Mothers

One year ago, I spent the weekend of Mother's Day in the hospital with my mother, who was 91. She had been experiencing radical delusions and hallucinations for some weeks. Her nature led her to conceal these from me and my one sibling until I was sitting with her in her house a few days before the weekend.

The day before Mother's Day, I sat at the end of her gurney in the emergency room of a major Boston hospital. I knew she could no longer live alone. It was obvious from her resistance to this notion that it would take elevating these changes in her mental status to a crisis, requiring immediate medical attention. The neurologist had just told me that she had a large and untreatable brain tumor. He had asked me to tell my mother that she had a terminal prognosis. Her record at the hospital may have informed him that she was not the most tranquil or cooperative patient.

"Mom, this is really hard for me to tell you, but you have an inoperable brain tumor." My experience as a hospice nurse, quite used to telling strangers that their bodies were dying, enabled me to get this out calmly while looking her in the eye. Her head was propped up on pillows. She rolled her eyes at me and replied, "You think it's hard for you, what do you think it's like for me to hear that coming from you!" 

We didn't have the warmest of mother-son relationships. She had once confessed to me, by way of explanation, that she had not wanted a second child. In fact, she went on to explain, she had consulted her parish priest about the morality of getting an abortion. This was in 1949. Needless to say, she came away from that conversation chastised and enraged at the priest, who had dashed any hopes of her saving herself, and me, from a lifetime of regretted consequences.

The disappointments I brought her were constant. At my birth, she commented that my head was oddly shaped. If I contracted a common childhood illness, she bemoaned her bad luck at having a sickly kid in the doctor's office, despite the doctor's assurances that I was a healthy child. When I showed an aptitude for drawing the human anatomy at four, she tore up my drawings and took away my pencils because she thought my drawings were obscene. When my inevitable neurosis worsened under her rage and tyranny, she bemoaned my existence publicly at family gatherings, "What did I ever do to deserve a kid like this?" I developed obsessive-compulsive mannerisms and ticks. I was terrified of school, which was presided over by nuns, whose behavior was a continuation of my mother's brutality. My dyslexia and occasional incontinence, caused by sheer terror, led to my spending hours locked in a coat closet at the back of the classroom. 

My parents were a model couple in their community. My father was a popular policeman, who was gregarious and operated more like a social worker than a cop outside the home. My one sibling was more than six years older and had been my mother's one wanted child, pampered and allowed a great deal of autonomy. So, I grew up believing as a child I was indeed a crazy disappointment to everyone I loved. After all, everyone else thought my parents were perfect and my brother destined for great success in life. 

My sharing all this on Mother's Day is an offering to those who may not have received the kind of mothering that is written about in flowery verse on tacky cards. If you are a mother and read this, I would like to say that I am not suggesting that mothers must be perfect. I am suggesting that motherhood is a serious responsibility of the mother to a separate human being, not something to be engaged in for social provenance, the mother's emotional/hormonal needs or the approval of others.

If you are a child of a mother like mine, I am sharing this to make you feel less alone. I want you to know that your mother's inability to love you in responsible and constructive ways was not your fault as a child. My own peace with this came from years of intentional reflection and eventually dealing with my mother responsibly in ways she was incapable of dealing with me. By being there for her as best I could as she became old and in need of care, I was able to appreciate my own ability to heal and progress beyond the injuries of my childhood. That is what I am celebrating today on Mother's Day, nearly a year after her death.