It Hit Me Like a Ton of Bricks: A memoir of a mother and daughter

do know,” my mother says musing over her vegetables, “is you can’t live through your children. They leave you and if you don’t have a life without them, you’re nowhere.

The one thing I

I am starting to think that is the meaning of life. Kindness is the only thing that doesn’t go away. Even when people die.

All we have are moments of human contact.

etting old sucks. I know there must be some beauty in it, but at the moment it escapes me. After surviving this stinking life with all its disappointments shouldn’t there be something better at the end than watching your body become a condemned property?

This is what getting old is: The end is visible and your plans and ambitions have to be adapted. Your options are no longer limitless. And on top of that, your body leaves you behind to fend for yourself. Aging is so much more awful than I was prepared for and I am dealing only with the beginning of it myself. And sitting next to my mother watching the aging king battle the elements and his mortality and his mind is almost more than I can handle.

It’s so primal. And when I don’t want to crawl back inside my mother I want her to leave me the fuck alone.

“Well that’s what they do, they test you and they want to be independent and they push you and they drive you crazy and I’ve got news for you. It just gets worse.”

I am a wreck. And I am so tired I think I am going to collapse. I lose my patience. I can’t bear to lose my patience with her when she hasn’t done anything that warrants it. Everyone says, “Cathy, you’re human.”

But I want to be the kind of human who wakes up tired in the morning and says, “Yay! I’m tired! I’m so lucky to have so many wonderful things in my life making me tired! A great job, a wonderful child! Who cares about the state of the world? I’ll just put some makeup on and have an extra cup of coffee and be thankful.” I have never been that kind of human.