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Hair I am

I cut my hair today. Finally the inches and inches of it. All gone. I never cut my hair. It has been to this date nine years since I have cut it.

When my father died I took off 7 inches of my beautiful Lakota hair. Today I cut off ten.

I watched my mother in a full blown panic attack and realized that she and I have had enough. She and I have been to hell (only to go straight back). The hair is bundled and ready for the ocean. I took my hair to the ocean nine years ago for my daddy. Now I cut it again. My Grandmother past away this last month but in truth, that has nothing to do with anything that comes to my silly hair.

I cut my hair to invoke change, to acknowledge change, to become one with it.

I am within public display of my horrid, painful folly.

I cut my hair because the past is dead. Because the past has become so painful I cannot breathe.

I cut off the past, I found my husbands arms covered with my own tears. Without the past I do not know who I am. My hair is gone, my beauty, my pride. Now I feel worthless. Now I can become worthlessness. I only can accept that I am what I am with or without my precious hair.

If I had balls, they would be very engorged. It took all of my strength to cut my past from myself and face still, my own face. Hair or no hair, God or no God, dreams or no dream.

I could feel the knife upon my vein (oh, how I wanted it). I can still feel the clean cut that severs me from all of this.  But I took the blade to my hair, not to my life.

Death screams to me but I chose to sever the ghost of the past. Not sever the ghost of the future.

Blade covered with hair, not blood. I am satisfied by this.

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Dec. 10. 2008. StarDate3490.804.20080.12

Dear Dad;

I really, really fucking miss you. I am so mad at you for leaving I can barely control it anymore. Did you really expect me to be able to hold this family up? I mean, what the fuck were you thinking? You don’t talk to me for years then you come back to me and tell me you always loved me then you travel up to see me and die! Really, what the fuck was your soul thinking? Did you really think mom and I were going to leave the hospital and be OK? Did you really think she and I would survive your ignorant death? You know that it is seven years later and it is still the same for her and I as that night you died. You die everyday for us, over and over again. Do you have any idea what I went through? Do you have any idea what she went through?

Let me tell you, you absolute asshole.

After years of longing for our damn relationship to return to normal, after years of self hatred at the thought I had done something so wrong as to lose your love, after years of lingering around your bedroom door waiting for forgiveness you come back to me. You decide to forgive me (much to my shock) for being a crappy teenager. You travel your ass up here with my mother in tow, not once but twice, back to Oregon where we should have stayed. You forgive me, acknowledge me, hug me, cry, tell me you are proud of me, tell me you love me. Then you fucking die. You have some stupid heart attack that kills you while your on the fucking road.

So here it is you jerk. This is just me remember, mom has some words for you too.

My fucking day at work, I begged and begged my boss to get off early so I could spend as much time with you and mom as possible but there was so much to be done that I had to stay all through my shift. By the time I get home, so excited to plan our night together before you get back to California, I give mom’s cell a ring to check status on our plans. Let me tell you now how you destroyed every moment of my life, for the rest of my life.

Panic on the other end of the damn phone. I had no idea. Mom was on her way to the hospital with you. You were already dead. I didn’t know you were dead dad. I got in my Honda in a fury and started to drive in your general direction. You should have died in Portland, not so stupid town 30 miles away. You could have done the damn antique shopping in Portland. I had no idea where I was going, stopping at a Les Schwab in screaming tears to ask where the fucking hospital was in a town I had been to only once before and only in passing.

Oh, let me tell you about the traffic, see you decided to die right before rush hour. I was trying to get to you, putting cigarettes out on the floor of the Honda in panic screaming, no God, you won’t take him, he will be fine, it was just a heart attack, he is alive and we can get his heart fixed, no God, you would not take him from us, no God you just would not do it, never take my daddy, not now, not now when I just got him back.

You see dad? I thought you were still alive and it was too close of a call. Even though my panic was so bad I think I knew you were gone. But I did not know. After an hour in panic in traffic some miracle guides me to the hospital in a town I didn’t know, off of roads I had never travels to rush, crying into the hospital asking for you.

Listen up dad, it gets better.

The nurse did not tell me you were dead. She put her skinny arms around my shoulder and lead me to you.

See dad, she didn’t tell me. I ran to you on that hospital bed, telling you I was there and it would be ok from now on. You just had a heart attack and now we could get your heart fixed and you would be ok and we would be a family again and I loved you, God how much I loved you.

See. You were dead and she didn’t tell me. I really didn’t know until I had stopped talking to you and looked at my mother. You left us there. Alone. You left us for dead. It gets better still dad, see the Grim Reaper may not have taken our bodies but when you died he took our souls.

I screamed my way out of the hospital and put three beautiful dents in my baby Honda. They called the police on me dad. The stupid nurse, shit she probably called, “some crazy girl in the parking lot kicking a white Honda and screaming”. Lucky for the cops they didn’t even touch me. I was ready for the gas chamber.

After that the nothingness set it, not the good kind of no-thing-ness but the empty silence of absence.

I got in a fight with the clerk at the hotel you and mom had been staying at. That son of a mother fucking, ignorant, bastard. When my mom had stated (still in shock mind you) that you had just past away he did not care and demanded that she pay extra to have her room unlocked because she failed to check in. “Sorry, I thought, her husband was busy dying and she had just lost her entire world” but of course, pay the extra damn fee.

I threatened to kill him. If I had had a gun dad, I would have. He told me it wasn’t his fault you had died and I agreed but when I screamed that he could me more compassionate to a widow he just stared ignorantly with a supreme smirk on his face. He didn’t understand. I wish he was in the grasp of death, even now.

Dad. You left us for dead. Now it is Christmas time and you are not here. Oh, you ruined Thanksgiving too. You just had to die Thanksgiving Eve so we eat pizza on Thanksgiving and cry.

I have made every attempt to end my life. Life has little value. Even my beautiful husband, special son and enduring mother cannot convince me to stay. I am coming for you. It was all I ever, really wanted. Just want my God damn daddy.

-Cass

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The Passing of Mothers’ Day

Another Mothers Day come and gone; it makes me think about this flower giving, obligating and false promise making “holiday”. I have been a mother for three years and every time mother’s day comes around I feel bad that I might not have been the “best” mother all year and results in me cleaning the house from top to bottom, agonizing over my mother’s gift for the occasion and fighting with my husband about the day itself. After sweating all day doing dishes, putting on make up for my hubby and telling my son I love him every six seconds I ask myself; what really is this day of mother worshiping?

I think about my mother.

This day is a false and ignorant means to get money and inspire people to spend it.

But I think of my mother anyway; hence have I “sold out” to the masses of holiday frenzy?

I have. I bought her roses.

But I thought about her, wondering what gift could I give this woman? Well knowing my mom, only my happiness in life would do to please her. That I am still having trouble with so what to I get this woman? A promise? A thought? Roses that will die?

My mother will never know how much I love her and the moments I remember about our interactions that I hold precious to my heart. She may never know that I still have bad dreams and wake up wanting a hug. There is so much my mother will never know about my complete and utter love and respect for her.

My mother may never know how much I love her so I sent her beautiful yellow, peach and orange colored roses in a lovely square vase with a balloon from her grandchild stating; I Love You Grandma and a silly card. I had to choose the roses. I over thought a holiday that can never say how much I love her.

I guess that this is what mother’s day is about.

I simply could not get my mom off of my mind.