by the daughter you both forgot
©ESR 2025

⚠️**Content Advisory** for medical neglect and medical deception by parents, hints at past childhood abuse and neglect.

(This Post contains 2 poems to my parents. My mother (73) died unnecessarily in early 2024 due to her own stubbornness. My father (89) did not call for medical aid or call me… because mother threatened him.
I didn’t know anything was wrong until there was no hope of recovery. Due to my father’s age and being their only child, I had to handle everything relating to her hospital, long term hospice care, cremation and burial.
I was always civil with my mother, because I loved my father and didn’t want her to turn him against me…but there was history her and I)

[To My Mother]

You died,
and no one told me
until the tubes were already in,
until the clock had already started ticking backward.

They said you fell.
But they didn’t say
you lay on the floor
for nine months—
nine months, the same time it took
to grow me.
Did you think that was poetic justice?
Or just a fitting cage
where you could rot in silence
and no one would dare challenge your rules?

They obeyed you.
Even as your body betrayed you,
they obeyed you.
They kept the truth
like a pit viper tucked under their tongues—
not because they loved you,
but because they feared you.
Even dying,
you were the one who ruled the room.

I wasn’t there
because I wasn’t allowed.
Not by you,
and not by the twisted contracts you forged
in the minds of those around you.
You trained them well.
To lie.
To hide.
To protect the queen from the mirror.

But I am not like them.
I went to therapy.
I spoke truth to a silence
so old it had callouses.
You hated that—
that I broke the spell.
You said I was sick
for naming what you did.
That I was weak
for needing to unravel
what you left inside me like shards.

You called it betrayal.
I called it survival.

Now you’re gone,
and I still can’t breathe right.
I still wonder
if maybe—just maybe—
I should’ve broken into the house
and peeled back the lies
like rotting wallpaper
to see the truth beneath.

But what would I have found?
Your body, shriveled and stubborn,
too proud to call for help?
Your voice, still barbed with blame,
asking why I wasn’t there
so you could accuse me
of standing in the doorway
with blood on my hands?

I grieve what never was.

A mother.
A moment of softness.
A whispered truth
instead of a hissed command.
A hand that held instead of hit,
a gaze that saw me
not as reflection
but as daughter.

I wanted you to get better.
But you didn’t want help—
you wanted control.
Even in death,
you orchestrated the story
to end on your terms.
You made me a ghost
in your final chapter.

And yet—
I carry the ache
of what will never be.
A phone call.
A letter.
A sliver of connection
threaded through the years.
But that thread burned
long ago.
You were already gone
before your heart gave out.

Now I sit in a room with soft lighting
and ask a stranger
how to forgive a corpse
that never apologized.
How to forgive myself
for not walking through fire
to be burned again.

I couldn’t save you
without losing myself.
And still
some part of me
wishes I had tried.

That’s the part that haunts me.

I didn’t get to say goodbye.
But maybe you never deserved
my hello.

Still,
I hope death gave you a peace
you never knew how to give.
And I’ll try—
God, I’ll try—
to give that peace to myself.
To the little girl you broke.
To the woman you scorned.
To the daughter
who is still here,
still healing,
still learning
how to live
without your shadow
controlling the light.

⸻

[To My Father]

And then there’s you.

I loved you
the way a child loves the moon—
from a distance,
with awe,
through shadows.
You were my safe place
when there was no safety.
But to reach you,
I had to walk barefoot
through her games.

You let her build the maze,
and I crawled through it
for a glimpse of you.

Even now,
I defend you in rooms
where my voice trembles,
where my therapist asks
“Why didn’t he stop it?”
And all I can say is—
He was scared.
He was kind.
He didn’t know how.

But the truth is—
you did know.
You knew.
And you didn’t tell me.

You watched her fall,
watched her choose the floor
like a throne of martyrdom,
watched the rot bloom in secret—
and you let me believe
nothing was wrong.
You let them hide it from me,
because she said
she’d leave you.

So you let me
be the one
who was left out.
Again.

I handled everything.
Hospice. Obituary. Ashes.
I signed the papers
and made the impossible calls
and buried the woman
who once told me
my voice was too loud
for anyone to ever love me.

I did it all
for you.
Because I knew
you couldn’t.
Because you were still
too broken by her
to even grieve without permission.

And now you’re gone, too—
not dead,
but gone all the same.
Moved across states
to the family I fought to place you with,
to comfort, to protect,
to keep you safe
in the ways I never could.

I didn’t even get to say goodbye.
Maybe it’s better.
Maybe if I’d seen your eyes
I would’ve broken
right there
in the airport terminal
or the doorway
or the driveway
where no one would know
how to put me back together.

Because here’s the truth I’m choking on:
I can’t tell you what she did.
I never will.
It would crush you,
and I am tired
of being the one
who has to carry
what no one else can survive.

So I’ll carry it.
Alone.

Like I always have.
And I’ll try to forgive you
without the answers.
I’ll try to forgive myself
for still needing your love
even after everything.

I don’t know how to hold
so much ache
in one body.
But I’m learning.

And someday—
maybe—
I’ll write a letter
I’ll never send
telling you
all the things
I never got to say
before I became
the parent
to my own pain.

But not today.

Today I just miss you.
And I’m angry.
And I’m tired.
And I love you
with the kind of love
that still limps
from childhood.