We sit in silence now.
I think I learned to read so I had an excuse to find quiet. Most of my childhood, the background noise was your voice. Stories or ramblings, phone calls, and songs. I used to fall asleep to your stories being told. Now we sit in silence, and I try to fill the space you're leaving.
"Mama, I'm just not you."
Remember. You tried to convince me to talk. You forced me into speech and theater, which of course I grew to love. But I didn't love it like you did. I never searched for the spotlight or longed to hear the laughter. I connected to those around me, and grew comfortable speaking out of my silence. I never turned into you. Longing for the attention, to be noticed, to be the loudest and the most. Those are skills I never learned, I inherited your laugh - never your voice. And now I'm straining to hear what you want to say. I'm trying to put your thoughts into my words.
My second language is Mary Pauluk.
I translate now. I adapt your long winded, winding stories into my own brief summary. I tell your memories with a slight point of view twist. I string together your three or four words into paragraphs and I make them understand. After years of having our own language, surviving as the "Gilmore Girls," I am the only Mary Pauluk translator in this part of the world. And the pay is not enough.
I hear your words, from a strange Chaplin's mouth.
They're nice, but they certainly aren't you. I don't feel comforted by their words, I don't hear home when they speak of death. It feels detached and I cannot cross the bridge to comfort. They speak words I've heard you say, tell me facts I know from listening to you, but their words are not yours. They are missing the coating of love and acceptance, understanding why I feel so cold. They speak, but they do not feel. Robots dressed in collars speaking of mercy. I always anticipated you would do your own hospice, and I would go through this with you. Now a stranger holds my hand and walks me away.
