Late Night Part I

This is what a memoir writing class will do to you: 

" If you don't mind my asking, what happened...? To your mom? How did it all start?" It startled me how carefully he asked it. He wasn't asking to pry, or out of curiosity. He asked because he genuinely cared. I sighed and looked out over the cliff where we were sitting at the murky river bobbing below us. 

"I don't know that I can tell you. It's not that I don't trust you, because I do. I've just never told anyone before, and I don't know that I could tell you without crying. I wouldn't want to make this situation awkward for you." But the thing was, I don't think we'd ever felt awkward around one another, and that was how we'd gotten on this subject. All my fronts came down when I was around him. I was so completely comfortable, there was almost nothing he couldn't get out of me if he really wanted to.

I thought back onto how we'd even gotten onto this subject. A series of questions had led me to tell him about my preparations to transfer earlier in the year. He'd asked me about something he'd read that I'd written, a series I titled "Stay," about my back-and-forth struggles to decide whether to remain at school or go home and finish my education there. 

"Earlier this year, I found out that my mother was really sick. My parents had been lying to me about how things were at home. My mother's always been really sick, ya know? She's had anything and everything: ulcers, bad kidneys, complications due to insomnia, sinus problems, sleep apnea..." I kept listing things off, all the things I could remember from 16 years worth illnesses piled in a decaying heap one on top of the other. She didn't have diseases or cancer, she just had a lot of everything else. 

"Growing up, I took care of myself a lot, because she couldn't. I had to do a lot of things children should never be burdened with. But we seemed to hold it together okay. We got through. We functioned. Not well, but we functioned." 

I looked out over the cliff at the blue mountains rising opposite us. Their tree-poked lines sloping through the gray-clouded sky. I couldn't get over how beautiful and perfect this day was. I could have missed this day, I thought. It wasn't until I actually thought that I would be transferring that I truly began to appreciate where I was. It wasn't until I thought I would be forced to leave that I didn't want to. I'd complained plenty of times that the mountains weren't like mountains at all--that they were like large hills, instead. I'd complained about the climate and the humidity. I hated that I could never see the sky because my location in the hills and all the trees were always obstructing my view. I didn't like that I couldn't see stars. 

And then one day, sometime in October, I realized that I may have to leave. It was during a phone conversation with my father that I found out. All phone conversations with my family are about the same. We talk about how church is going, how school is going, and what latest illness has Mom bedridden. So, when Dad had been telling me about Mom being ill, I didn't think it was anything different from what we'd experienced before. Except on this particular day, Dad let it slip that this time, it was different. It think I've subconsciously blocked out how this came about and what exactly was said. All I remember is that I felt my parents had lied to me. I felt they had played down the seriousness of my mother's current condition, because before this conversation, I wasn't concerned. Now, I was scared. And angry. I was angry at myself and my family. I thought How could they not tell me?  and I was angry with myself for abandoning my family. They needed me. Dad was trying to do it on his own. Neither of my brothers could or would help; and here I was, leaving them to fend for themselves. 

That's when I started making preparations to transfer. I'd go live at home and attend school at the nearest university. I'd go back to my old job and take care of Mom. It would almost be like high school all over again. 

I could hear the relief in my father's voice when I told him I'd filled out the transfer application, but I still struggled with the decision. Something told me to stay, but guilt made me want to leave. As I sat next to my friend on the mountain, I realized that I hadn't wanted to leave because of that very moment and what it meant to me--all the things it signified. When I thought about transferring, I suddenly didn't want to leave the landscape about which I'd previously complained, the landscape I was now witnessing. And I didn't want to leave the friendships I'd formed, especially the one with the person sitting next to me.