Whenever I was around people who were close to my mom (there
were many; she spent a great deal of her energy making sure people liked her;
it was her main function in life), I have for most of my life, felt the need to
defend myself to people who’ve never met me. It was either that, or I was
compelled to apologize on her behalf. It’s who I became because of mom. She was beloved by many. Even people she
treated like shit; including me in some cases.
My mom gained their esteem and friendship by painting herself
to be someone she never was. You see, my mom may have been one of the One
Thousand Points of Light, and she might have advocated for the needy. She even
got in trouble doing some work for the Massachusetts DHS, when she brought a
baby home because the mother was neglecting it and she couldn’t get anyone to
respond. It wasn’t unusual, as kids, to come home from school to find some
random person living in our home; some young person she found panhandling for
money by the metro in Brussels to fund their continued journey. She brought
home Irish kids, Scottish kids, Americans, Brits… she brought them home like
strays, and fed them, and cared for them, and sent them along with money so
they weren’t lost in this world, or alone.
On the outside she was fucking amazing.
My mom also spent a lot of time telling people terrible
things about us. Whomever was ‘bad ranger’ at the time, she would rip to
shreds. So when we met her friends, whichever target child she’d maligned would
be received with a sneer of disdain and disapproval from complete
strangers. This happened a great deal to
me in these last years. All her little biddies, they glare at me because I am
in their estimation, based on my mother’s words, the antichrist. Yet this antichrist still marched in as much
as she could to pay attention to the old lady, and spend time with her—and more
importantly, to allow her to spend time with Alex.
One of the former employees of the care facility told me
that I was her favourite. That she spoke well of me all the time, and not of my
other sisters. But several of her senior friends had different opinions. So it’s
impossible to tell. It’s impossible to know exactly what she said and to whom.
It really doesn’t matter, but it is a mark of her character that has always
irked me. All those people that showed up at her memorial adored her. They all
had such nice things to say about her. Of course they did. She was who she
wanted them to think she was.
But I’ve talked about the flip side. The stuff people don’t
know about. And as I process the loss of my mother, I am brought back to those
things; which, because of their negative aspects, arrive in my memory with
clarity and vividness few memories share.
I had convinced myself at the very beginning of this period that I would
let it all go with her. That it would fade away now that the source is gone. As
if by clipping away the trunk of the invasive plant, its suckers would wither
and die. But the truth is the truth. And I have to accept that my mother was
not a good person. And I carry a great deal of guilt for feeling that, because
of all the good she has done, and the moments she was good to us.
The last time I took my mother to visit my little brother
John, this was just before my anxiety issues kicked in and I could still just
drive wherever I pleased without having a nervous breakdown; my mother entered
the residential home where my brother is cared for. He, as always, was slumped
in a sofa chair, his thumb and index finger pressed firmly in his eye sockets,
sleeping. His hair, kept short and
manageable, his clothes stretched across his round belly, his five o’clock
shadow and thick eyebrows so reminiscent of my father. She went to him, and
kissed his face, and he dropped his hand and looked at her. With a grunt of
acknowledgement, he waved his hand and put his fingers back over his eyes. She’d
spend about ten minutes telling the caretakers what sacrifices she made for
him, and then turn to me and say: Okay, let’s go. Then in the car, she would apply all the
strategies for me to take her shopping somewhere on the way back.
John is a product of extreme neglect coupled with diligent
care. As a child, my parents enrolled him in an intern program with the Belgian
school system; where he stayed for two weeks, with a home visit every other
weekend, and a parental visit on the others.
He attended a stellar school, with amazing teachers who were trained
beautifully to work with severely developmentally disabled children and young
adults. When he was there, he had structure, he was happy and he could
communicate.
My mom never learned sign language. She never had us learn
it. Nobody in my family did. Yet we have a brother who is deaf. He was absent
more than he was home. Which was a good thing, because when he was home, my
mother was in no way equipped to provide
proper care for him. She could barely manage her non-disabled children as it
was.
When John got home, he was promptly locked in his tiny
bedroom to spend the entire weekend in the dark, with only brief breaks for
food and hygiene. He was so frustrated sometimes,
he broke things. Even windows. His room had been a nursery, so it had a window
inside that was viewable from the corridor upstairs, and then an outside
window. He smashed both of them. And they were both boarded up like a shanty
house. He smeared his feces on the walls. He would scream in frustration and
fling himself against the door. As kids,
we all had to listen to it, and feel the depth of misery for it, but were
powerless to do anything about it. To this day, none of us can talk about it
without a profound painful sense of guilt and anger. At ourselves and at mom.
