Losing the Woman I Never Really Knew -- My Mother

My mother left when I was 7.  Packed her bags and left.  No goodbye.  No explanation.  Just gone. I was too young to understand, I just knew that all of a sudden I was set apart from my classmates.  I was an oddity. I only had one parent.  My mother had left.  In a community where parents stayed married to each other through good times and bad, a mother leaving her children was unheard of.  Kids can be cruel, and when someone is suddenly perceived as different things can get really ugly. I was taunted and called bad names. I was ridiculed. I was an outcast for being different.  I got in fights and I acted out. I withdrew.  I finally learned to ignore and grow a thick skin. I blocked a lot of it out.  I don’t have a lot of real vivid memories from that time in my life.  The mind is a wonderful thing, and when the pain and hurt becomes too intense, it shuts down and starts to suppress the bad memories and only leaves behind pieces of what is bearable.

From time to time a letter would come in the mail from my mother or she would infrequently come back for a quick surprise visit.  I used to day dream about the day she would come back for good or she would come back and take me away with her. I used to hope she would just show up at one of my school functions surprising me – proving for once and for all that she did exist and that she did want me.   It never happened.  I finally quit dreaming.

I spent my childhood and young adult years listening to my older siblings talk about their memories of our mom and I was jealous. I heard stories about a woman who played with them, did crafts with them, built dollhouses and sewed doll clothes.  I heard stories of her teaching them to ride horses and the pony shows she used to organize for them and the children who lived up the street. I heard stories of day trips and wonderful adventures.  They talked of swimming and hiking and picnics.  I heard stories of a fun loving, energetic, happy woman and my heart squeezed shut because I never knew her. To me she was a stranger. On the rare occasions when we were all together with my mother, my sisters always had plenty to talk about with her.  I always felt like I was the stranger in the group, the outsider, the one who didn't belong. I felt shut out and excluded. They talked of times I knew nothing about.  All I could do was listen and watch and wonder what was wrong with me, why did I have to be the odd one out? 

As I got older, I tried to forge a relationship with her.  It always seemed that as soon as I had established some type of rapport with her, then she would make a decision that would lead to her being unavailable to me again.  This happened time and again.  Each time it hurt a little more. I felt abandoned again and again.  But I kept trying. 

 

Now my mother is elderly.  And sick.  Her mind is failing her.  Her health is rapidly declining and as I write this she is hospitalized and the outlook is not promising.  There is a real possibility that this is the end for her.  And I don’t know how I feel.  It is almost as if I am losing something I never really had. And yet I still hurt.  Her passing will affect my brother and my sisters deeply.  I feel sadness and compassion for them, for they are losing their Mom. My heart aches especially for my brother who has spent the most time with her and who has tenderly cared for her and seen to her everyday needs these last few years.  My heart hurts for each of my sisters who have such fond memories of the mother she used be. I wish that there was something that I could say or do to ease their pain and make this heartache easier for them to bear.

Mostly though, my heart aches for the little girl who needed her mother and never had her. 


PS - 3/19/2013 -   My Mother died on March 3, 2013 (on what would have been my Dad's 86th birthday) at the age of 78 in a hospital in Hemet, California.  My brother, Fr. Francis and one of my sister's, Anne Marie, were with her.