Memoir

For Language Arts, our project we've been working on is a memoir. I wrote this all in a 90-minute period (yay for being a peer tutor in a class full of freshmen with nothing to do!) So.... Not exactly sure why I'm posting this, but I hope the writing's ok. Now, just to let you know, in case you're some random family member who was there at my parents' wedding, remember that I was five years old. I may not have remembered things exactly as they were. This is just as I remember them. So if it's completely wrong, that's nice. Don't ruin my story. And if you're my parents reading this, GTF(oops)[H]O. Thank you.

My last memory of her is of her in a hospital bed.

I don’t remember much, except for the warm yellow fluorescent lighting and that she was smiling. I don’t remember my three year-old self feeling fear or apprehension from the medical instruments and monitors. I just remember the happiness of my beautiful mother looking at me and smiling. It was the last time I would see her alive, though we didn’t know it at the time.

            Linda Diane Fralick Wilcox died on Thanksgiving, November 23^rd, 2000 of a cerebral hemorrhage. After a lifetime of suffering from multiple kidney transplants, dozens of surgeries, hypertension, and a couple of near death experiences she was finally gone. She died at only 34, leaving behind a 48 year-old husband to care for their three year-old girl and two-year old boy, her miracle babies.

            My first memory is of getting a computer for my 3^rd birthday (one of the benefits of having a father in the computer industry). I remember sitting outside my bedroom door, hearing the unknown noises coming from my room of my dad setting it up. I remember my mom sitting down by me, hugging me and laughing.

            “What do you think Daddy is doing in there?” she asked.

             With a shy but excited smile, I answered, “I don’t know” with an added shrug.

            We waited until he was finished, then I was introduced to a whole new world of Microsoft Word and a plethora of Sesame Street games.

            My second to last memory of her is on the way to Utah, a day or two before she died. We were about two hours away from our destination when two whining children wanted their mom.

            “Mommy!” Kevin wailed.

            “Mommy, please come sit back here with us! Please,” I pleaded.

 She finally relented, unbuckled, and precariously climbed into the back seat between us. That may have not seemed like a major act of love, but in that case, in that instant, it was everything.

            I don’t remember the funeral. And I’m glad. I’m well; I guess happy probably isn’t the right word to choose while talking about death. I’m suppose I’m thankful that my last memory of her isn’t of a cold, pale dead body, dressed in white clothes in a casket. This may sound demented but I have always been intrigued with dead bodies. From examining a dead mouse with my play doctor kit as a child to touching the waxy hands of the deceased at viewings and funerals, I’ve always found it fascinating. I know random facts, such as how decomposition starts the moment of death, though of course it’s not noticeable for another while.

            I want to know what makes a dead body so different from a living one. What is it about the moment of death, the absence of the spirit that causes such effects? Energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed. Where did the part of my mother that made her her go? I also wonder if someone this day, this second, is walking around with my mother’s corneas, her liver, hear heart. Definitely not her kidneys, because no one would want a malfunctioning, twice-used body part. I found out that she was an organ donor, that her body was kept alive just long enough to be eligible for organ donation. While her brain was… a dead, useless piece of body tissue.

            Because of my religious beliefs, I know that I will see her again. But that is not enough. I need her now. I found a hope chest of her things at my grandparent’s house. I sleep with her beautiful red dress she wore to see “Phantom of the Opera”, clutching it like a child’s security blanket, inhaling the musty but oh so wonderful scent of being in a wooden chest for 11 years. Sometimes by morning it ends up above the covers, and I know that my parents have seen it, though they never say anything. They never say anything at all.

            A month ago, I found a large box of her old things in the attic. I found a journal from when she was a teenager to her twenties, from which I found out her exact medical issues, that she didn’t even go on a date until she was 25, and that she considered suicide on a number of occasions. I found her old, huge make-up box filled with Amway makeup over 13 years old. I even found her glasses, those clunky, unattractive “coke bottle” glasses. I put them on and try to see what she saw. Maybe it would bring her back.