We were kids, we know it wasn’t our fault, but it doesn’t help to appease that
pain.
My dad was noticeably silent on the matter. I don’t know
exactly what he felt about this. But there were some pretty hellacious fights
over him, many that came to blows. My father resented my mother insisting on
having him, when she was presented the choice and told that the child was
abnormal. She wanted her son. It was paramount to her, even if it meant she
would neglect him for his entire life. When it came to the parental visits to
my brother’s school on the odd weekends, my mother never went. It was my father
who went and spent the day with him.
When my mother took up with her lover Omar, who would turn
out to be my molester, there was one good thing that came from that, and that
was Omar’s unease about this situation. Even a child molester couldn’t deal
with it. So when my dad was working, or away, he was often there, and he would
take John out of his room, feed him, play with him, and pay attention to him. Part
of the reason why I accepted Omar to be how he was with me was because I loved
him for the care he gave my brother. In a childhood where trusting adults was a
dangerous game, there was this one little shimmering good thing next to so many
terrible things.
When my mom decided out of the blue that she wanted to
return to the US, a several years after Omar killed himself, she got my father
to agree, and within a month of this decision, which was not imparted to
anyone, even me until the day before the flight (not kidding) we were moving
back to the states after 20 years. She left John behind. She also abandoned our
saddle club with horses still in the stalls.
She abandoned a lot of things.
It took several weeks to even get her to acknowledge that
something had to be done about John. She flew back to Brussels and disappeared
for several more weeks. When I called the school, they said they hadn’t even
heard from her. Hunting her down was a
task and half. I had to go through a friend of a friend of a friend, cross-Atlantic
call after call. When I tracked her down, she was sofa surfing at a friend’s
house, partying in Brussels and hadn’t even gone to see John. I talked to her
briefly, and she finally said she was going to come home with John.
I was worried the moment we arrived in the US, because I was
not familiar with the social services nor with what sort of options could be
had for a young adult like John. I discussed it with my dad, who was ambivalent
and unhelpful. And when mom got there, I started researching places, and her
response was “I DON’T WANT HIM IN AN INSTITUTION!” All I could foresee was a repeat of those weekends
of John locked away in a room. It was a
worry that came to fruition in many ways.
While in New England, John rarely if never left the house.
They took him to a doctor to have him medicated, and my brother spent his days
both furiously bashing down the house or sleeping. His care became my responsibility
on the most part. I lived in that house until I was 27—my entire life crammed
into a small bedroom with a locked door
while my mom went around being one of a Thousand Points of Light, and spent her
evenings carousing with a bunch of crusty old men at a membership club
bar. When my dad retired, he took over
the medication and bathing of John, and I did the housework. When I decided to move out and get my own
life, there was a meltdown in the family that went as far afield as my eldest
brother, from whom I had not heard for over a decade—he was sure to call and
chastise me for ‘leaving daddy with everything’.
But leave I did. It wasn’t a total split, until I moved to
Oregon. I still went there. I still cleaned the kitchen and did laundry or it
would just pile up on the floor in mounds. I still cooked holiday meals. I
still went there and put up a Christmas tree for John, because if I didn’t
nobody would.
I often feel my leaving New Hampshire is what caused the final
spiral of my mother and father’s home life.
Perhaps, I even took part in my father giving up entirely on everything.
At least that’s my theory. Because the light in his eyes was so faded the last
time I spoke to him face to face and he was lucid. There are members of my
family who still think I was selfish to leave—spoken while they nestled in the
lushness of their full and meaningful lives, jobs and families.
John’s care went downhill, naturally. My battle to get him
cared for by the state was lost. My mom’s idea of feeding him a good meal was
to microwave him a burrito or bring him Burger King. The laundry in the laundry
room was knee high when my husband went to clean out the house. The place was
disgusting. I cannot even begin to describe how disgusting, but if you watch
Hoarders, the really dirty episodes, you’d have the right idea.
When she arrived with Dad, and dad died so soon afterwards,
I watched John’s appearance worsen. His nails were like talons, his beard was
like a homeless person; he stunk, she never bathed him. She would drug him with
old, out-dated medications so he would sleep most of the day, and she would
leave him alone there so she could go shopping. Her house quickly became a
disgusting shambles. Her health failed.
