Death Wish

Don't you sometimes wish that somebody was dead, just because they have so much power over you? Someone maybe like, you know, like your boss, or your teacher, or like, Madonna? Yeah, sometimes I wish that Madonna were dead.

Ok not really, I am totally looking forward to her next album, even though Confessions on the Dancefloor left me a little cold.

But sometimes, I wish my mother were dead.

Is that horrible? You can say it, tell me I'm horrible, it's okay. Sometimes, I wish that Cher was dead too.

Ok, that's not really true either. You who have children know this; your kids have wished you dead a thousand times to your face for not letting them drive the car, play video games or to wear make-up to the boy scout troop.

I don't really want my mother to be dead. My mother is the only person in the world who can really get to me, she's the only one in the world who can put any kind of sense in my head. She's the only person in the world who can make me feel happy and sad and angry all at the same time.

In my last visit home in the Philippines, my mother drove me around town. She wouldn't let me drive her car, ever since I backed the car into the garage door. What? I was fifteen but I was paying attention and totally looking at the rearview mirror, you know, at my hair.

And as we usually do while we're in the car, we were having an argument about my financial situation, my "bachelorhood," my eclectic choices in deodorant. The conversation would go from a discussion of what diets we were on, to how long to hard-boil an egg, to why-the-hell-aren't-you-married-yet? Sometimes it would go exactly like that, except without the first two topics.

It's a touchy subject, one that nobody in my family would ever have the nerve to bring up sober--or at least when I'm sober.

When I'm drunk, then it's free game where all the old aunties come by and sit around and they all start planning my big fat heterosexual wedding. I don't have the heart to tell them that I would never get married unless there were Limoges china involved. And a shotgun. And the girl had a penis.

My mom brings it up at every opportunity, as if my "sell by" date is fast approaching, that if I don't get married soon, I would have to be marked down for a quick sale. She doesn't know that in local circles, I am already cheaper than a whore with no boobs and a crystal meth habit. She thinks that the right girl will "turn" me back, back into a werewolf with my bushy unibrow and untrimmed man-lawn. Which is sad, but I think she prefers that. She prefers me with wild bushy pubic hair. Mothers. Sigh.

I remember the day my younger sister got married, my mother was so radiant, so happy, you'd think it was her own wedding day. We were all having a wonderful time, drinking, laughing. My mother was in her element. She was able to marry off one of her four children. I think that she thought that we would all get married in succession, inevitable, like time or tide. Or herpes.

That was ten years ago, my sister is still the only married one of her children.

Sometimes, when I think about my mother, it makes me really sad, especially when I think that if something were to happen to her, I will not be by her side. Even if I rush on the next flight to the Philippines from Chicago, it will be 16 hours, 45 minutes and a smelly cab ride too late.

Once, I woke up in the middle of the night and thought that I was back home, until my eyes adjusted to the darkness and realized that I was not. It filled me with a small despair; I could not walk out of my bedroom and find my mother's bedroom down the hall.

The thought of my mother slipping away from the world scares me, and I wish--don't think me callous (even though I don't blame you if you do)--that she was already gone, the grief already behind me, because I don't know that it will ever be behind me.

This distance from my mother and my family is an ache in me. It is always with me, like a pebble in my shoe. If my Mom were to be gone, I would miss that ache, that pebble.

Mom, I wish you can be with me forever.


I had debated whether to put up this post. Most of the time, when I write, I don’t censor myself, I let my thoughts wander freely. This was supposed to be my Mother’s Day post and I was in sort of a mood when I wrote it.

Did I go too far? I feared that mothers might launch a vendetta against me, or conspire to give me a bad perm. When I asked my boyfriend to read it, he said it to was too dark, which I kinda knew, especially since we were both sitting in the living room with the lights off.

To heck with it, let it be posted. You tell me if I crossed the line.

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Engagement - On her deathbed, my grandmother schemed to get my dad married off. Letter From Home - I come across a letter from my mother which tugs my heartstrings.

voyeur - I stumble on a train wreck of a blog, of someone who wishes he were dead. My Sister, The Hurricane - The baby of our family fulfills our genetic destiny.

Cary Tennis of Salon.com advises a man who can't get home before his mother dies.