Something in me went distant after my mother died. Disconnected, in a way I can’t fully explain.
Part of me, I think, was fighting to stay married — not for me, but for my own ego and to kind of hope she wasn’t right. She didn’t dislike him, exactly. She’d get giddy, almost shy, whenever he came around. But she also saw what I wasn’t ready to see: that he never really gave her the attention a mother-in-law deserves. And she’d warn me, in her own way, about the daily calls — a clear voice on the other end, a woman she couldn’t place.
When I finally asked him about it, he said, “How the hell would she know what was being said? She doesn’t even speak English.” I remember thinking speaking English has nothing to do with knowing something is wrong. My mother didn’t need the language. She had something older than that. A mother’s instinct doesn’t require a translation.
Here’s what I haven’t said out loud until now: divorcing him, with her gone, feels like some weird I told you so even from her grave in a way I can’t fully explain. Not because I doubt the decision. Because some part of me did stay because I didn’t want her to be right. I was ashamed and embarrassed at her knowing and at me neglecting her input. So for me to make that decision after her passing feels like I finally caught up to what she already knew. So instead of an ending, it kinds of feel like feel like an answer. Now it just feels like I’m arriving at the truth alone, without the one person who saw it coming.
I don’t have a clean resolution for this one. Grief doesn’t hand you closure just because you finally understand what it was trying to tell you. But if you’ve ever lost someone who saw your situation more clearly than you could see it yourself — I want you to know this: their absence doesn’t erase what they knew. You carry their instinct forward, even without them here to say “I told you so,” even without them here to say “I’m proud of you” for finally listening.