Alyson

The following is a “goodbye letter” to my mom that I wrote as part of the Every 15 Minutes program held at my high school, and many others, to promote awareness of drinking and driving. Around 40 of the 3,800 kids at my school were chosen to be part of the program, and my participation signified a teenager that had died in a drug- or alcohol-related car accident. After staging a live car accident—complete with ambulances, a helicopter, and the jaws of life—we 40 took trips to the county jail and morgue, then went to stay the night at a hotel, where we were cut off from the outside world completely, to represent our absence from the world as victims of this horrendous crime. It was there, after hearing graphic story after graphic story from now-graying and forever grieving parents who had lost their kids to drunk driving, that we wrote these letters.

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Dear Mom,

I can’t express to you what things will be like now that I am gone, or even how I want them to be, specifically. Well, I would like a legacy. Maybe you can try to publish my writing and exhibit my art? I can’t say what life will mean for you now, and I can’t understand the difference, but I’ll try to understand it by pretending that I’m losing you.

Lying on my bed with you or sitting next to you in the car after school is what I dream about. When my mind was a hell, that’s all that I wanted. I could feel every emotion and every sadness during that time, but the realization that this sickness was pulling me from your arms was generally the only thought that would draw tears down my sweaty cheeks. I wanted to be back with you.

“I want my girl back.” Words I will never forget.

I want to be back, too.

I’m glad that I came back for a little while before I had to go forever. Although I was often in pain while those times were happening, I’m able to look back and extract happiness from every moment together, and twice as much whenever I was hugging you.

I never saw you as a separate person, or as just a being. We were a plant. You were another part of me, and our relationship was critical to our survival. I’m sorry that I let our symbiotic system down. I really want you to evolve and become an independent organism, but I also really do not. I had begun to realize that I am a very selfish person, and this situation could not be an exception. However, is it selfish that I am longing for something (someone) who is entirely essential to my life?

Being able to love someone is a luxury. It denotes a level or two above primitivity. My love for you is second to my absolute need for you. It’s hard for me to believe that heaven is a place if I am there without my mom.

I close my eyes and miss your milk smell and soft little hair. Your body’s skin blanketing strong muscles merging like a mouth talking to me, reminding me of how you taught me to run, to love myself, to work hard, and that I can absolutely do the impossible.

But those are merely beautiful pieces of wrapping paper that protect the person with whom I have laughed painfully hard, felt better, said everything. The person I have screamed at, have tried to heal, and have hurt again. The person that I had never stopped trying to figure out, because I realized how necessary it was to my figuring out myself. If I wasn’t right with you, then nothing was right. I think the thing I disliked the most about you was how much power you had over me, naturally. The world was dismal at best when we were at odds.

Leaving you at this age is hard because the final result of ME hasn’t been created yet. I was still being tinkered on by life, God, everything and everyone. You know I hated to miss out, and I don’t think that feeling has ever been greater than right now, imagining all of the pedicures, Diet Cokes, split meals, free drinks, pranks, Law and Order, and involuntary laughs that I will be missing out on, that we will be missing out on. We will miss out together.

We will still be bonded by the absence of each other. It’s not as fun as a bond that includes watermelon Lip Smackers and inside jokes (if you could remember any of them!), but it’s a bond nonetheless. And it will keep us together.

Until next time,
Your only daughter and occasional bunny,
Alyson ♦