telescope

September 16th, 2024

Some days you look into a telescope and all you can see is the immense, infinite universe, nebula swirling like frosting and stars sparkling like sprinkles; other days all you can focus on is a black hole, consuming its corner of the cosmos.

There are typical anniversaries when it comes to loss and then there are the abnormal ones. If you have dead loved ones (shout out!) you probably hear me. We have standard days of annual mourning, and then we get bonus days, personalized, the weird ones that bend us in magnetic, mysterious ways.

Today is one of those days for me.

We got exactly one month to get hit with, absorb, and accept what was happening with our mom. We found out there was something wrong on September 16th; that something wrong stole her away on October 16th. There wasn’t anything fair about it then; there isn’t anything fair about it now.

To say I think about her every day is like saying I breathe every day. Like, fucking duh. Of course I do.

Sometimes those thoughts are magnificent, like the universe. I watched the Emmys today (I worked open-to-close yesterday and they didn’t invite me to the ceremony AGAIN). Every time a winner thanks their mom, for “all the unconditional love and support,” I leak like a gutter because I know that unconditional love and support, I lost it, but it’s something that lives in my heart until that thing stops beating.

Sometimes those thoughts are devastating, though, like the aforementioned black holes. As I resume the role of student again, I darkly wonder how many years I’ll have left on this earth after I graduate. If I live as long as my mom, I’m already over two-thirds through my life.

Two-fucking-thirds.

I feel like I’ve accomplished so much and I still feel like a baby.

A baby with gray hairs forming at my infant temples.

We got a month to deal with it and it’s been almost four years and I haven’t even begun to deal with it, and once I deal with it? It’ll probably be over.

That’s so sad but it’s also hilarious, the kind of comedy that starts deep in your stomach, comes up through your throat and makes you cry tears of every flavor.

Most days I look through the telescope and I see it all: the joy and the beauty and the humor and the light. But some days, the weird days, the abnormal anniversaries we celebrate all alone, I look through the telescope on the wrong end and see only black.

At times like these, with thoughts like this, I just remind myself that telescopes turn around.