my mother's voice

To battle the identity I for so long associated with the path my mother laid for me, I had to battle my mother.
"How dare you."
And so I did.
"This isn't how I raised you."
There, on the floor of the master bathroom of the condo my wife and I had bought with the money my mother had to die to give me, I pulled at my very skin, inherited from her.
"Think of what God wants."
Layer by layer, I peeled away at my own existence - my clothes, my hair, my eyes, my words - I pulled at each in turn, my arms and eyes empty-handed except for the tears and fists they had become.
"I'm ashamed of you."
I kept hearing her voice, and I had to silence it. I became a man, there on the bathroom floor, wrestling the sacred memory of my mother, the voice that haunted me after her death, the ghost of the woman who bore me, whom I felt watching me. Judging me.
"I'm disappointed."
I exorcised her. Because it wasn't her voice. The only voice that harbored fear and shame had been my own.
And then, from the last birthday card she ever sent, I could hear her voice again. Clearer, this time:
"Love you forever,
Your Mother"

4/17 (edited 7/12)