Not long ago, a group called “Mike and the Mechanics” made a record named “In the living years”. It was a song about how the composer missed and opportunity to makes amends with his father before he passed away. I almost had a similar situation happen to me.
I grew up in a violent household. I can remember as early as age three my father beating my mother. When he left her boyfriend beat her, and the violence traveled down to us and we, my brothers and I, were beaten mercilessly, sometimes until we bleed from our backs from the extension cord that my mother would use.
As I grew older it wasn’t the beatings that I resented the most it was the lack of education. You see, my mother was consumed with fear (a fact I did not know until recently). Every day, with her not working, she would keep one of us home with her from school; she slept with the lights on all night, and the thing that I hated the most was that I had to sleep with her until the age of about 11.
As I grew up, because of innate intelligence, I began to realize that I had missed the promise of everything that being educated had to offer. I first resented, then hated my mother, and threw up a wall of indifference and resentment to her and her feelings for me. For most of my life, she followed my development offering to assist whenever she felt that I needed a shoulder to lean on, but I was resolute in my rejection of her. I was so angry that I didn’t even let her develop a relationship with my son, her grandson.
Then one day out the clear blue sky it happened, I had a life-altering event, my son died, a victim of suicide. My life spiraled out of hand and one cold dark night I made the commitment to follow him. In the torturous weeks that followed I had developed enough strength of will to commit the deed when I got a phone handed to me, it was my mother. I didn’t hang up this time, I listened. As words of comfort eased my pain I found strength and a newborn will to live. I don’t know what made her call me at that time and on that day, maybe it was my soul crying out for help, all I know is that somehow she knew that I needed her and she was there for me. I opened my heart and let her in.
My son died in Sept 2006. His death caused my mother and me to develop a relationship based on friendship, she and I agreed that a mother-son relationship at that point would not work. Because we both wanted it to work and committed to giving it our all, mother and I developed shared a great, almost, 14 years relationship: we wrote and shared poetry, shared cooking recipes, hung around and talked, and had some great Christmases together.
Nearing her eighties, my brothers and I had to have my mother placed in a nursing home, as she began to suffer from “Sundowners disease“ (a kind of dementia where you hallucinate when the sun goes down).
The next to last day that I saw my mother, my brother and I were down for a visit, she started to hallucinate and imagined that she was about twelve again. During the hallucination, she said,” It’s almost dark. I hope he doesn’t come tonight, I am going to leave the light on, I’m afraid to sleep on my back, and it’s going to hurt”.
Her words hit me like a sudden slap as my brother and I stared at each other in stark confirmation that our mother had been raped when she was a little girl. In the blink of an eye everything made sense: the beatings, the lights, my having to sleep with her, these were all ways of her dealing with the atrocity that happened to her when she was a little girl. As my brother and I made our way back to the D.C. area we made a commitment to try, for the rest of her life, to make her as happy with life as we could. Unfortunately, it would only be another three weeks.
Why I wrote this article:
I lucked out. I am not like the man in “Mike and the Mechanics” song; I was able to mend the fence and enjoy quality time with my mother before she died. I know that I am not the only person in the world who harbored pent up resentment for a friend or relative for things that they feel the other person did to them (real or imagined). I would like to suggest that this holiday season in the spirit of forgiveness if you have an estranged loved one or friend that you try to work it out. In the end, you will feel better for it.
Lastly, I want to share two poems that I recited at my mother’s funeral last weekend, one by her wishes the other for me (I wrote them both).
For mom:
Will Anybody Cry For Me?
I look at life and I cry for thee
I cry for the bird and I cry for the bee
The beautiful ones of natures song, whose lives you’d think can bear no wrong
A tear for them at the end of their life is that too much to ask amidst all of the strife
And what about us? Are we more important than them?
Sometimes I wonder with all of the games that we play
But for me, I try to live my life right
Give something to those the less fortunate plight
Sometimes it seems that there is no one to see
So I wonder, will anybody cry for me?
For Me:
Into the Light
Hither Thither where art thou now?
I look at the sky and my head do I bow?
Is there a heaven? For sure no one knows, but my heart feels for certain that you’re now amongst those
Grandfather, grandmother, friend Allen, G.E. They’ll find you they’ll guide you you’ll be safe you’ll see
Though my heart mourns your passing I must not use haste, I’ll stay hail your memory so that your life won’t be wasted
For the rest of my time here towards your memory, I’ll fight, when it’s over we’ll meet and walk into the light.
Thank all of you for your words of strength and your condolences.
May you all live to see one hundred, and I one hundred less a day so that I won’t have to live to see such beautiful people pass away.
MB
