“Mothers hold their children's hands for a short while, but their hearts forever.”
- Unknown
I set aside a few moments each Mother’s Day to remember someone I never really knew. Her name was Audrey. It is a terrible burden of guilt and shame to admit I can’t remember what my mother looked like or how her voice sounded. This burden has been my constant companion for thirty some years. Knowing that I was much too young to be expected to remember never eases the guilt. Children are ingrained from birth to honor and cherish thy mother. For me, all that remains is a series of images borrowed from faded photos and family stories told during quiet hours.
The first recognition of loss was instinctual and brutally accurate. I do not recall my age at the time, but I the moment is burned in my mind as if it was yesterday. Playing outside in the yard, I ran into the house and down the stairs through the kitchen. My father was on the phone standing no different than he ever did. Without breaking stride I ran past him never hearing a spoken word. Halfway down the steps a cold realization ripped through me like a bullet parallelizing me in place. I turned to look at my father but his back was facing me still unable to hear a word of the telephone conversation. In that brief second I knew with absolute clarity than my mother was gravely ill and would die shortly. To this day I still do not know how or why I was allowed to see the future with such absolute precision. Running to my room, I slammed the door and proceeded to cry, never revealing the dark future to anyone.
Memories of the next couple of years are just fragments as three of us kids spent countless hours in hospital waiting rooms. The smell of antiseptic, the echo of rubber wheels rolling down the bare corridors, the blank whiteness of the walls, and the muffled sounds of a black and white television hanging from the ceiling is most of what I remember. A feeling of sadness for being immersed into a community of terminal illness enveloped my childhood. Each week I recall asking about some gravely ill elderly person who I befriended the week before and was told they where no longer with us. I would sit on my mother’s hospital bed counting all the tubes and wires attached to her, while she would gently smile from beneath a clear plastic mask. I would gaze out the hospital window over the parking lot to the Navasink River in the distance making believe that was the promised land were disease did not exist and everyone came home. If I ever stopped to consider what was happening I would have tried to pay more attention, but I was just a child just riding out the endless boredom. To this day I am unable to visit hospitals without an overwhelming feeling of suffocation and panic. My greatest fear is being confined to a hospital which explains my absolute avoidance of them.
There was a day I recall which was different. Dad asked each of the children to dress up in our Sunday clothes before we headed to the hospital. We waited for what seemed to be an eternity in the hall before each of us was escorted one by one to our mother’s side. As I walked through the door I immediately noticed that my mother was wearing makeup for the first time in months. Her hair was perfectly combed and a flowered dress had replaced her hospital gown. All of the tubes, wires and masks were removed and laid in a pile on the stand next to the bed. She smiled as tears welled up in her eyes. For a second I thought she was finally to be released from the hospital and would soon be coming home again. Her lack of energy and frail disposition conveyed a different reality. She gently directed me to sit on the bed next to her as she hugged me for a long time. Holding my hand she stared deeply into my eyes telling me that she was proud of me and never ever forget how much she loved me, remembering that she would always be by my side. As a child I never understood that would be the last time I would see her alive. It was the last living memory of my mother. Unconsciously I realized the magnitude of the moment by freezing the images in my mind. Life would go on without ever shedding a tear.
It was a brilliant clear blue sky in the morning as the sounds of birds creeped beneath the open window. As I awoke I noticed that it was almost 9:30 am. It must be a holiday because we were allowed to sleep late and miss school. With an uncontainable childhood glee I bounced down the steps to the living room, chanting that “I am missing school”. While rounding the corner I saw my father sitting on the sofa with a glass of Dewars on the end table. I knew something terribly was wrong. With the calmest demeanor and caring controlled authority he asked me to sit next to him and proceeded to tell me that my mother had passed away last night. He sat resolute and composed. He commanded the strength of a thousand men, but as I looked into his eyes I could see a pain and suffering I have never known. The hollow depth of his eyes continues to haunt me today. It was the single most courageous act of love and compassion I will ever experience. No one should ever be tested as my father was tested on that sad day. At that moment forged by pain and incalculable loss I became a man weeping in my father’s arms. His pain flowed through me as if we were one sweeping me away to a desolate cold lonely prison devoid of light and warmth. I vowed we would pass the trial together. What was torn from us that day would be healed in time. The sheer strength and courage he possessed that day made him immortal in my mind. One by one as each of the children awoke my father would be asked to repeat this test of strength three times reliving Dante’s inferno over and over..
