Dear Mom

With the exception of the past two years, every summer when the weather broke, I would start to get a sense of dread that seemingly came out of nowhere. This dread became a deep sorrow that seemed to fill my heart and was unassociated with anything I was doing or who I was around. It took me some time to realize that this feeling happened because it was the summer break between middle and high school break when my mom passed away. As sorrowful as an event this was, I have often told people that it was not her death that affected me as much as it was how she lived. My mom was an alcoholic and abused other drugs, and for a while, I sat in a place of unforgiveness for what she did. The following is my story of how I learned to forgive her.

There’s a stereotype that goes, “young female seeks father-figure from guy she’s dating due to issues she had with deadbeat dad growing up.” While many of the friends that I had growing up, both male and female, had this very issue, for me it was the opposite. My father was an excellent example of what a man should be, in the way that he provided for his family and the fact that he never gave excuses for things that he knew he had to do (he never in his 30+ years of working at Dupont missed a day of work). It was my mother who, if society was fair between the sexes, might call “deadbeat.” While my mother was a beautiful person inside and out, she was an alcoholic. Because of her alcoholism, my dad and her would often get into arguments. Most of them were verbal, but every now and then, items were thrown, and things got physical. Eventually, she cheated on my dad with a man who introduced her to crack, leading to a temporary divorce between the two (as well as the first and last time I ever saw my dad cry) and her being in and out the house on multiple occasions to go to rehab. Ultimately it was in the summer of 2003 that my second oldest sister found my mom dead in her room as she had passed away in her sleep.

My immediate feelings to her death were surprisingly stoic. In contrast to the loud crying one may expect from a 14 year old who just lost a parent, a numbness came over me that would follow me for several years thereafter. The statement that most accurately defined this numbness was one I clearly remember praying one day: “Lord, I pray that I die soon so that I can see my mom again. I don’t know that I can live my entire life without her.” In many ways, socially speaking, I did die. Many of my interactions became me just going through the motions, and it would be years before a genuine laugh would come out of my mouth. I remember a guy in school asking me why I always seemed like I was fake laughing at things, and that I didn’t have to laugh if I didn’t genuinely find something funny. I didn’t know how to answer the question at the time, as the fake laugh I taught myself was the only one that I knew. For me it was better than sticking out as the kid who never had fun.

It wasn’t until my first romantic relationship however, that deep rooted feelings toward my mom had started to surface. I, an insecure 20-year-old, dated a new girl to my college class at the time who everyone found attractive. “I don’t know why she’s into me,” I would often think to myself. The totality of my being at the time was my 5’6 (and three quarters) height and my 130lb frame. This seemed to sum up my view of self at the time. Long story short, the relationship ended and that’s when some of the other stages of grief started to surface in my blame of my mom.

“If you were alive, maybe you could have taught me how woman think, and what I can do to keep them excited and interested,” I thought to myself. Maybe I would be more confident, or more patient or more kind. I wept over my mother’s death for the first time in years. It was the first time I missed what she could have been in my life. Maybe If I was old or mature enough at the time of her passing, I could have been there for her to help her through what led to her committing suicide. My sorrow and reasoning stages eventually turned into anger however, when I overheard a conversation between my sister and her friend that discovered my mom’s suicide. “Suicide?” I thought to myself. “I thought she passed away in her sleep!” I confronted my sister about this who informed me that since me and my younger sister were too young at the time, the elder members of our family felt it best to conceal such a thing from us. She told me how she herself felt guilty as my mom informed her of the planned suicide the night before, citing the pills she told her she would take the night before as what ended her life. My sister had wished she took her more seriously. Eventually, my sorrow turned into anger.

“How could you be so selfish?” became the banner of my thoughts toward her. I felt like my mom took the easy way out by committing suicide instead of facing her problems. Instead of being there for me, for us kids when we needed her, she had forsaken us to find her own “peace.” Not only did I miss out on development that could have made me a better boyfriend, or just overall a better person in life, but it wasn’t even for a “good” reason. For years I grew to resent my mom until a conversation that I had with my father.

One evening I was talking to my dad about the young lady I had dated, and about how I was upset over our breakup. While I took the blame for most things, I admitted that I saw how an early molestation she had experienced played out in some of the things she was looking for from me in our relationship. “I never told you this before, but your mother was molested when she was younger.” These words hit me like a train. It’s easy to blame the people who are supposed to be perfect in your life, like a parent or a pastor, when you elevate them beyond the status of “human,” but this newfound revelation seemed to change things for me and started me down the path of my forgiveness of her. No longer was she a selfish woman who escaped into alcoholism and other drugs at the expense of her family’s health, but she was now a hurt woman who was coping through these things. Because I had dated someone that I loved who coped in similar ways, my heart towards her had changed and I had eventually learned to forgive her.

When we are young, we often see our parents in a fantastical light. We see them as heroes who can do no wrong. And when things happen that contradict this dream, many of us enter a disillusioned state of being where we no longer hope for things offered to all people who search hard enough for them. This was my story at least. When I discovered that my mom was molested when she was younger (and went through other things in her youth not mentioned in this paper) however, I came to realize the two-fold importance of forgiveness. The first part is that we are all human, and often even the worst of us are simply coping with something that maybe we were never able to overcome. Sometimes an unexpected (and often undeserved) persistent kindness is enough to quell such peoples. The second lesson I learned is that forgiveness is not for the person who committed the offense. Too often we want to wait for the person to change before letting go of the burden unforgiveness places on our hearts. There was a life I wanted to live, and no longer would I allow the pain of someone who was no longer in the land of the living to effect it.