Ramblings on Horror

My father just left from his first visit since my mother's death.

This visit was hard in many ways, but also good, and has left me with some confused emotions.

My mother was the bridge between he and I for as long as I can remember, and now we try to bridge that gap ourselves, for her sake.

Naturally, she came up, as a topic of conversation, or as an aside, in almost everything we spoke of. What she was to us, to others, what she did and liked, what she had told each of us and when, what the circumstances were, what she would have liked, or enjoyed, or laughed at. Everything.

But I discovered something disturbing.

Well, I had known it for a while, but I avoided recognizing it. I'm good at that, I went from 1991 to 2006 without acknowledging the existence of issues that were plain to see, until I was forced to deal with their results, finally.

You see...I'm horrified, when I speak or think of my mother, now. There is an image, a final image, welded into my mind, which is now there, to a greater or lesser degree, any time I think about, or of, her.

I had been to funerals before. Open casket funerals, where I viewed the dead "in repose", closed casket where I knew why the dead could not be viewed, even some where I had seen the deceased in the closed casket before the failed medical attentions had been paid to them.

But none ever bothered me.

I had been a hunter, killed living beings, eviscerated them while they were still warm, sometimes while their heart had a beat or two left in it. Been up to my biceps in their warm innards, as I cleaned them out, to avoid poisoning the meat.

I had created human corpses, in the service, and seen many others do so. Had seen the freshly dead humans on the ground. I had caused, and received, grotesque injuries in fights, and often treated my own, in manners many considered to be sheer, stupid, macho bravado.

I had spent most of one night attempting to find pieces of a friend's foot and calf, while medics worked on his screaming person, mere yards away, hoping that we could find parts salvageable that doctors could use to reduce HOW crippled he would be.

I had traveled south, on Highway 80, after the 100 hours war in Iraq and Kuwait, and seen numbers of bodies, many hours, or some days, in the desert heat, under the smothering clouds of oil smoke from the burning wells.

None of these hit me with the twisting animal of fear, loathing, disgust, attached to this single image I now relate to my mother.



You see, my last view of her...she was laid out quite peacefully. Even beautifully. The service and viewing were carried out without a flaw, with friends and family talking, consoling, remembering, and speaking, in heart-felt and touching ways.

The makeup artist was a genius.

But I could see. I could see under.

I couldn't touch her body, neither hand with a clasp, nor face with a caress or kiss. Because I could see, and knew what I would feel.

Under the beautifully done makeup and dressing, she was soft, lax, nothing. Under the makeup, her skin was the gray-green-blue of emptiness. The color preceding corruption, stench, rot.

I know she wouldn't rot...she was embalmed, and before decomposition could begin, she would be burned to ashes...but there it was.

A lifeless bag made of skin, holding back the ills I had seen over and over in strangers. Veins without any blood, organs with no life, no tension in the muscles, no vibrancy to the skin.

Her smile was gone, an artificial one of relaxation pinned to her face, in its place.

And I felt horror. I had to back away, look away. I couldn't cry, because I wasn't seeing my mother, I couldn't bear to offer a farewell to this, a mockery of what I had known, and trusted utterly, and without reserve to offer good counsel, share a laugh over the ridiculousness of the circumstance of life, of society, of people, to offer love, unconditionally, no matter how badly I had mucked things up.

I was able to cry, with my brother, once I could position myself so I couldn't see this human-shaped "purse" that mocked her, over what we had lost.

But from then, and now, and I don't know how much longer, when I speak of, think of, hear about, her, my gut churns with an internal image of this goblin or ghoul colored image. The color and vibrancy I have used in drawing and imagining the animated dead. Totally lacking in anything that was her.


Even as I write this, I cannot cry, though I want to, but I feel nauseous with "the picture", sick and disgusting as it was, and ever shall be.


I had something of utmost value stolen from me, and when offered a chance to say a last good-bye, it was a false and empty offer, mocking both she and I, and I don't know that I can ever forgive myself my inability to become absorbed in the ritualistic play, and take succor in what was offered, nor if I will ever stop seeing and feeling this horror, when I should be remembering, and feeling the echoes of, her.