried for a while, though it was doomed, but he’s been dead now for over 5 years. I don’t miss him; I never did, even though I think of him from time to time.

When we were married, I would read the poetry I wrote for him as we lay together late at night. I haven’t spoken to him since he passed, despite having written thousands of words about him. That would be the behavior of a crazy woman talking to a dead man. I’m not insane.

I started reading religious texts. I was looking for the God who could answer me. One who could explain why he took my daughter. Someone was going to give me a f*cking reason, that was for certain, or I wasn’t moving from this very spot without some answers.

I read through Bibles, Torahs, and Qurans. If there was a God to speak of, I was going to straighten it out and directly.

Months upon months of searching, reading, and scouring, yet I knew nothing more than when I started, and my heart was still a searing pain beneath my breastplate.

What if I had earned it? What if my poor decisions and decidedly little faith meant I was unworthy of being her mother? Was this my lesson in gratitude and piety?

Surely no God could be so vengeful, right?

I learned of karma, convinced my Saṃsāra would entail a thousand lifetimes of grieving, losing my daughter, my marriage, and ultimately, my mind. I went over my life with a fine-toothed comb, determined to suss out the behavior which earned a life so bleak.

Then one day, it hit me. It was simply the way it was written for me, and I was powerless to change it in this life. But what about the next life? Or the one after that? Would I live this torture again, or would I be spared the agony of doing this shit again?

I don’t know what waits on the other side.

I can’t give anyone any answers because I never found them. What I am sure of is that I’m not comfortable with the thought that it was all for nothing and that I’ll never see her again.

I have retained a “passable” amount of faith; I’m living just this side of right because I’m afraid to find out there was a chance to be with my daughter again, and for the second time I managed to f*ck it all up.

It’s almost like I’m a hostage to faith. I’m living under the threat of never seeing my daughter again, unable to speak out against the entity who took her from me lest He never return her. It’s just not something I am willing to leave to chance. I have to get in, be it behind gates or the Elysian Fields; if it is real, she is there waiting for me.

It isn’t of any consequence to me if the gatekeeper is Freyja or St. Pete himself; the end result is the same.

I’m marching right up and telling them I’m there for my daughter and someone is letting me in.

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This post was previously published on April Hawkins, Ask A Bitchface.
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