Good Mourning

It is official. I am outing myself. Honest, I just this morning realized it. I have been hiding.

It’s my mother. These past few days, I have been feeling things I have never felt towards her…ever in my life.

It’s deep sadness that she is not here anymore.

Yes, I do feel rotten about saying it, but it is true. I am the lowest of the low, and as much as I want to, I cannot change that it has taken me this long to miss her.

When my dad passed away in 1988, I mourned him for two years. I already told you about him. He was extremely flawed, but he put it all out there. He showed me who he was. I KNEW him deep down to my toes, and I loved him more than anyone. I was devastated when he died.

I didn’t know my mom. She wasn’t able to show me who she was. My mom hid her pain well (see I learned this hiding thing from the Master). She simply did not have anything to give. I grew up distancing myself emotionally because (in my young mind) she started it. So when she wanted that adult connection with me, there was no way I was giving it because she didn’t want to play with me when I wanted to play with her. Okay, i admit it, I was emotionally still 7, deeply disappointed and pissed.

So when Claire (I stopped calling her mom when I was 9) passed away in 1999, an Alzheimer’s shell of the woman she was before, it honestly wasn’t much different than when she was alive. She wasn’t there anymore, but, for me, she never was.

I made our relationship all about how she had let me down. Even as an adult, I never once thought about the excruciating pain of being unable to connect with your child.

Until I had one.

I’m a mom. On one hand, I believe I am a good one, but it doesn’t take much to expose the underbelly of that belief. (If you have been reading this blog, you know what I am talking about) I fight against the guilt, the past mistakes with my son, the “wrong” choices I made for him. I want a do-over. I want to start again. I want to give to him now what I couldn’t or didn’t know how to give to him then. All of a sudden, I get it. In lay-person’s terms…. I’m a parent.

It’s too late for my mother to give me what I wanted from her then. It’s too late now for me to give her what I feel today. For the first time in my life, I want my Mom…flaws and all. I want a do-over.

But please don't be concerned. After a lifetime of clouds and rain, the sun is breaking through. It is a good mourning.