Chapter 8 - tears worthy of the title

"It's your fault! You're a piece of shit deadbeat of a mother!" My husband loved to scream, but he'd never screamed quite as loudly as he did the day we heard she was dead. It's ironic, comical, that somehow he thinks he's any better than I am. "Do you know how this makes us look?" If he was gonna treat my like I'm shit can't he at least grieve her? But I know I'm selfish too. I didn't grieve her the way a good mother should. I live on everyday the same. But perhaps now, I'll imagine a little part of the fragile glass heart I wore hidden in my chest is missing a piece. A piece she ripped out when she left. Even if that battered and bloody flesh despite its bruises, is somehow still intact. Perhaps it's a comfort that lessens my guilt, that makes me feel like I'm better than him. That makes me feel like I'm less of a piece of shit than I know I am. When she died I cried but I don't know exactly if I could call those tears I shed grieving. It felt mostly like shock. How someone who seemed healthy and fine moments ago could die so easily. It was mostly a feeling of denial. She can't be dead, I thought. But when I cried it wasn't like tears that hurt, it wasn't like the tears of her friends or the tears of her younger brother. My tears weren't heavy or hot, they didn't burn my face like lava and ripen my eyes like strawberry blossoms. My tears don't reserve the right to be called grieving. And for that, I think that's why I feel the worst. I loved her but I don't have the right to claim I loved her enough. My husband said to me, as he ripped blondes and grays from my scalp, "if you loved her enough she'd be fine and well, dandy even." When he punctured my eye, as fluids secreted from the wound, painful and hot like grief he yelled to me, "what if we lose our son from this, what if we're found unfit to parent?" But he wasn't afraid to lose our son, he feared a blemish in his reputation. By now, I know him well enough to see that. Lately I've been having dreams, the life where I was a better mother. I can still see through both eyes, all my children are alive, my husband is less hateful. Or maybe in that life, I took the kids and left, I wasn't blinded by a non existent love, I wasn't afraid of finding a way to support myself. While my daughter was struggling, while she was hurting, I grabbed her, pulled her in close and held her as tightly as I could, and I cried, we cried, we sobbed, together. She wouldn't have been dead because I'd have kept her alive with my tears as we wept. Like a wilting rose, I'd water her with sorrow, I'd give her life. That would be the life where I was a better mother. I'd feel all the things I never understood, all the things I still can't understand now. Or maybe, in the life where I wasn't subpar, she never would have been suffering at all. Instead of rotting away, instead of me shying away from her bedroom, I'd barge in, wake her up while she's all sleepy and groggy, pull her out of bed and boast about making her favorite breakfast, something I'd truly know in that life. We'd live everyday like that. My son would wake himself up a few moments later, crowding us with questions that no one but a child could ever have come up with. We'd all feel the exact definition of happiness. Not the dictionary definition, the one portrayed in fiction, finding joy in everything mundane. That is the life I'll never know, the one I'll never live. Because I was not a good mother and she is dead and I'm married to my husband who I still think can grow to love and appreciate me like when we were young, and I'm still afraid to find a way to support myself alone.