My mom was always a cryer. She’d cry after our basketball games in high school. She’d cry at tv commercials. She’d cry looking at a beautiful painting. It was sort of a running joke between she and I. My mom was moved by life. By beauty. By love. And her emotions were just there beneath the surface. Waiting to flood the gates.
And now the jokes on me because I find myself doing the same.
I started watching Dying For Sex on Hulu. Calm down. Sure it has some explicit content. But that’s not what it’s about. It’s the story of a woman with stage four breast cancer. And god love Michelle Williams and her performance but I can’t look at her and not see my mom. Rail thin. Short hair. Chemo wracked bodies. Full of life even while they were dying. Her performance is brilliant.
I’m honestly astounded that a show like this exists. The world has shown us over and over again how little we care about a woman’s pain, let alone her journey to death. And yet here is this show. Raw and beautiful.
There’s a scene where Molly’s (Michelle Williams) best friend Nikki (Jenny Slate) watches as they pull a breathing tube out of her best friend’s throat. She’s terrified because Molly might not remember how to breathe on her own. I couldn’t swallow while I was watching this scene. It was too reminiscent of my own experience when my mom was dying in the hospital. I watched as my brother removed the nasal cannula from my mom’s nose and she took her last breath. It was the most intense moment of my entire life. It feels like it happened yesterday.
But in this scene Molly’s body remembers how to breathe. And the relief Nikki feels is palpable.
I honestly don’t know what this post is about other than understanding why my mom was so moved so often. She didn’t always cry from sadness. But I know she did cry a lot from pain. And not even her own pain. But the pain of watching those she loved suffer. And that remembering.
She was so in touch with her feelings. It might have seemed excessive but she didn’t deny what she felt. She felt it deeply. In the moment. Always.
God I miss her. And watching this show I just want to hug Molly. Be there with her through the pain. Like I was with my mom. Tell her she matters. All the good. All the bad. All the mess. And it is messy. This life. The living. And the dying. It’s all right there on the surface. Where it belongs.
