Would We Have Known These Were The Best Moments of Our Lives?
“She’s so proud of your traveling. She wants you to live the life she was afraid to live, but always wanted. You were always her greatest work of art.”
Those were the words she wrote to me in an email.
She was my mom’s friend back in the moments of white Mustang convertibles, flirty bell bottoms, heart-filled hopes and dreams laced with determination.
At a time when my mother, a free-spirited artist and renaissance soul, first began to lose who she was.
At a time when her nervous excitement slowly began to transform into debilitating anxiety.
At a time when she was suddenly left broken-hearted and broke.
And at a time when she became a victim of her own self-doubt and self-consciousness, that slowly, but surely, gnawed away at any last bit of nerve she had.
You were always her greatest work of art.
Her anxiety disorder murdered her coldblooded. It murdered her while she was alive, and it murdered her the day she took her last breath.
She later had become sick with a physical ailment that needed treatment, but she was too anxious to fight.
Eventually, she stopped taking her medication.
The medication that was keeping her alive.
She couldn’t take the pain anymore.
The physical pain, the mental pain.
She quietly tucked the pills she was given into her mattress, where she lie wishing for a revolver.
I know she wished for a gun because she told me so, through tears of agony and shooting pains in her legs.
You were always her greatest work of art.
They were the same tears I dismissed as being overly dramatic, as I pranced back to my dorm room an hour away, hopelessly naive and foolishly anxious to meet up with a group of fair weather friends–our last night of freedom before the final semester of our college career got started.
I got the call the next morning at 8:17.
“Your mother is unresponsive,” said the unfamiliar voice of authority.
I arrived to our house an hour later, unsure of what I was going to find.
But by then, there was nothing left to find.
Just a hastily written yellow post-it on the door.
“Call me. Signed, The Coroner.”
You were always her greatest work of art.
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I wish I had known her when she drove her white Mustang convertible, golden blonde hair waving in the wind, signature neck scarf tied just right. I wish I had known the woman that winked at sailors, sipped on Brandy, breezily splashed paint on canvases, and entertained guests with salami sandwiches made with fresh cut Italian bread.
I didn’t know that woman. But I do see playful glimpses of that woman everyday, in everything I do.
Yet I wonder–
Did she know those would be some of the best moments of her life?
And furthermore, if these, right now, are some of the best moments of ours, would we know? Or would we just let them delicately slip through the cracks of time, forever chasing after tomorrow and the promise of nothing?
With our heart-filled hopes and dreams laced with determination…
Her moment was then.
…But our moment is right now.
Your moment is right now.
This very minute.
Wherever you are.
And whoever you’re with.
Now is yours.
Because as it turns out, you never know when the moment will arrive, when it won’t be.
You were always her greatest work of art.
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