Here's to You Mom!

My mother left this world many years ago. She died of breast cancer, but gave a good fight. For an original prognosis of only 6-months to live, she pushed on for 3 years before the cancer spread to the point where she was overcome. I do remember though to say Happy Birthday and Happy Mother's Day, as appropriate, but I admit that I do not pine every day for Mom.

My mother was one of those women who should likely never have had children. She, like me, was very impatient with the young and very practical/realistic when it came to life. I do credit her with a great deal of my independent nature, both due to genetics and to her methods of rearing me, but I did not LIKE her for most of my childhood. In fact, I disliked her quite a bit. My mother made what, in retrospect, was a bad decision when it came to marraige. She married a man 20 years her senior and paid that price throughout her life. My father was 51 years old when I was born and was preparing himself to retire from life. While growing up, we did very little as a family. We didn't travel or participate in activities. This was due to my father's reluctance to do ANYTHING. My mother was a woman who enjoyed life. She loved to play cards, go bowling, travel...little of which she was able to do with my father. The neighborhood women had a weekly card game and Mom did belong to a bowling league. But, this was all with other people. She had an incredible interest in sports, but we never went to any games. She did coach in and then direct the church-sponsored softball league in which I played and played on a team herself for awhile. She was very active in my school and in the church's programs, but never with my father.

With him, she did nothing, and this was all of his doing. Therefore, WE did nothing. It was not until I was older and could drive that my mother and I participated in recreational activities. This situation did not sit well with her, I believe. As a child, my mother was a volatile, frustrated woman. With others, she was a wonderful person. She would give the shirt off of her back for friends/relatives and the other neighborhood kids loved her. But, they didn't have to live with her. At home, her frustrations would come out and I was the one to pay. She would often get angry at life and I would find myself punished. The sound of a hairbrush cracking on my butt or noggin was not uncommon. I think my knees are impaired now because of the amount of time I was commanded to that position. All was not bad, though. She did try, but I sometimes feel it was more for convention's sake than a real desire to be "motherly." She baked elaborate birthday cakes for me and I never lacked for possessions. Of course, my possessions kept me quite occupied behind closed doors in my room...

When I was older, our relationship improved greatly. I lost the immaturity of youth that she found intolerable (as do I) and gained a driver's license. She was more mobile now and had a companion at home. By this time, my father was in decline from a variety of illnesses, the most significant of which was Alzheimer's Disease. I will not recount the horror of caretaking a person spiraling downward with this affliction. Let's just say there has been nothing on television or cinema that even remotely approaches the day-to-day stress, fatigue, frustration, disgust, anger, etc. that caretakers have to endure. And, of course, it is not a fast disease. My father was in barely human condition for years before he died and the toll on my mother was literally lethal. While he was diminishing, my mother noticed symptoms that signalled cancer, but she took no action. Even when a tumor externalized, she hid the fact until he died. By then, it was too late to do much. She fought the good fight - she was a woman of formidible will. Finally, though, she succumbed.

My emotions over my mother are somewhat mixed, but ultimately positive. Fiercly so, in fact. I think the injustice of my father's selfishness, which I didn't fully understand until I was adult, explains much of her behavior. She was married to a man who, when he retired, positioned himself in a recliner and never left it until he was ambulanced to the hospital. He retired from life and his marraige entirely. I see that now and began, long ago, to forgive my mother the actions she took towards me when I was a child. I was married to a self-centered individual who shut me out of his "personal" life. I realized the feelings of entrapment, anger, loneliness and further realized that this was what my mother had felt. But, at that time, my path of divorce was not readily available. She was captive - I could be free.

I love my Mom. I admit that I have not visited her grave in many, many years, and I don't know when or if I will rectify that anytime soon. She is thousands of miles away. She does have company. Not my father, although he is buried beside her, but her sister, who died not long before Mom did. Aunt Pat is right there and they were very, very close in life. So she is not alone. I am happy for that. She was alone for so long in her life; now she has good companionship. One day I will visit the cemetary with two small bouquets of violets for Mom and Aunt Pat. I will chat about my life and the adventures that I have experienced. I will also apologize for disliking Mom as a child and explain that I now understand things pretty well. I will tell her how I learned so much from her about independence and from her life committed myself to making my own way in the world. To following my own heart and not letting my dreams be crushed by someone else. From her, I learned that I am the only one who can really make or break my life. The lesson was not pleasant for her and I learned from seeing these things taken from her, but it has carried me to this point without the help of any other being. One day, I may marry and share a life with another person again. But I will enter that relationship knowing that I am not trapped, that I can succeed on my own, that I have interests, hopes and dreams that I am free to pursue. For all of that, I will thank her.

Happy Mother's Day Mom! Hope it is an enjoyable one!