If My Mom Died Today, I Don't Know if I'd Die Tomorrow
“We love our mothers unknowingly, and only realize how deep-mated that love is at the ultimate separation."
These were the first words on screen in Xavier Dolan’s film ‘I Killed My Mother’ (J'ai tué ma mère). They were words that left me with a profound, yet alien feeling within me. As a daughter, it made me feel all sorts of horrible emotions. Regret, anger, but also passion and a strong conviction I have never felt before. Because the woman who I fail to acknowledge as my mother during my 18 years of living is but a fatal wound in my life. A scar that refuses to heal as I pay the debt of my conflicting emotions through cold detachment.
Hubert, the 16-year-old protagonist in the film, suffers from this universal flaw and I could not help but feel repulsed as I watch a film scarily identical to my relationship with my Mom. Like I was looking directly at a mirror of my life. Hubert subconsciously and internally kills his Mom out of deep-rooted hatred and the burdensome task of being her son. A character who despises and sometimes wholeheartedly forgives out of love, but lapses into the same aggrieved state and I couldn’t bear witnessing his trials and errors as I too have endured the same.
My mother is both a blessing and a curse in my life. An anchor to my uncontrollable feelings and the catalyst to my perpetual grief. She gives me joy, a sense of security and belonging and there are times where I admire her (mainly throughout my childhood). But she gives me the greatest pain I can ever seem to endure. The pain of loving, but the refusal to show it out of hatred; a hatred that in fact veils fear and suppresses the truth.
Do all people feel this way? Why is it when we grow up, we become alienated from the people we should love and once loved? Does that bond between a parent and child stay strong throughout one’s life?
I have never said “I love you” to my Mom before. In fact, the times where I have shown true affection to my Mom was when I would do it to gain something in return or do something to appease society’s standards on where a daughter’s responsibilities should lie. On her birthday, for example, I would send a card because I, as a daughter, am obligated to and I would feel less guilty as a result.
And yet I don’t attain any form of true gratification. What’s left is a perpetual wave of regret out of my own selfishness and arrogance, but I should not feel that way because she too is a terrible person in my eyes. I know having flaws is a universal human condition, but her flaws are so great I cannot put them all cohesively into a paragraph. But ultimately, they are flaws I acknowledge, and I am learning to instead see the beauty that lies within her no matter how deep it’s buried within her imperfect exterior.
Recently I saw another Xavier Dolan film called 'Mommy' and I guess this too was a catalyst for my realisation; that all mother’s do these things in the end, for their child, out of love. Diane, the mother in the film, is left with the painful task of sending her ADHD son to a hospital without regard for fundamental justice following a fictional law in Canada. There is a scene where the guards physically beat her son and at the last minute, she screams at them, telling them she changed her mind. It is a beautiful scene that truly depicts the complications of such a relationship and the film has become one of my favourite films of all time. Because there is nothing more powerful than a mother’s love for their offspring… it is a universally acknowledged fact.
Our chances of reconciliation exist, we just refuse to go beyond a simple “good morning” or “how was your day”. A hug and a kiss on the cheek is awkward and any form of intimate conversations turn into a fight. I look at my friend and how she interacts with her Mom as if she were her best friend and I become so jealous a fiery rage builds up inside me knowing I want the same thing with my Mom. I love her so much but sometimes I see her as a stranger and it shouldn’t be like that. And it’s that hand reaching out towards her that ultimately becomes the thing that draws my hand away.
Affection extinguishes that flame until we are left with anger and disdain poisoning the love that exists between the barriers we’ve both put up for each other. That’s the complication I’m dealing with.
What I’ve learned from all these films, these archetypal stories and anecdotes from people I know have been greatly valuable to me. They’ve opened my eyes to something I refused to see throughout my whole life. They were a raw snapshot of reality, a reminder that all that pain, grief and longing for the past deep inside me are futile. If I died today, I know my mother would die tomorrow.