🔵 By Antoinette Yancey. Photo by lauragrafie.
My mother died of cancer while I’ve been incarcerated. Some time has passed but occasionally I still go through the motions over this. Mainly because we never had a conversation where I got closure from our traumatic relationship as I was growing up. I’ve long forgiven my mother for the incredibly damaging things she did to me and said to me. Those things hurt, but the thing that hurt the most from then was her unconcern and at times it appeared she hated me. I was incarcerated for about ten years before I heard from her. She never once visited me in county jail (I was there for three years fighting my case) or came to a day of my trial. She was an extreme alcoholic, then a crack addict. But she was mean to me before all of this. Once she got sober, she did eventually visit. As long as we kept the conversation light and jovial we got along fine. Using humor in my family to avoid painful feelings is a thing. So I accepted this because she came to visit twice a year only. Inside I held to the hope that one day we’d talk and I’d be able to resolve some things. Then one day she stopped accepting my calls. She didn’t come visit any more. She didn’t let the family know until it was the end already that she had cancer. For a whole year she kept it a secret, racked up debt bills she left for my struggling baby sister to pay off and once again chose to be selfish towards her family. I still feel some type of way about that. I found out she was sick about two weeks before she died. I never got a chance to talk to her again. She didn’t even wanna say bye to me or sorry for anything. I’ll never understand why.