Dear Mom:
You might think this is crazy that I am writing you a letter now that you are dead and I am not able to mail it to you. Like you so often said in real life, people in our family are often, “A day late and a dollar short.”
But on a more serious note - I really think that writing you now will make it possible for me to really share things with you. Now that I am not fixated on ridiculous fears of you not approving (which to a child means not loving) or in thinking that I have to protect you.
For whatever reason, I can’t quite explain - this feels like the right thing to do. The best way to process all my thoughts and feelings about our life together, our past relationship, and where our relationship is headed.
Oh yeah, here is where everyone still living will definitely think I am mad.
But aren’t we all a little mad sometimes?
I got the songs you played for me tonight and they really made me feel close to you. You must have been listening when I played the first song in honor of you and it felt really great to feel you responding.
I got about half-way through the song, smiling and feeling your energy all around me before I started to question my own sanity. Am I for reals? Thinking my dead other sent me a message in a song?
And even if you would - the song was quite sentimental - even for the two of us. And then the next song came on and sealed the deal - one of our favorites that I used to sing to you.
Except now you are singing it to me - and with lyrics that totally call me out on the things I regret.
Like I wrote in your obituary, your humor is unmatched, and this slight dig at me and my flaws filled me with so much love and appreciation for you; I almost couldn’t stand it.
I was smiling and crying, but I’m assuming you can see me and what I’m doing - so you knew how well the joke landed.
You once said that if every audience was as easy to make laugh as Aunt Debbie, then you could be a successful comedian, but I think you really didn’t realize how funny you actually were.
You just had a way of pulling strings of thought together and sardonically delivering lines that made it nearly impossible for anyone to not belly laugh out loud - even at jokes made at their own expense.
That’s an important form of power, did you know that? To transmute irritation or ugliness or pain or shame - into a ray of light in the dark. To use the underbelly of life to light our way forward.
Now here I go, waxing on poetic - being as sentimental as the first song you sent me was. But seriously - we didn’t always have it easy. But you always had a way of grasping onto the humor of the situation and that made all the difference.
When I look around at my friends whose outlook on life is a little “worse for wear,” as you would say - I can’t help but be so fucking thankful that you taught me the gift of reframing things in a more positive light.
With my life-long struggles with depression and anxiety - I might not have made it this far without this skill. So thank you for making me resilient in this way. I know it can’t always have been easy for you.
But I just want you (or myself) to know that I am here - for reals; still living seven months later. And I’m ecstatic to feel you with me.
I was terrified that the initial void between us would last forever.
Maybe everyone who reads this will think I am insane.
Maybe I am insane.
But no matter. I can always use the dead mom card to get away with it.
No-one has to know that I was just as mystically wacky when you were alive.
We can keep that just between us.
Still needing you,
Your Loretta Lynn