Saving and Purging

tkscovill ♦ November 12, 2018 ♦ Leave a comment

Many years before she died, my mother gave me the responsibility of saving her writing. I said I would, being a writer myself. I did, mostly. She helped a lot of people with her Ezine articles on “starting over.” She became an expert on navigating the pain and emptiness of divorce and loss of a spouse. I saved those things, along with her “morning pages,” which must have helped her maintain her own sanity while helping others.

But I could not justify holding onto the poison she had allowed herself to swallow from the tv and the internet. She had become a victim of the fake news/us-and-them/op-ed media. I believe she was brainwashed into believing things she would have laughed at in her younger years. Facebook and Fox News kidnapped my mother and turned her into someone I did not know. She became even more fearful and negative and angry than I ever thought possible. It was the anger that disturbed me the most. She taught us to love and accept everyone, no matter the color of their skin or the country they came from. We are all immigrants, she told us. Yet, by the end of her life she was standing in line with those who wanted to “get rid” of all the “aliens” and “non-believers.” If I could’ve had one more conversation with her it would have been about this. My question would be, “What would Jesus do?” I don’t think she would have had an answer.

Purging her office was a way for me and my brothers to remove the mental torture from her life, even after her death. We needed to do that so we could remember who she really was underneath all that negativity. It was painful and exhilarating at the same time. There were countless bags of paper poison and negativity taken to the dumps–too toxic to recycle. Hopefully by now it has decomposed and merged with the mud and garbage that it always was anyway. We had been tip-toeing around her “collecting and saving” and worrying and warning for way too long. We needed this purge as much as she did.