wilting rose (zine)

wilting rose a zine about someone you love getting very sick, hospitals, trauma, healing, and more

zine created by Massimo Avanzato www.massimoavanzato.com avanzato.massimo@gmail.com *feel free to email me your thoughts about the zine or whatever else is on your mind*

In February of 2017 my mother’s colon burst. She was rushed into emergency surgery. She thankfully survived. The journey was hard as hell for her, but also very difficult for my family and me. Life seemed to come to a halt for everyone. Our main priority was to take care of her.

It took months for her to function properly again. She had to relearn how to walk, eat, use stairs, get dressed, drive, and more. On top of dealing with the stresses of being a teenager in high school, I had to care for her. Family dynamics shifted so fast. I took on a motherly role in an effort to take care of my mother. This caused me to really grow up in a short span of time. After her emergency surgery she had to get two more surgeries in the following year. She is now healthy and still healing.

Trauma affects us all differently. It took a long time for me to reflect on this strenuous event and my mother’s many months of healing.

I created this zine as a way of releasing trauma. I chose to venture back into the past to examine thoughts, writings, internet searches, objects, and photographs from the months during and following my mother’s sickness. I compiled all this information, as well as revisited the hospital where my mother, my family, and I spent so many days. I analyzed objects in the hospital. I paid close attention to the colors and patterns. I took photographs and notes about objects in the hospital and poured it all into this zine.

And so I dedicate this zine to anyone who has had to care for a sick loved one, to anyone who has been ill and in the hospital, to anyone dealing with trauma and feels scared, misunderstood, and hopeless.

You are loved and I see you.

-Massimo

so many group chats and so many messages “how’s mom?” “any updates?” “could you text me when you can and update me on how your mom’s doing”

I texted my mom on nights when I was scared and couldn’t stop crying.

“I miss you so much Mom” I sent her messages telling her how much I loved her while she was getting cut open like a science experiment

I knew she wouldn’t respond

my mother told me that in the hospital rooM next door there was a

candy shop

where the nurses would make every type of canDY Imaginable

Andrea Hollander October 9, 1970 The same automatic doors and the same white-haired volunteer, the elevator and the corridor with its antiseptic odor and hushed voices door after door down one more hall and again through double doors— but this morning the lone nurse standing before the door of 246, and immediately inside, the view through the window of the other wing, its dozens of identical windows, and here the pale green walls paler today behind the blank screen of the TV protruding from the wall and on the movable metal bedside table the familiar plastic glass of water with its bent straw peering out like a periscope through its plastic lid as if only a hidden eye had full view of the bed and the body of the woman in it who was once my mother. Š Andrea Hollander 2013 from Landscape with a Female Figure: New & Selected Poems, 1982 2012 (Autumn House Press, 2013) Selected Poems 1982-2012, Reprinted with permission from the author

press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up green button to dispense pain medication press the lit-up

there’s a putrid shallow pond you have to cross with a gate in it. then once you get on grassy land there’s a kind of incline. an old, grandmotherly woman with two young kids (a boy and a girl) will appear, they’ll be sweet and be laughing and come towards you but you must run away...you will find things in the forest caused by them, like slices of human skin hanging, decapitated animals, and more. singing holy songs makes them go away (they disappear into thin air).

recurring dream #2: 3/6/17

I think it hit me when I heard your voice that February day Straining The pitch had changed Pain had squeezed your sweet voice thin Dim the voice we all knew A stranger the woman we all loved And although I knew that roses cannot live forever I hoped to never see that day

your mother is a strong woman your mother is very strong

she’s a very strong woman

she’s independent

i would find myself wandering down into the basement of the hospital. the same basement where my mother’s stomach was cut open. my trauma fed on sweets. processed junk. dr. pepper. manufactured vanilla cakes that you’d find sweet cream inside

if you cut them down the middle.

I tried to find a temporary motherly figure but nothing could replicate the way she comforted us

I had the dream about the possessed grandma and children. this time my mom was with me. she was still healing from surgery. she couldn’t walk too well or too fast. we went for a walk in the grassy hills where we live. all of a sudden the possessed children came out but my mom couldn’t walk fast enough to escape so I grabbed her hand and helped her. since I had encountered this situation before, I knew what to do. I started singing holy songs and praying desperately and finally they vanished.

recurring dream #3

there were plastic bags everywhere now in every single one of our cars hidden in the corners of rooms a bag of bags in her bedroom

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