My Mother’s Death

“Honor Thy Mother and Father”

I have finally arrived at an understanding of these words.

I used to think it was funny, a little bit of silly nonsense; because they didn’t believe. Recently I encouraged my son to do this–to honor us–no matter how bad it was a lot of the time, because everything about him is embedded in his parents’ lives and experiences in so many ways.

So, when my mother died I couldn’t speak at first. It was just so unexpected. The night before, I had written a letter to her about the lifetime of conflict, with the intent to open up a dialog. Because she was getting older and, the time seemed right because she had agreed to read Cats Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. I had read about 90 pages, then I gave it to her because I sensed it would give her just the right understanding of all the things I tried to say to her over the years. We were in a conflict because of a session with the three of us (me, her, and my father) and a therapist I was seeing at the time. Something slipped in the way things do sometimes and my father made a mountain out of it in the way he does. It was the kind of “place” where I have a sort of silly good feeling while I look at my imminent death. And here I am now. Trying to pull out of it. My mother is gone. Its three years later. She may not be dead, she or they may have faked it. Or that may have happened but she died afterward.

The point I want to make is about that letter (an email to her.) After I wrote it the Christian song “Smile” by the Sidewalk Prophets started playing through my mind, and played all night long. “There’s always a reason to always choose joy/Smile, if you think you can’t/Smile get up and dance…” I just loved that song and when my father came to the bottom of the stairs early in the morning I was ready to get through the 3 years and 1 month until today. Its been pretty frigging awful.

There was NOTHING HARMFUL IN THAT LETTER. My father probably edited it to his liking. I touched on a few points in a way that was a “dig” or challenged her thinking–as I said, to get a dialog going; because the meeting I had with her and the therapist was pathetic. The therapist just loved her accent. That was about as far as it got. Those last two sentences are going to bring down evil hatred on me. That’s just how it goes whjere me and my mother are concerned. People adore her and hate me. I have my own way of saying things that comes from laying around the house talking to myself all day long. Everybody would leave, and I didn’t even know that I was alone. I remember standing near the top of the stairs once looking for the pencil that I was holding in my hand and I toppled over and fell all the way down the stairs. There was nobody in the house. I remember weekend morning tennis doubles with their friends. Steven went over to his friends’ houses. I was asked to change my sister’s diapers and did so. I laid in bed in the same room as her in desperation. I would go down to the kitchen and get a tiny spoonful of Marmite, which is very salty and spicy, and feel very guilty about it, and lick it off the spoon very slowly. Then, after a while, I would get another spoonful. I think that it was then that I would get up the gumption to put on clothes and go to the family friends’s house about 6 or seven blocks away and knock on the door and the daughter always let me in, she was alone too. And we played board games. For a couple of hours. I guess her mother came home and threw me out, I don’t remember. The major difference was that we didn’t have to play in a basement, we played in the family room or living room on the first floor. Everyone else–including my family–had a “New Jersey basement.”

Anyway, back to my mother, she came in for some very harsh judgment over me once I got into the psych system but she also gained a lot of allies. It’s all very unfortunate.

So, its hard to talk about my mother. She is, or was, a crowd pleaser, and I was shy and awkward and could be a bit of a bully sometimes, a quality I acquired from her. That contradictory mix put people off every time but there was something more going on there and it was partly sexual and I just don’t want to spend a lot on this right now because the main thing was about the email–they save everything so of course he would have saved that. Point ONE is that it was not threatening or derogatory it was what I have already said and point TWO is that he would have altered it. I know that I need to clear this because it had everybody hating on me after I didn’t go to the funeral “Luncheon”. I was absolutely terrified. I laid stock still on the bed the entire time. I got the therapist to write an excuse for me. As I lay there, I was sure that I HAD made the right choice. My father was half psychotic–he said so to me himself–I knew that he was going to do something to publicly execute me. Over the letter. What has happened since then has been pretty bizarre but I am starting to come out of it.

It is my impression through what my father says and does not say that my mother WAS still living after being reported dead but IS now dead.

My father really is NOT a very smart man. He has handled his family affairs poorly.