This is a picture of my mom taken when she was 25. By my reckoning I was 2 or 3 years old at the time. My mother died last week at the age of 78. Cancer
had ravaged her body throughout and she made
the decision in November of last year to
discontinue her treatments. It took cancer to move me to
reestablish a relationship with her, to attempt to learn who she wa
and who she had become. I discovered as much
about myself as I did about her. To understand, or perhaps it is better to
say to begin to understand the words that will follow
requires me to cover familiar territory for some of you.
My
childhood was far from normal. My parents had a
difficult relationship that included abuse and neglect
of both his spouse and son. My father was an enigmatic
man of great talents but also great failings. His
was a difficult upbringing that I don’t believe he ever made
peace with, and those unresolved issues bled into every area of his life.
Eventually their marriage fell apart, my mother leaving him in the summer of
1976. Through a series of hard to understand events I found myself with no
family shortly after my 16th birthday. My parents never reconciled,
their marriage finally dissolved by my father’s death in 1983.
There was little to no communication with either
parent and for many years I was unaware of either’s whereabouts. Needless to
say, this created lots and lots of unanswered questions. I had a poor opinion
of both for a number of years, until hearing from an aunt who finally began to
provide me with some of the answers that I had wanted for so long. This
interaction with my aunt reignited in me a desire to answer those questions
that had haunted me for so long, questions about rejection and reasons and
fears of being a man I didn’t want to be.
My mother seldom gave me the answers I sought. She
didn’t want to reopen old wounds. She had remarried and was building a new
life. To be honest, for a long time I held hard feelings towards her over that.
I needed answers about my father and why she permitted the things that
happened. I came to understand that my mother had been a buffer between my
father and I, that she had taken many blows intended for me and had taken the brunt
of many blows intended for me. I came to understand that she left me behind, in
part, so that I could have the stability that a 16 year old needed, that she
trusted my soon to be adopted parents to be able to provide for me what she
could not. I cannot say that it was a noble act, but it was not as calloused as
I had come to believe.
In the 34 years since my father died my mother was
able to piece her life back together. She married again, a man who loved her
and cared for her. They were good for each other. She had found a way to break
free of the chains of her past. She
discovered faith in Christ and turned her life around. She made an impact on
many people. She became someone I did not know. The question was and is....can
I break free of the memory as I have held it all these years?
As Christians we are called to forgive, and I
believe that most of us genuinely try to forgive others. But we all have
trouble forgetting. Genuine forgiveness involves forgetting the offense, to
choose to no longer hold the offense against the person we have forgiven. There
can be no true forgiveness without forgetting. I had to choose to forget the
past, unanswered questions and all, if I was to truly embrace forgiveness for
both my parents. I had allowed my memories to color how I thought about and how
I related with my mother, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes deliberately. My
mother had become a different, a better person, and I was unwilling to let her
be that person. I limited my love and forgiveness for her by the memory I chose
to keep alive, and nobody suffered for it but me.
As I spent a few days last week at my mother’s I
came to realize that my mother had become the person she was always meant to
become. She had been molded by her experiences into someone who made a
difference in the lives of others. She allowed what was to pass and became
someone I had never given her the freedom to become because I would not forget.
Sometimes it’s not so much who we need to forget but
the memory we hold of them.
Rest in Peace, mom. We all will miss you, even me.
