The Gift of Death

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The greatest gift my mother gave me, outside of life, was her death.  It feels like placing a landmine when I say that, but it’s true.  Her death forced me to face the grief I dodged for decades.  No longer could I evade it with coping mechanisms and the stealth of a well-trained ninja.  It had snared me, and my only option was to look it head-on or be consumed by it.  I had to see it through bloodshot, tear-soaked, sober eyes.  Feel it in the darkest parts of my soul, that I had long abandoned and left on life support as I strived for the illusion of superior unbotherdness.  Nothing could touch me.  And if nothing could touch me, then I’d be safe, free from the pain that gnawed at me in my sleepless nights.  Then death knocked, and grief wrapped its cold hand around my throat and dared me to run.  

I lost myself in the past couple of years.  No, that’s not accurate.  I lost the version of me I had crafted to survive the hand life had dealt me.  I burned her in the cremation fire with my mother and have used the ashes of that facade to build something that feels true and authentic. Like home.  I’ve begun to say the hard things out loud, to sit with the emotions I had tried to drown in bottles and busyness.  

I told a friend, who is helping to hold me accountable to this new version of myself, that, truth be told, I need to cry while being held, and admitting that felt gross and uncomfortable.  But why did it feel that way?  Where did I learn to abandon my need for connection?  I trace my life back, and I see the times I needed someone, and the people I sought out showed me that they had no desire to hold space for me in that manner.  If by outright refusing or worse, taking my hand, pulling me close, and then digging a knife into my back.  So I learned, early on in life, that the safest place for my emotions was the gilded cage I forged around my heart.  Life reiterated this when I would crack the cage door ever so slightly to test the waters, only to be violently pulled down, forced to fight my way up through the ripcurrent and back into the safety of my self-imposed cage.  

I hated the cage, but it was safe.  That’s what I told myself.  I became the person no one ever needed to check on.  I became invincible.  I became a prisoner of my pain.  The delicate parts of myself were kept under lock and key, letting hurt roll off my back when really I wanted to kick and scream and demand to be treated fairly.  To be loved and cared for.  It was easier, I told myself, to pretend that I didn’t need those things.  It was easier to shrug it off when lovers or the world dismissed my asks, just as it had been easier to shrug off my calls for love from my parents.  

Every morning, I woke up and told myself a new lie.  Another rivet in my armor to ensure no one ever saw how truly vulnerable I was.  How desperately I needed to know I mattered.  Fuck it was my mantra to cover how much giving a fuck had broken me.  My mother’s death blew open the casket I had prematurely placed my soul into.  I crawled out bare, exposed.  Every emotion fired under the surface of my skin.  In that swirl of emotion, despite the chaos of swimming in unfamiliar waters, I could clearly see what I needed and who and what lacked the ability to provide it.  

I got louder, weirder, freer.  I broke the lock on my cage for good.  I peeked my head out and took in a deep breath, and I jumped.  My wings are rusty and sore from lack of use.  But as I gaze back at the cage, I’m thankful.  While she never gave me much when she was alive, she has given me the world in her death.  And for that, I will always be grateful. 

Copyright(c)2025 Rayven Holmes