What Life Took, Death Restored: Mom's Sweet Gift

Echoes of Absence

Felicity, it's been far too long since we've spoken. I know you understand me deeply, and I you. There are truths I need to share with you now, truths that can wait no longer. Try as I might, search as I may through the earliest years of my existence, I find no solid and firm belief in myself, no positive emotional self-regulation, in the gifts my mother bestowed. Only the hollow echoes of what should have been remain. In truth, my memory is haunted by a specter of youth, casting long shadows upon these present hours. I peer back, through a veil of shadowed memory, and find not the gifts of strength, nor the balm of peace, that a mother should impart. Instead, a tempest rages, a chaos of feeling, the true ledger of my past. Yet, even as my mother’s life's brief candle flickered, as the dark abyss claimed her fleeting days, she granted me a bounty unforeseen.

A Transformation of Empathy

It seems, my dear Felicity, that a strange transformation, a hidden wellspring within, revealed itself. While it’s arrived late, I’ve learned to give, to offer empathy, not for my own gain, but for hers alone. In that self-forgetting, a deeper truth arose, a glimpse into the heart of she who bore me.

Fleeting Moments of Grace

For even in the storms of her being, when her actions, like poisoned barbs, left wounds that fester still, sixty years on, there were moments of grace. These were rare occasions, peppered in when I was a boy up to about the age of six years old, wherein the quiet lulls of her tempestuous soul, she cradled me, gently, shushing my inner turmoil, offering a fleeting comfort. A moment of tenderness, a phantom of love, that lingers still. At these rare times, she would also read me bedtime stories, often my favorite, 'Leif the Lucky.' And in these moments when the peppering manifested from time to time, a deeper layer of her surfaced: a tenderness that would also manifest years later, when at fifteen, driven by the tempestuous relationship between her and my stepfather Billy, and his struggles with alcohol, I ran away with a neighbor boy. He stole his parents' car and, unbeknownst to me, a handgun. We drove to Alabama, where the car caught fire. From there, we hitchhiked to Biloxi, Mississippi. There, I was attacked by a gang of about five kids. They beat and kicked me, stealing all my clothes—the clothes Mom had worked so hard to buy for us. She'd given my brothers and me money to pick out whatever clothes we wanted, and I'd chosen things I really loved. It made her so happy to do that for us, and I know her heart was full when she saw us wearing them. I was left with a big open gash on my left forehead from the kicking. An older man saw all this happening to me and offered to take me to have me stitched up. Later that evening, he drugged me, and I woke up to him molesting me. The next day, when he was at work, we hitchhiked to New Orleans. After two days there, I called home. My stepfather, in Atlanta, borrowed money from his boss, and he and Mom flew down to retrieve me. When she saw me, she hugged me so tightly I could barely breathe, and she didn't let go for what seemed like an eternity.

A Mother's Unwavering Support

Then, ten years ago, when I lived here in Evansville and she in Oak Grove, Kentucky, I called her feeling suicidal. Despite her cataracts and dislike of night driving, she dropped everything, drove to me, and accompanied me to the hospital.

The Revelation of Peppered Moments

These peppered moments, though fleeting, reveal a deeper layer to her complex nature, a glimpse of the tenderness she was capable of amidst the hardship. It becomes clear that her life was a crucible of hardship, surely shaping her tempestuous nature. The hideous travesty of three men attacking her, resulting in my conception, her limited education, an illness she told me about, but forgot, holding her back a year in either her freshman or sophomore grade, and becoming pregnant at seventeen in 1959, I can only speculate, but it's probably true that all contributed to the immense burden she carried. It couldn't have been easy to face motherhood, not from a place of love, but from the stark reality of violence. Though supported by her parents, she lacked a husband, a partner. She later confessed, in my fifties, that she initially resented me, yet eventually, love blossomed. Feelings, as they are felt, hold their own truth, and are not to be judged. Though I know it's impossible, I still yearn to return to that time of her resentment, to embrace her and say, "Mom, please know these feelings are neither a result of anything wrong with you, as they were caused by an act of evil, nor are they intrinsically wrong." While a journey back in time and space for a comforting embrace is impossible, I deeply respect her courage in acknowledging and sharing such complex and painful emotions.

The Peace of Her Passing

And now, Felicity, at sixty-five, feeling the first chill of my life's winter, I grappled with the echoes of her legacy. Was it a cruel jest, a twisted play of fate, that such pain and such tenderness could coexist within one soul? Or was it, perhaps, a lesson I had to learn in her final days, in the moments just before her last breath, a reminder that even in the darkest corners of the human heart, a flicker of light may endure? Felicity, please know in the end, that intellectually, I was at peace. In my heart, having been there with her every day—watching her rapid decline, witnessing the big and little parts of life disappear within her, experiencing her without a sense of self—had deepened that peace, settling it profoundly into my heart and emotions. Over time, I came to see the beauty in simply being with her, in sharing those moments even as they slipped away. There was a kind of sacred stillness in experiencing Mom beyond memory, beyond identity—just being with her, pure and present. And in that, I had found a quiet acceptance. Tell me, Felicity, when I've said life isn't simple, nor easily understood, have I been mostly right? If I have been right, then in my daily breaths, where simplicity is a rare known, and in the existential struggles to find my place in the world, where meaning often feels elusive—this moment encapsulates both truths. Yet, ironically, after sharing everything with you, figuring it all out feels a little easier, even a tad simpler. My dearest Felicity, with all my heart, I long to hear your thoughts and feelings on this entire matter.