I wanted to not be affected. I was affected. I was affected in such a way that I know there was healing involved yesterday.
The day started out with leaving my home before the sun came up. My sister and her fiance and I decided to drive up to handle my mother's affairs. It was about a 3 1/2 hour drive, going through morning LA rush hour traffic, if we didn't leave at the crack of dawn. Early start it was!
There were so many feelings on the drive up. I started out the day with a bit of cynicism. I was still full of all of the confusing feelings of trying to connect growing up the way I did and the manipulation in my young adult life to being without a nurturing mother and then suddenly losing her. And then reconciling it with losing what I never had. There is just no way it would make sense to people who had the happy, nuclear family.
As the drive went on, my feelings changed to fear. At some point, remembering how she erased me from her home a decade ago, I wondered if I was walking into the same thing. Would I still be erased? My stomach started to somersault. All of the feelings I thought I graduated from, came back.
I did a lot of deep breathing during those 3 1/2 hours.
While speaking with the people who cared for her at the nursing home, I was told that although she was a difficult person to handle at times, that she was remorseful for the things she did to drive her family away. This was the most surprising thing to hear. For as long as I can remember, she has never taken responsibility for anything she had ever done. She would tell us up and down that she was the best mother and we had a good upbringing. I could never figure out if she honestly didn't remember or if she blocked it out. Was it her reality? It wasn't mine. From the outside, things looked normal when I was a teenager. We lived in a nice community. I wore nice enough clothes. I was a typical teenager involved in school clubs and having fun with my friends. Looks were deceiving. Although the physical abuse was no longer, the emotional wounds were deep and embedded within. I couldn't figure out if people who knew her in the last few years were being kind to her children in the face of her death or if they really saw the humanity in her. I started the morning very skeptical.
What I found within her possessions at the nursing home were quirks of an old lady, probably bored with her life, collecting things bought from catalogs. I imagine it was similar to what people do when they feed the emotional emptiness by going out to the mall and spending money or even stress eating. Except she couldn't go anywhere because she was bedridden. I work in senior living, so I understand the sadness that comes with losing your autonomy of bodily functions and making everyday decisions. This was the beginning of knowing I was glad I didn't have the pictures of her feebleness in my mind. When I picture her, I still see a different person than the one her caregivers described. We ended up donating 90% of what was before us.
The next part of our day was what I was dreading the most. We went to the apartment she lived in prior to being in the care center. She kept it for the entire year she was away, always hoping to return. I wasn't sure what to expect. The apartment was in a senior community next door to a church, in the middle of nowhere. She was befriended by the local pastor who visited her weekly and then spoke with her by phone 4-5 times a week. He is a kind man. I looked him up to make sure he was the real deal and he was. I suppose there was a part of me that wanted to make sure she wasn't being grifted. Pastor James was the keeper of her apartment while she was in the care center. He kept it safe. The community itself was nicer than I expected. She lived in a one bedroom apartment and the neighbors all knew who she was. I was again surprised at the community with which she was surrounded. The neighbors were concerned with her well-being and were sad to hear of her demise. There was a sense of rallying around each other. Honestly, I was a little proud of her for the community she built for herself, having done the same thing more than a decade earlier in my own life.
I heard again, this time from Pastor James, that she knew she drove away her family and that she was remorseful. He spoke at length with us the journey she went on with him to find redemption from the life she led. He told me of her holding on to the pride and anger, until she no longer did. He told me of praying with her and that he believed she found her way to a better place. When speaking with this man, I started to believe that it was possible she changed at the end. I thought it was possible, but I was still a bundled mess of feelings. I suppose this is where my heart started to soften a little bit.
We finished in the apartment, taking paperwork and photos and family heirlooms. Her apartment was a lot different than the places she had lived previously. She had moved a few times since her last home in San Diego and her belongings and pictures and things I remembered must have been lost among the moves or with the people she knew previously. It was sparse, but not too sparse. There were pieces of her and things remembered from my childhood interlaced with things I had no connection to. I was surprised and relieved to find I wasn't erased, as I feared. There were photos of my sister and I and my brothers and my step-dad and her grandchildren. We found my sister's baby blanket and my mom's collection of teapots. They were so prevalent in my memories and something that was very much a combination of the mother she was and the mother I wanted her to be. I think it was the part of her in my memories that wasn't marred by pain. At first, I wasn't sure why I wanted them. I just knew I did. We ran across a few things that made us catch a little bit of feelings in our throats. She still had things that triggered the home we knew.
There was a picture that hung in our house, growing up, that she knew I loved. It is a Picasso print. It's obviously a reproduction, but it has always appealed to me. Among the few familiar things, she kept the print. It was tucked away in a dresser with her family photos. It made me think that perhaps she kept it for me. Perhaps she thought of me, after all.
We ended up donating much of the things in her apartment to the church through Pastor James and also to the community she lived in. Pastor James took her clothes and jackets for their clothing drive. The community will have a sale of some sort with all proceeds going to help the group of people she lived near. Knowing that something good can come of her life is a way to make more light out of our darkness.
I didn't realize it until we were driving home, me driving my mother's car following my sister and her fiance in theirs, that there was healing involved in the day. I was affected by everything I saw, despite not wanting to be affected at all. I saw where she tried to make something out of not very much in the place she lived. I saw where she tried to make it a home for herself, after losing everything else in her life. I saw that she still had the selfish demands of her past self, but that she seemed to try to break free of it, prompted by the kindness of the people of which she was surrounded. I believed, finally, what was told to me: that she was remorseful of the things she did to drive us away. I started to believe that she was in a better place, when I didn't the night before.
I had a conversation with her on the drive home. I told her I was ready to forgive her. I told her I was sorry that things couldn't be different. And since I believe in God and Heaven, I was finally believing that maybe she was the whole person we searched for in our life, in her death. I want to believe she is finally perfect and loving and forgiven by my oldest brother, who I know is watching over me in heaven, along with my grandmother. Finally, I can try to believe the best in her. It will take some time, but I see the beginnings.
I discovered a CD playing in her car when I tried to put on the radio. Billy Joel. It was so perfect, because in my child's memory of the 70s/80s, I have always pictured her with friends at a bar, with a piano man of sorts entertaining the crowd. Think of the 80s tv show "It's A Living." Forget for the moment, that I knew she was in a bar, while I was a child at home alone with my sister. After decades of listening to this man's music, I be-bopped and belted out songs, as I left some pain behind, feeling a little bit lighter. I'm not ok, but I will be.
I'm not really sure how it goes
But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete
When I wore a younger man's clothes"
La-la di-di-da da-dum
Sing us a song tonight
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody
And you've got us feelin' alright
