Wishing you were somehow here again

The past few times I’ve visited my mom, she’s been way more responsive to my interactions. Her eyes are more focused, and she’s alert. She has moments where she sees me, and a happy/startled flash of recognition comes over her face, like somewhere a synapse connected properly just long enough for a little spark of electricity. It passes as quickly as it comes, but considering the dead-stared interactions I’ve had with her for what’s felt like forever, it feels like such a huge thing.

As much as it elates me, I also feel how it tugs at a wound I thought had healed long ago, the most scarring one of all:

Hope. Hope that maybe the medicines are working, some mutation is reversing, hope that all the prayers and wishes and solemnly swears I set out into universe finally paid off; that those conversations hadn’t been one-sided after all.

I hadn’t really felt anything about any of this in such a long time, almost to the point of thinking I was “cured,” from my grief, but seeing her light up, feeling that hope spring in my chest, I remember: I miss my mom.

I miss that she’s not here to talk to, to get advice from, to laugh with, to make laugh with my filthy sense of humor, despite her trying to act like she’s appalled. And I’m so mad at the shitty moms who get to live long, shitty lives, or stupid fools who complain about how much their mom is shitty because they’re always calling them or wanting to see them on the weekends.

I also wish desperately I could be one of those stupid fools, with lunch plans with my mom for Saturday that I’ll dread all week.

And not to get weird and woo woo, but I really hope one day we get another shot at all this. I hope there is another lifetime after this one where our souls get reintroduced, hopefully with a little more time this time.

I hope one day, I can hug her again (and not like, Heaven hug, but real-life, flesh and bone, hearts beating), and know on some inexplicable level, know that the connection we have has spanned generations and lifetimes and heartaches, but that all that’s in the past now, because we found each other once again.