Lessons in breathing

I was 8 when she left.

I don't think of her much. Don't care to. Don't want to. It sounds awful. Hateful. But it's how I feel. I didn't take my first breath until she'd taken her last.

I spent a lot of time in front of different people, on different couches, in a number of offices. All of them fitted with kind smiles and armed with nervous pens/pencils that tapped rhythmically against legal size pads of various colors.

I tried imagining what they were writing. It made me feel important. Important until I peeked once and discovered random doodles and idle scribbling. I was invisible again, so...I stopped breathing. It was easier that way, surfacing only to take tiny breaths when in the company of my Grandmother who took me in after she'd gone.

I was 8 when she left.

I don't think of her much, if at all. In fact, I pretend she doesn't exist, never existed. When I've been asked, I say simply: She died in childbirth. It sounds awful. Hateful. But it's how I feel.

But 2 weeks ago, I was reminded. How my life began when hers had stopped. And I'm angry. Hurt. Did I miss the signs? How did I not know? Shouldn't I have seen? And worse...did I have a hand in the injury?

I know what it's like to stop breathing. I lived a great deal of my life without it, but when he stopped breathing. It was awful.

This time, I cared. Breathed through it, anguished, and was scared shitless.

This is what it means to have family - you learn to breathe through it all, even when things go bad.

Especially, when things go bad.