She ended up in the hospital, and she would be there for
some time. It was the opportunity I needed, so I swooped in with the county and
got John into care. And from that point on, for the first time in many years, I
was able to go a day without worrying about John. I visited him to find him shaven and clean,
he’s in a day program, he’s got a routine, he eats well, he’s in clean clothes,
his nails are trimmed, he’s going to a doctor, he saw a dentist for the first
time in his life, he is by all standards as good as he can be. Some things are too late. Diabetes, the
blindness, his failing body. But he is okay.
My mother loved to cry about how I didn’t take her down to
see him. I did; many times. But it was never a good visit. It was tedium for
her. I’d drive twenty five miles one way so she could say after four minutes of
telling the caregivers how amazing she was for John, “Okay, let’s go.” I got
tired of it. It was just a way to get me to take her to Marshalls or Ross or
Payless. For her to add to her newly growing hoard, and to abuse me miserably
with accusations and nastiness.
Finally, last year, she was in a particularly rankled mood,
sour as vinegar the moment I arrived. I said: “Hey, let’s go see John. “
“Who?”
“You know, your son…?” I replied, irritated. She sighed
wearily and rolled her eyes.
“All he does is sit. And I don’t have money for shopping.
Your sister never sends me money…” and she went on to talk shit about my sister. At that point, I decided I was done with
taking her to see John. If she had the desire to do it, she could talk to the
facility people and arrange a ride herself.
John is only one of the difficult things I have to hold on
to because of her. Her predilection to abandon things, and leave me with the
detritus was another—and then her subsequent blaming of me for the failure. She
did it several times before I was even 20.
If I hadn’t managed her books and payroll at her ‘successful’
temp business which was recognized by senators and the like, she would owe
Massachusetts so much money, it boggles the mind to try and even imagine how
much. When I left for Oregon and quit that job,
she closed the business down a few months later, owing about $70,000 in taxes.
She liked the beginnings of things. She left the aftermath
to me. I accepted it, why? I don’t know. For the vain hope that she would
realize I was there for her and show me a little respect? Who the hell knows?
I have so much unresolved anger towards her. How tempted I
was to just tell her all those things when she was half-paralyzed, but still
there. I could have. But instead, I am going to try to kiss it all up to the
universe as they say. Write it down, and put the truth out there, so I can know
that at least someone knows she wasn’t by any means the saint she painted
herself to be. That all those ‘sacrifices (sah-kree-faysus as she pronounced
it)’ she claims to have made, were not by any means selfless. Everything came
with a price. Psychological interest, as I used to call it.
Did I love my mom? Absolutely. Did she love me? I suppose in
whatever capacity she was capable of, yes, I think she did. She even may have
loved John. But mom wasn’t really able
to love the way normal people love. She did not love herself, and that is the root
of it. Her utter dissatisfaction with her own being is what spurred her forward
every day.
It's hard, but I try to understand her. Her self-reproach, the way any criticism of her would invoke wrath and a lifelong grudge. The way she would write people off, good people, and give value to the biggest losers on the planet. She was who she was. She was good, she was bad, she was an asshole, and a glorious woman.
Once, back in NH, a little bit before I moved to Oregon, I was met my mom at a shopping center in Salem to pick
her up and drive her somewhere. She pulled up next to me and parked, locked up her car and was getting into
my car, when I noticed a couple of teenage girls standing by a car with their
doors and trunk open. They were pulling out empty bags of junk food, cups,
garbage and all sorts of other debris and brazenly tossing it onto the parking
lot.
“Oh my god! What little assholes!” I exclaimed. My mom’s small eyes locked onto them, her lips tightened into a straight, hard line, and she
wordlessly slid out of the car and slammed the door.
I watched her blaze across the parking lot like a bull, and
I could not hear, but I could see her just losing it on these teenagers. She
stood there, all 5 foot 2” of her, arms flailing, hands slashing, and the girls
cowering back with each spittle-laden expletive that came out of her mouth.
The girls, to my astonishment, started collecting their
trash. They gathered it up and threw it back into the car. Mom stood by like
this angry bastion until every last piece was back in the vehicle. She then
remained until they got back into their car and drove away. As they passed us
on the main road, they flipped her the bird, which she responded to by blowing
them a kiss. I swear I saw their heads exploding. Well, maybe not, but still,
it was possible. She got back into the
car, put on her seatbelt and looked at me expectantly.
“Well? What are you doing staring at me? Let’s go already!”
she snapped. I did exactly as she asked,
and put the car in reverse. My relationship with mom was like that. It was a
roller coaster ride of gloriously brilliant moments followed by belly-flopping
pits of negativity.
At least she wasn't boring.
