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May 31st, 2023

The older I get, the less I try to use the word “hate,” but today is the worst day of the year, and I hate it.

It’s my mom’s birthday, which is worse than her death day, because that day was something that happened and is done, while her birthday is about what could have been, what should be; birthdays are about futures and potential and possibilities, and today is the day that I feel most helpless of all.

I get mad at myself because I didn’t know the last card or hug or laugh was the last.

This year, I’ve been going through all these photo albums I inherited, and something that delights me is how many animals there are in the pictures.

We were just always around animals; we may have lived in a city-zoo. My mom fucking loved them, and I am my mother’s son, so I fucking love them. I was years into writing books before I noticed that every single story I’ve ever published has at least one animal in it.

I eat meat, and hunting has always bothered me. I’m hypocritical like that. Learning about Temple Grandin reduced my boiling guilt but it’s still always there.

Humans have really done a number on the environment. When I say “done a number,” I don’t mean a snazzy dance with jazz hands; we are actively burning down the only house we have.

I get unreasonably upset when people talk about our planet and I realize it’s because I take it personally.

There are those who don’t “believe” we affect our climate like we do, but that’s the best part about science: it doesn’t give a shit about what you believe. You can believe whatever you want and still be objectively wrong; we do and we are, much more often than we don’t and are not.

My mom loved animals, and they loved her, because duh; she had such compassion and empathy for them. She understood that while we think we’re better, smarter and stronger, animals are the best of us.

I learned from her that silence is a sign of fierce intelligence; quiet is brilliant insight.

I say too much because I’m not any of those things.

It’s silly that I still fear letting my mom down.

I watch us destroy everything, and I feel like I’m letting her down; it reminds me how much some people just don’t care, and how unfair it is that this woman who cared so much isn’t here to care anymore.

I see her sitting in her chair in the living room; she stayed up because I was out later than I said I would be and she was worried.

I see her face at my door, making sure I stay in bed this time, making sure my eyes are closed and my blanket is over my feet and her baby is safe.

I miss how much she cared.

I hate today because birthdays are about the future and some days the future just feels so bleak, especially when we lose the people who care enough to make it bright.

I miss her being the sunshine on my dark days, of which I have too many and am bad at enduring without her; I miss her being my umbrella, her ability to repel life’s mixture of rain and tears, to ground electric pain; I miss her texts about nothing that meant everything but especially after they stopped.

I take it personally when people don’t care, because they’re here, and they should fucking act like it.

I hate today.

Go tell an animal that you love them.