Mother's Day...

I find myself not doing a very good job or sorting through all these feelings today. We celebrate Mother’s day on May 10^th, so today is not as emotionally poignant as last Wednesday. Luckily, I was scheduled to do an intake up in St. Peter’s Regional Treatment Center and I welcomed the two-hour drive. It gave me an opportunity to be present with my feelings while not having to interact much with the world around me, with the exception of fellow travelers, of course.  

            I’ve indicated before that Mother was not a particularly good mother as I was growing up. As a matter of fact, she finally acknowledged a few months before her death that she didn’t like me as a child and that she’d grown to love me as a woman for the integrity, honesty, and force with which I have lived my life. Of all the gifts she gave me during the past few years to help me heal, the latter was the most precious. It’s shocking to hear a parent tell us that we were not liked, yet the reality is that we always know these things. Mother acknowledging it validated what I’d known all along. It alleviated a lot of her guilt for “failing” me as a mother and it allowed me to forgive her humanity; not to mention, that it gave me that “I knew it!” moment we all need at least once with our parents.

             No, Mother was not a very good mother. I haven’t faulted her for this in a very long time. Most of it was due to circumstances beyond her control. She learned she was pregnant with me when she tried to kill herself. She told me once how much she resented me because my coming into being enslaved her with my father for longer than she’d wanted. I also have strong suspicion that she experienced Postpartum Depression with my birth. Father didn’t help once I was born. Most of my early memories are fraught with recollections of him making me his partner in his emotional and psychological abuse towards her. It took me many, many years to come to terms with this. Most of my life, I believed that I deserved Mother’s antipathy because I had been such a horrendously cruel child to her. Maybe I still do. I still feel a pang in my chest when I think of some of the cruel things Father encouraged me to say to her and the countless times she left the room in tears.  I wish she would have accepted my many apologies, but she didn’t feel they were necessary, regardless how much I insisted. I’m sorry, Mother.

            Tete, my oldest brother, is who I always celebrate on Mother’s or Father’s Day. He is the one who nurtured and looked after me. He taught me to read and write, tie my shoes, tell time, and shaped my moral compass. Of course, this year the loss feels a bit heavier on this Mother’s Day. I mourn them both. I mourn the parent who changed my diapers, protected me during thunderstorms and against bullies. Now, I also grieve the Mother who helped me heal all the pain from the traumatic experience that was my childhood. I miss the Mother who encouraged me and believed in me as a woman; the Mother who admired and respected who I am. 

             My two biggest fans are dead. I am luckier than most, I had Tete to fill-in for Mother. Most don’t have the privilege of a stand-in for their parents. Though, I have to admit that it is hard to feel grateful with this heavy pressure on my chest making it hard to breathe.

Somewhere in the midst...

Sartre once wrote, "Life begins at the other side of despair." I understand that my life will begin soon. But first, I need to surrender to this journey, I know...

Grief, what a confusing and frustrating process. You find yourself relieving old hurts, experiencing sadness about events you thought had long-ago healed.  Sunday would have been Mother’s 79th birthday, but it wasn’t because she is dead. My Mother is dead. I have to keep saying this to myself, lest I forget. It pains me so when I forget and then remember. Anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one can relate to this feeling: the forgetting and painful remembering. I don’t remember experiencing this for this long with any of my previous loses and I’m not sure what it means. Is it because of the intensity of the loss? Is it because it’s the first time I'm experiencing loss sober? Is it because of the relationship? Who the fuck knows. It is and that is all I can say about it. Mother was not big on celebrating birthdays unless it was hers. I didn’t miss her for mine because it had been a long time since she called me at 4am on my birthday to sing me “Las Mañanitas.” I’m not sure I had any feelings in particular about it being her birthday, only that it seemed to burgeon an immense sadness about my brother, Juan, that I struggled to reconcile.

I have been challenged with trying to sort through these very confusing feelings connected to my sibling. They’re a mixture of anger, resentment, longing, jealousy, unwanted connection, and shame. My therapist had me write him a letter during one of our sessions. I expressed angst against it, thinking that I was way past that stage of healing. “A letter? Seriously?” I begrudgingly wrote a letter that, to my surprise, brought forth sadness and longing for the brother I lost somewhere between our time in La Cañada and San Salvador. I remember his replacement quite vividly: a face filled with menace as he pushed me down a flight of stairs. Then nothing; an empty face just staring at me at the bottom of the stairs as I rolled into a ball crying and terrified. I remember the blank face he donned while raping me a couple of years later and the hate-filled face that beat me. Somewhere in those memories is the worried, weeping face begging for forgiveness after he brought me home from getting cuts and wounds stitched at the Red Cross. Then there’s Mother’s face crying out in agony for him with her last breaths and my inability to alleviate her suffering. All these faces. All this sadness. My therapist reminded me that one loss can burgeon other losses. Maybe Mother’s death brought the last link to Juan; and hence, finality to our relationship. I want to hate him. I really do. The reality is that when I think of him a great sadness overwhelms me. I have no idea what his life is like now. Part of me can sense that he is not well. Or maybe it is vindictive hope that creates that illusion? I don’t want to know. If anything, I wish I could eradicate him from my memory banks. But for now, he must be part of this grieving process.

I wish Mother were here… she’d help me sort it out while she gently caressed my head with her arthritic fingers. I was never too old to sit on the floor before her as I laid my head on her lap.  If I close my eyes and concentrate hard enough, I can almost feel her hand on my head. Fuck! I miss my Mother!

Until this process is done, somewhere in the midst... sadness dwells.