Mom Wanders

34 years ago, on a cold winter night, a teenage girl gave birth to her only child....

Something happened in the last two weeks that changed my life. It forced me to confront and to forgive demons that have haunted me for far too long. It also gave me a sense of peace and calm I have never fully felt.

I alternate between emotions. I am wrapped in a welcoming sadness simply because I never thought I'd feel it. And that makes me happy. As odd as that may sound, the fact that I feel this pain makes me feel more like the phoenix someone likened me too.

Underneath it all. Despite it all. Through it all. I loved her. She was not Donna Reed. She made Peg Bundy look like a pro. She would have gotten on well with Joan Crawford. But she was the only Mother I had. And in those moments before she passed, for the first time in my life, I wanted her to hug me. To tell me that she loved me. To say everything would be alright. But it never came.

We walked the same path her and I. Physical, sexual and verbal abuse seemed to be written in the stone of our lives. Because she feared it, she became complacent with it and closed her eyes to what was being done to me. But I no longer blame her for my pain. She knew no other life. In a way, her acceptance of it allowed me the strength to leave her on that path and take the one she was too scared to travel.

In the days before her death I was told (by priest) that she felt I had abandoned her. She thought that I should not have left. That I should not have traveled that other path. And it saddens me to think that she thought that staying, as she did, was the right thing to do. It saddens me that she feared the unknown so much that living that life was better than freeing herself from her own demons.

I cannot change the past nor can I rewrite our painful history. But I do mourn. Deeper than I think anyone, including myself, ever thought I would.

34 years ago, on a cold winter night, a teenage girl gave birth to what would be her only child. On the back of her newborn daughters photo she wrote one word. Love.

I love you too Mom.

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak
whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.
~William Shakespeare