In the first couple of years after Peggy died, I would think about Muhammed Mohammed and I would wonder what went through his mind in the minutes and hours after the accident. How quick was the fire? How loud was the explosion? I wondered about how his day had started and then I would feel a wellspring of aching sadness I hadn't known I was capable of and from there anger would brew.
I needed someone to blame. And fortunately or not the state of Oklahoma told me where I could channel that blame. But it isn't productive, that kind of devestated rage, especially not when it collides with the electrical storm of post natal depression and a marriage already bleeding from the shoulder.
There are very few things I am ashamed of in my life but the letter I wrote to the court is one of those things. I didn't allow myself take into account what any time in jail for Mohammed would be like, a black Somali-American in a county jail in a very red state, even for a month, at least, not at first. Sometimes, I wonder how difficult he would be to find in Colombus, if I reached out to the Somali community. I wonder if he would sit and have a coffee with me, accept my apology.
There other things I am ashamed of - of not being able to ask for help when I needed it my sophomore year of University, for shutting off friends because the depressions and self-disgust for *allowing* myself to have been drugged and raped. I wasn't careful enough. Or maybe the campus police were right and it was my fault because I was 'too pretty.'
Or not being able to articulate my anger and discontent to the flatmate whose career I would unsuccessfully try to scupper because she made a pass at my boyfriend, railed at me for buying coloured loo roll (in my defense, it was the only loo roll available at the shop on my way home from work), and then called me her 'patroness,' well...how petty can you get? Pretty petty, it would seem, when you're broke, exhausted, the boyfriend has cancer and your dad's just had 2/3rds of his heart lopped off. But why deal with any of those things, when you distract yourself but enacting revenge? Oh, for moment of 'Being Ericka.' What would I right? There must be others; I'm hardly a saint but those are the main 3...my dark secret shames.
I'm standing at an interesting crossroads, approaching 30 years in my profession and I am looking back over this time, wondering. I love what I do and yet...what comes next? Well, more, obviously. But what shape does that take? I am passionate about heritage and legacy, to be sure. Fascinated by the ability living organisms have to move through trauma, to go on to thrive. In 2014, I was fortunate enough to meet Maria Sangris, who introduced me to the concept of being a death doula. I've researched this a bit and I wonder if I'm ready to hold that space. Why death over birth, I wonder? Because we all die but no everyone survives the birth and I still wake up at night looking for that sweet blue boy who never got to feel grass on his feet. So I think about next and I wonder if I am ready. Are we ever?
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