There are so many questions I would have loved to ask my mother before she died, and listened to her answers.
My mother died when I was 36 yrs. old. Not that I’m a sage at 53 years old, but I did not know anything of what I have learned in the nearly twenty years that have come and gone since she transitioned from this life into what lies next.
It would have been helpful to listen to her describe what she loved most and expound on that. Knowing what brought her the greatest joy, I feel, would have offered a great path to discovering what brought her the most pain.
My mother was not a happy person. Neither was she tortured, as much as confused and sad. She held a lot of anger, the kind that lashed out so often during my childhood and then in her elder years simmered as sadness.
She was 76 when she died.
I always found it strange that my mother lived 7 years less than her mother, who was born prior to the turn of the century.
Yes, my mother was a child of the Depression.
I often wonder how much mental depression resulted in people who lived through that tough economic time that gripped the entire world.
Not unlike today, so many struggled with so little. The frustration became so great that it erupted into a second cataclysmic war (WWII.)
It would seem we have returned to that place once more here in America, and abroad.
Is there a difference.
I see so many struggling and unhappy parents, parents who have lost their jobs and are rightfully frustrated. And then others who are over worked and trying to hold onto their way of making a living.
I, myself, often grow angry.
Am I like my mother?
I cannot see how I would not be.
And yet I am different.
I have a greater awareness of what I feel contrasted against what I sense going on around me. I can distinguish the distinction of what I feel from those emotions of others swirling around me.
And yet, like my mother, I see that many my age and younger cannot.
My mother struggled emotionally in this life. She fought in the way she knew how.
That often involved lashing out at me.
I would like to ask her, what it felt like, not in the moment of her most heated times of anger, but what she experienced afterward.
And if at any time, she felt regret, what that too was like.
I would like to help her unburden herself.
As a mother I have come to see that it is those times after you have unleashed your madness that you feel the greatest pain and sorrow.
Unlike my mother, I have made a practice of bringing awareness to myself and my feelings so that I do this much less than my mother.
Also, I do not approve of corporal punishment, which was her standard fare of reprimanding me and my brother.
And yet, even in those moments when I now a mother, though less than when I was a child with her as my mother, when I now a mother of three daughters lose my temper, forget myself, I am certain, my pain goes just as deeply as my mothers.
I thank the universe that I embrace the words, “I am sorry,” something my mother, many of her generation, and others of mine, do not value.
But words can never be enough, at least not for me, as a mother.
My children accept my apologies, thankful that I offer them.
“So many kids’ mothers would never say that,” they remind me.
Maybe this is my way of unburdening my mother.
Saying, “… I am sorry … for her, to me.
And while accepting, also forgiving her, for doing her best.
What would you like to hear your mother apologize for?
And for what would you like to ask your child, “Please forgive me?”
Forgive me for taking so long to leave a comment. Computer troubles. We have parallel stories. I was 39 when my mother passed away from pancreatic cancer at age 68. My Mom was born in 1930 Jim Crow Dayton, Ohio and I now know this had a great effect on her attitudes and emotions. Her Mom, my Grandmother lived to be 85. Weird. Grandmother outlived my mother?! Jim Crow ~ What is it like to be “Less Than” all the time. 24/7/365. Not quite human. Maybe that’s why in December 1955 after a brief courtship my mom married my Dad and returned only twice to Dayton, Ohio to showcase me and my brother after we were born.
My mother also suffered from schizophrenia and was a functioning alcoholic. I used to think she hated me as a child but before she died I realized that was not true and she told me how much she really loved me. It took my father’s death in 1995 for her to get the proper medication to arrest the symptoms of mental illness. In the last three years of her life we grew very close and when she died a part of me died also.
At the end of February I will turn 55 and in many ways I’ve grown closer to and become more like my mother than ever. I too suffer from mental illness ~ depression. Like my mother I’ve also attempted suicide. And for many years I was a functioning prescription drug addict. You name it I was hooked on almost every anti-depressant available. My doctor was a pill pusher. It was like Alice’s Restaurant. Basically you can get any type drugs you want legally, but I digress.
Last year I found out that my grandmother Hattie Finney Banks, My Mom’s Mom was a domestic abuse survivor. After placing my grandmother’s picture on a Facebook Black genealogy page I discovered some revealing and disturbing information. I had already found out in 2009 that my grandfather Hugh Banks was a murderer and died in prison but in 2013 through a white lady who thought that we might be related I discovered Hugh Banks murdered my Great Grandfather, Hattie’s Dad. Shot him to death. My Great grandfather was trying to protect my grandmother from more beatings. Hattie had endured years of abuse from my alcoholic grandfather but finally she could not take it anymore and ran taking her three girls, my Mom being the oldest to her parents home. A confrontation ensued and my grandfather shot my Great Grandfather to death. Now my mother never talked about her father and she would have been maybe 5 or 6 when this all took place but I wonder if she had residual memories that caused her to become an alcoholic and brought on her mental illness.
In 2012 my mother Mable Palmer began to speak to me and last year I heard my grandmother Hattie voice. Both have been dead for years but it is like the veil was lifted and they communicated to my soul. You see my brother Stephen is autistic. Of course nobody knew what autism was back in 1963 when Stephen was two, however my mother was blamed for what we now know is a genetic illness. My Mom went through a lot of hell from her in-laws. Can you imagine being blamed for your child’s disability?!! How cruel!! Anyway I wrote down her words as they came to me in torrents of emotions. Then last year I wrote my Grandmother’s story of domestic abuse and survival. She never remarried. My parents were married for 40 years. As for me I made the decision at a young age to never marry or have children. My brother has triumphed over autism. He works, has two girlfriends, attends church, has a great social life and is a contributing member of society. Currently I’m still writing my mom’s memoir. Your blogs on your relationship with your mother has caused me to re-explore my life. I’ve never been able to sustain a long term romantic relationship except once when he turned abusive. I also wonder what makes one woman able to overcome and find the right person and somebody like me repeat a pattern of either abusive or emotionally unavailable men. Finally last year I stopped dating and now I just concentrate on me. I’ve long been at peace with being a lifelong Singleton. Let’s see where my writing and photography take me.