Broken faith

My little girl,

Throughout the months, days, minutes that you've been gone, I have questioned this thing called life, more than ever. I have questioned the meaning of it, most times deeming it meaningless. I have questioned my own existence, most times deeming it worthless.

I've thought it senseless & cruel. To go through life, always having to fight battles. One after the other. Always struggling, always fighting...but with hope thinking:

This is it. If I can just get through this, this one last thing, things will get better. There will be a reward. Things will change. There has to be a reason for all this...I can do this.

It's been that way my whole life. I've tried not to whine about it, or blame anyone. After all, if I can credit myself for all my accomplishments, I can also blame myself for my failures. Right?

There was nothing more irritating to me, than people who played the victim card. Maybe, because I grew up with my mom always doing so. Blaming my father, her family, even us. Everyone else was at fault for her situation. Accepting her fate as a martyr & surrendering. Not wanting to fight... for her sake or ours.

Growing up, I would watch her exist, but not really live. I witnessed her worst days, deep in her depression, lost in her own world. Unable to reach her, unable to save her. Broken & lost. I resented her "weakness". So many times wanting to just shake her out of it. Wishing her to just "snap out of it". Just wanting her to be "normal" for once, wanting her... to just be my mom.

Trying & doing everything we knew...which wasn't much. We were just kids. All we really knew was love. But even that didn't work. So, eventually she just stayed that way. We did too.

That woman you met for just two days? The one everyone said you looked like, your whole life? Before she aged, of course. Before her face was severely scarred. Before the history of her pained life started to show in the wrinkles around her sad eyes...

The one who sat in the corner of our hotel room, just talking to herself? The one who refused to enter the hospital waiting room & sit with the rest of the family, and chose to wander the streets outside instead? Because she was too nervous. Too anxious & afraid.

She was beautiful once, like you. She was smart. She was full of life. She is my mother.

I always saw her resemblance in you. You had her smile, her eyelashes, her hair & even her hands. Long, soft, thin & feminine. I have my dad's; thick, stubby, manly & warm.

Not only in looks. Similar in personality too. At least from what I remember, before she got real sick. From how my Dad & her family once described her.

Always feminine & delicate, smiling & laughing, fashionable with expensive tastes. Sassy & undomesticated. You never wanted to lift a finger & always wanted the best of everything.

Daddy & I used to joke, "I hope she marries a nice rich man who can afford her tastes in dresses & shoes, have many babies with and can hire a maid to clean up after them."

I often think now, my mom would of been happier, had she lived that type of life too. Except the baby part. My mom once admitted to me, "I was not meant to be a mother." But it didn't make her a bad person. Just maybe not the best mother...

She was a teacher, a professor of Spanish literature. A woman living in a third world country who managed to go to college & make something of herself. A woman with a profession. Maybe that destiny she worked so hard for, is the one she yearned for instead. But then life happened.


I wish you would of gotten more time to know her baby girl. The real her. I know she's still in there somewhere. Deep down underneath those layers of sadness, a dimmer version of her old self still exists.

When the doctors told us that the disease you had, Type 1 diabetes, would of struck anywhere, anytime & it just happened that we were there...some said you waited to meet her first, before you left this Earth.

That God wanted you to meet the grandma you always heard so much about. The one you watched Mommy cry over a hundred times....

I am glad you met her. I just wish it had been different. I wish so many things...

She wanted to bake you a cake for your 11th birthday, because she was never there for any of your birthdays. I just wanted you to know that. That she loved you always, even from afar. How very sorry she is, like we all are, about what happened...

She cried a lot too baby. And she is more broken than before...


It's her & all the other broken people around the world, that I thought about when I first saw this quote pop up in several places after you left.

I wondered, how could this be true?

My mom wasn't always broken. It's life that made her that way.

Her & countless others. Now me included.

I think, this isn't true for the mom who's kid was murdered. Or died in a car accident. Or committed suicide. I read about them daily. They are broken forever. If you ask them, they have no destiny, but to one day meet their child on the other side... that their destiny was torn from them, the day their child died.

I learned that brokenness has nothing to do with weakness. In fact, these beings are the strongest people I know. And yes, they are victims. To the unfairness of life. To life's tragedies. Only one who has lived it, can know.

Despite everything, my mom has made it this far. Living in another country for almost 15 years, without her kids, she misses & grieves for us just as if we were gone from this Earth too. Wondering the streets visiting churches, parks, schools & restaurants that we once went to. Seeing our ghosts roaming these places, just as I see yours too...when I miss you desperately. Searching for ways to be closer to you...

She also grieves for the life she once had, and for the future she won't.

I know now how my mother feels. I no longer resent her. I no longer blame her. I admire her.

Because her brokenness has nothing to do with her weaknesses. Yes, God gave her more than she could handle. More than she could bear.

That while her faith has helped her bear it for all these years. It's still not fair. It's still not a life anyone should have to live. But we live it, with the promise that there will be some kind of reward at the end.

My only thought for you my beautiful girl, is that you got to skip all that. You don't have worry about bearing such pain. I will try, for you, not to have you watch me live with it either. I will try...

But I am broken too now, like my mom. Why? Because even though I got to be your mommy for almost 11 years, I wanted a lifetime.

I would of continued to be your mommy & take care of you...I would of tried my best. But maybe my best wasn't good enough.

So, like her I will accept it. Having no other choice. I'll try & be strong. Continue to hope. That one day, we too will be lucky & free from pain.

Until then, we will continue to live as we have....doing the best we can, being the best we can.

Because if there is a reward to having survived it all....

The only reward I will ask for, is to once again, see you.

My beautiful angel. For you, I will keep my faith.


I love you forever.

Forever your mommy. <3