My mother was religious. Church. Sunday school for my much older sister. Trinkets. Books. Study groups. The “ladies”. I remember looking at some of this shit as a kid. My father remarried soon after her death and we moved a couple of years later. It all got boxed up but my Dad moved it and kept it all in the basement of the new house. His old life and dead spouse that he hadn’t let go of, boxed up and hidden in the basement from the new life to appease his living spouse.

I was aware of this idea of god and heaven and hell and angels as a kid but religion was no more real to me than transformers. When I found some of these books and started reading them and seeing the ornaments and statues and copper wall adornments it was chilling. I didn’t have the words back then but I had the feelings. It was cultish and scary to me. Boxes and boxes of books written about the decline of morals and the end times, of how to help your kids believe, the evils of pagan holidays and celebrations, the evils of culture and art. When she was sick the books she got about overcoming illness religiously were even more unhinged.

As I flipped through this shit and saw things about god’s plan and purpose, the ideas of being moral and faithful and the importance of family and faith I had a bizarre thought. If all of this is real and god exists why would he kill my mother and take her from us to cause all this pain if there is no higher purpose than family and faith. She epitomized those things and yet she was still gone so what’s the point?

One of the few things my father has told me about the period of time when my mother was dying was that all these caring church ladies would come to visit and pray for the lord to watch over. If there was anything they could do…. Then my mom would shit herself and need help getting to the bathroom or she would throw up all over herself and the bed but rather than helping these caring godfearing ladies would fetch my Dad to deal with it and all leave. Bye, we’ll pray for you.

My sister has talked about the Sunday school and church experience, about how she could never feel the holy spirit when everyone else seemed to be having these intense spiritual connections, about how isolating it was and how it made her feel about herself to not have this welcome itself inside of her too. What does it mean if jesus doesn’t shake your hand while he’s saying hi to everyone else in the room?

I thought for sure if my mother was in heaven and god was taking care of her it would be more than a matter of just having to believe it. After all, this was the most sacred of all relations and institutions. What higher purpose than the mother-child bond could a religion based on an immaculate conception possibly have? Seemed to me the answer was pain.

Existence is nothing but what you make it. That’s not hopeless, it just is.