The funeral was attended by vast amounts of family and close friends. Flowers covered the walls flowing onto the floor and the scent of floral perfume filled every breath. Kind words were spoken. I could hear the whispers “She was so young, she was only 35. What about those poor children?” I recall wanting to be strong for my father, wanting to show him not to worry about me. After two days of visitation the service was over, my father and the three children were allowed a final private moment to pay our respects before the casket was closed forever. This was the only time I ever saw the full extent of my father’s grief as he fell to his knees sobbing uncontrollably kissing his bride goodbye for the last time. As the suffocating pain and grief surrounded us all I steeled my resolve to be strong. During the entire funeral, not once did I ever shed a single tear in sorrow. In retrospect in was the worst possible decision I’ve ever made.
The years that followed were a blur as the mind attempts to erase the pain and loss. My father struggled valiantly as my grandmother took control of our lives. Only now do I understand that he fell into a deep consuming depression that lasted about 18 months. To cope with his loss he poured himself into his work. He would leave for the train to take him to lower Manhattan at 5:30 am every morning and would return 9:00 pm. We saw little of him during that dark period. His moods were raw and anger would erupt without warning like a wounded animal. When he did return home from work he would sit alone in the darkened living room in silence and drink Scotch until he fell asleep sitting upright on the sofa. Each of us children withdrew into ourselves as we searched for answers that did not exist. It was a solitary nightmare that you could not awake from like sleepwalking through a darkened hall that had no end. My grandmother stood in the center of the vacuum and provided the stability we desperately needed.
To survive, I developed to ability to disconnect from my emotions. I kept my feelings knotted up into a tight little ball in the pit of my stomach. My calm relaxed demeanor is a by product of all those years of repressing emotions. I could always disarm the situation emotionally by pulling the plug and checking out. I cared little for myself and respected the world even less. An angry young man roamed the dark side of life. I embarked on a path of self destruction which is an entire story for another day.
It wasn’t until 14 years later at the age of 26 when on a rainy day, for no apparent reason I finally broke down and mourned the loss of my mother. For the next six hours I laid in the fetal position letting the years of grief flow from me cleansing by soul. The tears were for my mother having left life never seeing her children grow. The tears were for my father having suffered a loss that almost destroyed him. The tears were for a child that could not reach out and a childhood lost. The tears were for the suffering of friends and family. One life so dearly cherished and so abruptly removed cascades through many lives for many years.
The impacts of those early experiences were revealed in shocking clarity during marriage counseling sessions with my first wife. Over the years as a young adult I developed a habit of seeking women that were suffering and in emotion pain. I always believed I could make a difference that I could help. I felt I was center of strength which could provide these women an anchor in a stormy world. It was an incredible moment of clarity when the counselor pointed out this tendency originated with by mother’s illness and death. As a child I was unable to help save my mother so I subconsciously sought women I believed I could save and in some remote way save my mother. Reflecting on the past a great majority of my relationships fit this pattern. I had surrounded myself with broken women that needed to be fixed. It took me awhile to understand that I couldn’t fix these women; all I could do is fix myself. This journey of loss to restoration took almost 23 years.
Our story does have a happy ending. Two years after my mother’s death, my father began dating a close friend of my mother and a year later they got married. It took us kids a while to warm to the idea and made it hell on earth for her as she attempted to heal the family. Slowly she won our hearts as her unending devotion to the family revealed a heart of pure gold. She was an angel that descended from heaven to save this distraught family. Once healed, we became a very close family spending most all our vacations and holidays together enjoying each other’s company. My father spent 31 years happily married to this wonderful woman we call Mim before he passed away. During those years she became the mother I lost in every sense of the word. I remain eternally grateful that she filled my father’s life with purpose and love as she restored our family.
It is ironic how the world works. As we sit around the fireplace talking about the past, Mim provides us stories about our mother when she was growing up. Her voice fills with love and admiration. She understands the importance of having access to the past. Mim recalls all the little things that have been long forgotten and fills in the gaps in memory. She has never been threaten by or attempted to hide the past, allowing us to explore it whenever we needed to. It is one of god’s greatest gifts to sit listening to the mother I know and love so deeply telling me about the mother I never knew.
“The art of mothering is to teach the art of living to children.”Elain Heffner, 2003
