For Thor - 22 - Anger 2 - Imperfectly Perfect

The hearts and flowers of my last letter to you are set aside today. Anger is back. Maybe it never left. Maybe it just went underground in the face of the brazen, bold and determined attempts at making sense of this. Maybe I put it aside so I could deal with the urgency of not drowning in the absolute abject agony of this fact: you died on December 31st in a stupid, stupid, stupid, fucking car accident. In my conscious effort to wrap this agony in love and to cushion everyone from the wrath that seethes in me just below the surface, I have tabled my anger. Well, it's back and hotter than ever.

I've been deeply agitated the past couple of days. This morning as I was doing my usual routine, the one that keeps me afloat, anger rose up inside me, and it ROARED! And I'm not mad at God, Thor. I'm still mad at you.

The past weeks have been heartbreaking, soul-crushing and eviscerating. The whole family is torn up. Your beloved Starr is torn up. Your friends are torn up. We are all thrown into a helter-skelter new reality. A reality that doesn't make sense, one that hurts like hell, one that doesn't have you in it. And you know what? There is a big part of me that is pretty pissed off at you for making this mess. Our family - your whole family -, Thor, is gutted. Big time, and why? 

Sure, I can rationalize that there is an aspect of destiny. I tell myself that nothing happens that isn't for our highest purpose. I tell myself that your moments were both quantified and qualified by some Higher Power. I tell myself that the Great Hand put something in motion that neither of us could have avoided all to enact a greater scheme than either of us could ever hope to see. I tell myself that you and I will meet again and that we are connected in new ways so that I don't go insane wondering where the hell you are and if you're okay. I tell myself to look for and even to cultivate some good to come of this tragedy. HA!

I don't know anything for sure. There is not one damned thing that I can prove beyond these concepts constructed of human thought. We don't know anything about what happens after our loved ones die. We just guess and rely on faith. We wrap the story up in hopeful fairytales that have a happy ending. We cling to these fairytales so that a crazy world can make sense. These fairytales emerge from our deep-seated fear of the unknown, of our mortality -- of death. Right now, I have little faith in fairy tales. Right now, all I know for sure is that you are dead and that all of us who love you are in a world of suffering and sorrow. Right now, I am aware that on this level, the level of this earthly tale, you made choices, Thor. You made choices that killed you, nearly killed your friend and blew the whole damn world up. Epic fuck up, son.

There, I said it.

Do you know how gut-wrenching this is to say? Do you have any idea how guilty I feel for even feeling this way? What kind of mom lays blame on her dead son for the choices he made that killed him? And the crappy thing is that I saw this coming and I couldn't do a damned thing to stop it. I saw you running hell bent for leather toward the cliff, and you wouldn't slow down. You wouldn't change your course. You heeded no warning and accepted no advice. You just ran and ran until you ran right out of your life. Out of my life.

We are all imperfect, and we all make choices that hurt others. When I look back at my youth, I have to say that Nana & Grandpa could very easily have been laying me in my grave at age 19. I was wild as a March hare and wily as a fox. My friends and I drove too fast, and we drove impaired, we never wore seatbelts, we drank and smoked and didn't go where we told our parents we would be. We skirted the law and colored outside the lines because we felt alive and free when we were defiant. We made wild-ass choices that could have killed us at any time in any place. Somehow, they didn't. Somehow we were protected from our stupidity. Somehow we were lucky enough to survive teenage insanity and grow to build productive lives.

Reflecting on my choices and the mindset that made them - I was completely and utterly unconquerable - gives me some perspective. It is here where I can start to forgive you - and maybe me, too. I could have done a thousand things differently that may have resulted in something different happening. But we'll never know. What we have instead is a story that looks like a typical statistical occurrence; male teen driver, going too fast in a jacked-up truck, while under-age drinking, wearing no seatbelts…these are the facts. These facts added up to the combo-punch that took you. You rolled the dice, and the house won, son. Game over.

I can't hold it against you that you weren't as lucky as I was. I can't keep being mad at you for making choices that have caused so much pain. I made the same dumb choices. I survived. You didn't. I don't know why.

There is no why.

It just is.

I am left to deal with the shitty end of the stick, as they say.  Hence the anger. No one wants the shitty end of the stick, my boy. No one.

Don’t get me wrong, this anger doesn't lessen my love for you. But you know that, don't you? We've done this dance together a few times, huh? My ire was always hard for you to face because I knew you so well and could see into the core of your being. You couldn't bullshit me on the stuff that matters. I am intimately aware of the firm and softer places in your character. Everyone who saw us knows that we are twin souls. I knew your heart and mind better than you did and because we're so much the same, and I had already been where you were. I have experience reconciling all those internal compass points that you still grappled with. While I could see that you had so much moving in a good direction, I could also see that you were in mortal peril as you rocketed toward the horizon, rudderless and wild.

No pretty pictures here today, son. Grace is hanging out on the periphery until this anger blows itself out. And it will. I can never stay mad at you for long. Especially after we've had a chance to talk about it. Which we just did.

Forgiveness starts here. For everyone. We are all imperfectly perfect. Each one of us has screwed up royally, and we will do so again. We are here to live, love, and laugh, to make mistakes, cry, mourn, and to forgive each other. We are designed to feel everything and through these feelings, we are called to push beyond our tiny selves and into each other's arms. We are imperfectly perfect. We are here to love each other through the storms and rejoice in the sunny days together because nothing is guaranteed. Clearly. 

I love you,

Mom