            My dad had already endured a divorce from his first wife in the 80’s, and now he was stuck again by himself but this time with two little children. I remember how night after night I would wake up in the middle of the night and run to his room, knock, and ask if I could sleep with him because I had a bad dream. I have to admit that I lied pretty much every night about those dreams. In reality, I was just lonely. In the mornings my dad would get my brother and I breakfast, do my hair in one or two little braids, and we would be off to the kind lady who babysat us every day. After over a year of shuffling my brother and me to the babysitter during the day, my dad finally found a permanent caregiver: my stepmother.

My stepmom was divorced by her alcoholic husband who came home with his new girlfriend and told her she had three weeks to move out. I didn’t care at the time that she was my stepmom, she was someone who was there to love me and take care of me. She was my new mother. She is a good woman and has done a wonderful job of raising my brother and me. But still it is not the same. I want the mother who thought she would be childless all her life. I want the mother who miraculously conceived and went through a risky pregnancy, but thought that her 3 lbs 7 oz daughter was perfect and completely worth it. I want the mother who would wake up in the middle of the night just to turn on the camcorder and record me, so that those moments could be captured forever. I want the mother who… loved me before she even knew me.

            On my dad and stepmother’s wedding day in January 2002, I was wearing a pretty puffy blue dress. I thought I looked just like Cinderella. No, I was Cinderella, and the temple with its beautiful fountain and landscaping was my castle. My new aunt was arranging all of my new cousins and aunts and uncles into cute picture-taking poses. Walking up to “Mommy”, I asked excitedly, “Can I be in a picture? Please?”

“No, honey,” she replied. “Only the cousins are going to be in this one.” My little five year-old mind was confused. Wasn't I part of this new family too? “But Mama, I am a cousin now too!” I could tell she was busy and didn’t want to worry about me at the moment. “Kelsey. These pictures are just for the people born or married into my family.”

“But… but Hannah and Abby were adopted, though—” She just looked at me. I could feel the implication. They count. You don’t.

  I was heartbroken. I wanted to be in a picture, any picture so terribly bad. I felt left out, like everyone got to have fun and be a part of everything while my maternal grandparents stood there watching Kevin and I the whole time. I wasn’t a part of that family. I didn’t count. I was an outsider.

            Sometimes now, when I put on her glasses and favorite lipstick (Amway color “Ember”) and squint reeeaaally hard while looking in the mirror, I can almost see her face. I can almost see the face I don’t remember but have memorized from looking at countless pictures. But when I open my eyes all the way again, I see no resemblance.

            There are dozens of photographs from that wedding day, and I pass many of them in a collage frame in the hallway many times a day. I am in only one picture, the group picture, where my little body is standing in front of my new mom, face stained with dried tears, with red eyes and a half-hearted, attempted smile.

Here's a poem I found online a couple of years ago that I really love and I'm thinking about adding it to the the printed copy:

“Memories”

By “AmbRawr”

And I remember she wouldn’t wake up.
Her lips were mushed together in a
Horrible shade of red
They buried my mother in a white dress
And red lips.
And she couldn’t see.
Where are your glasses, Mommy?
And still at sixteen I bring them to my face
And peer through the distorted murky lenses
To see what she saw
Maybe one day …
And I remember it hitting me 
Like it does every day
When I hear them all talk and complain about their
“Horrible” mothers
What’s it like to have a mother
I’d give anything to know,
Or at least for them to know how lucky they are.
They know.
And I remember she wouldn’t sit up
And I dreamed of a stuffing machine because
Someone whispered by my ear she was
Cut in half and stuffed
And it made no sense
And still at sixteen I wonder
What happened to my mother?
And I remember her faintly 
She doesn’t even smile in my dreams anymore
And I wonder if she’ll ever be proud of me
If she’d ever approve of me
And who I’ve become 
The things I’ve seen
The things I’ve done
And I remember her singing 
Though I can’t hear her voice
The only happy Christmas I hold on to
Every year
Maybe one day it’ll come back
I used to think
Maybe one day she’d come back
And still at sixteen I hope
Maybe one day she’ll come back …
And I remember she wouldn’t wake up
Not even to say good-bye.

Haha, are you depressed yet from reading this? Sorry.