Chews

When I was growing up, my mother was always around, but I didn't really notice her. I don't think I ever asked her about her family, or what she liked and disliked, or any of the things you're supposed to ask to get to know people better.

The only time I started caring was when she started using too many essential oils.

At one point, she was just buying them because of an MLM. My parents had divorced, and when my mom was trying to get a job, these essential oil hacks convinced her that she was actually better off buying and selling their products.

I couldn't stop her because at that point, me and my brother had both definitively moved out. I always thought she'd have been smarter than to fall for that. Maybe she just wanted the company of actual human beings. I couldn't blame her.

She talked to me about putting them around the house when I got the time to talk with her. I told her that it was a sham, and she tried unsuccessfully arguing with me about it for ten minutes before hanging up.

If you had told me I should have dropped my job, my entire life, and rushed to stop my mother, I'd have refused vehemently. But I guess hindsight is 20-20.

Over time, she started looking more haggard. I saw more essential oil bottles around my old house as she tried to sell them to unsuspecting victims. It was like the oil was sucking the life out of her.

She kept asking me to come back, but I was too clueless to see what was going on. I didn't come back.

One day, she called me and she said she had given up trying to sell the oils. I was happy. She said she had to get rid of all of the essential oils, and asked if I wanted to buy any of them. I refused, and I guess everyone else refused too, so she started eating them.

She'd buy cheap flavorless food and put drops of the MLM oil on them. She told me about it, point-blank, and all I told her was "Don't do that!" She persisted, and I still didn't come to check on her.

She called me one day saying that she had gotten a nasty cut, and she'd made the executive decision to pour oil on that, too. I told her she was going to go to the hospital, and she paused.

"If I go to the hospital, will you come back to see me?"

I said no, said I would pay for her hospital bills and leave. But she got into the hospital anyways. Despite what I had said, I cancelled everything and rushed to where she was being kept.

She was barely breathing. There were ulcers in her mouth, and her teeth were partially worn away. The doctor said the problem was sepsis. Her cut had gotten infected because all she had put on it was the essential oil.

I could see the "cut". It looked like she had stabbed herself in the arm with a kitchen knife. While I stood there in shock, the doctor slipped out.

I sat there next to her, and I asked her, "What happened?"

She told me everything. She said how she couldn't find any jobs, but she had always kept her eyes open for one. She said that she had understood that the MLM was bad news, but she had just wanted someone to talk to and couldn't figure out any other way to do it. She didn't feel comfortable asking for money, so she suffered in silence, trying to get me to check up on her.

She told me she was an atheist, that she had been to Guam, that she had never had many friends, that all of her "friends" were really my dad's friends. I learned more about my mom in the two hours that I was there than I had for the twenty years I had lived with her. I left the hospital vowing to come back tomorrow.

The next day, they told me that she was dead.

It was because the doctors had messed up the surgery needed for the gash. My mother's condition had already been fragile, and the mistake had pushed her over the edge. I got the money, but I never got my mother back.

The only way I can remember her now is by buying those cheap MLM products. It makes sense anyways. In her last moments, the MLM's products may not have really been "essential", but they were still more essential than what I gave her.