I can only imagine what the months following my father’s death felt like for my mother. Though she had always worked as an elementary school teacher and made her own money, she must have missed my father’s companionship.
They had long and routine conversations despite the fact that she regularly criticized him.
I suppose he was like me, held the ability to separate the good parts of my mother from those that I wished would go away and never return.
Perhaps this is love, the ability to overlook the challenging aspects of a person’s character in favor of those which make them good or add goodness to the person they are.
One Sunday, the goodness that lived within my mother sank under the riptide of anger and rage that could often over take her when reprimanding me. I had wanted to attend church with my then boyfriend instead of going to services with her.
She said, “No.” Meekly, I responded with, “I’ll stay home, then.”
I truly did not want to go to church.
I had been sad and needed connection with someone who could understand my plight of having lost my father. I found it easy to talk with my boyfriend.
He was helpful and understanding at that time, not distracted by his other life, like he would later become.
I would learn in years to come, long after we had broken up, that he was gay, not something that totally surprised me.
Since we had never had sex, I could hold him in compassion, something that I would have to work on concerning my mother.
(to be continued …)
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