My Mother Was Not My Mother Anymore

I don’t have the skills to combat it, not now, likely not ever. I have, instead, learned to pretend. Put on a brave face and insist that I’m doing good, in spite of the sadness that corrodes my insides like battery acid. High-functioning grief.

Losing my mother was what I imagine it must feel like to lose a limb. Physically, the leg is gone, yet the urge to move it lingers. The process of relearning to walk, daunting; the phantom pain, debilitating. I’ve waited for the cells to regenerate, but they never do, and the hope of feeling whole again dissipates like vapor.

The steady march of the years leaves me feeling more and more disconnected from her. I lose more of her every day and worry that, eventually, a day will come when I will have forgotten her altogether. The sound of her voice, the scent of Charlie Blue on the insides of her wrists, the angles of her face. Like being adrift at sea without a life raft, no land in sight, it feels as if an ocean separates us.

Then there are times when I feel her energy and presence so strongly that I swear she’s right next to me. And it’s like it always was.

Friends First
My mother was my best friend, and I, hers. Other people came and went, as people do, breezed in and out like the seasons, transient and predictable. We convinced ourselves that we didn’t need anyone else, which was not so much a proclamation of solidarity as it was a voluntary defense mechanism that steeled us against hurt and disappointment, concealed and protected as we were in the shadows of the walls that we erected around ourselves.

Kathi starred as the hero and villain in all of my stories. I wanted to be everything and nothing like her. Day to day, I was equally mesmerized by and ashamed of her.

She was beautiful, sexy, witty, and fearless, the epitome of cool. I mimicked her speech and mannerisms, the meticulous way she applied her makeup, the confidence of her strut. Men looked at her like she was a goddess.

But there was another facet of her that wasn’t as endearing. When she drank, she was obnoxious and cruel. She spiraled out of control for many years, exposing my brothers and me to situations that were beyond our collective age and comprehension, and which forced us to grow up quickly. We learned not only to take care of ourselves and one another, but our mother, too. I grew to resent her for it.

I don’t blame her. Not anymore. She had a difficult life, and the trauma from it spilled into our lives. Emotional byproducts. I spent my childhood nestled against the supple flesh of her outer thigh, listening to stories about how life had broken her.

Overwhelmingly, she was sad, my mother, and I couldn’t help but worry that I would end up just like her. She tried but couldn’t drown out the horrors that pulsed in the hemispheres of her brain. She wore her scars like badges. Abuse from her family and my father. The stresses and shame of being a poor, single mother on welfare. Estrangement from her family. Mental illness that went undiagnosed. She drank to quiet the noise, to erase the images.

With time, I’ve grown to understand her better, and I’ve realized that I have no right to be critical. I have no idea what type of mother I would be, no notion of the decisions I’d make or the mistakes I’d suffer. Having children isn’t easy and, for sure, raising the three of us on her own was no day at the beach. She was mother and father and everything in between, and she did her best with precious few resources. We were never hungry, we always had clothing on our backs (hand-me-downs, but still), we were never without shelter (despite multiple evictions), and she never abandoned us. It would have been easy to.

We were her life, and she loved us. Our upbringing was anything but typical, owed in part to our mother’s rather loose parenting style, but we were lucky for it. We had so much fun with her, and those are the memories we cling to. She was enough, and I worshipped her the way ancient Egyptians revered cats.

We were a team, Kathi and I. We did everything together, and many people mistook us for sisters. We bonded over a mutual love for music and writing, shared stories and secrets, clothes and shoes, makeup and razors, even shared a bed until she was forced to live out her remaining days on our second-hand couch. Some of my favorite memories are of us binge-watching music videos on MTV and eating junk food, getting dolled up to go to concerts, talking until the sun came up.

Like close friends or sisters, we often fought like animals. We were competitive and jealous and catty, and our screaming matches could rattle the bones of the dead.

We postulated that no mother-daughter pair could be closer than we were, although neither of us had a solid grasp on the outside world, so we couldn’t say with any certainty whether that was true. It was by design how we grew as if fused to each other.

My mother filled my head with horror stories about the world, some wildly concocted, others based on unsavory experiences from her own life, that made me afraid to leave her side. And so I rarely did. And she rallied against the possibility, however slight, that we would end up fractured, the way she and my grandmother needlessly had been for many years.

You and I? she’d say, leaning toward me, causing the ice cubes in her glass to clink. We’re friends first, Lady Jane.

But this thing we had, it wasn’t always easy. Straddling the line of daughter and friend, kid but also adult, was confusing and exhausting. I crossed the invisible line of demarcation one too many times before learning that I couldn’t be both simultaneously.

I’m your mother, not your friend, she’d say, pointing her finger in a stern warning when she felt I overstepped a boundary.

If I had a nickel for every time I'd heard that.

Supermassive Black Hole
I was the center of my mother’s universe. Daughter, friend, confidante, enabler. Therapist. Caregiver, mediator. Rival. Co-parent (to my brothers), and parent (to her). I gripped the cord willingly and squealed with glee as she vacillated from the highest highs to the lowest lows with acrobatic ease.

By her side throughout the abuse we suffered at the hands of my father, I listened to her cry and curse him for being a woman-beating prick, then justify his behavior and take him back, time and again, even after he tried to kill her while the three of us looked on – and eventually intervened, but that’s a story for another time.

I mixed her drinks and guarded her secrets. Cradled her while in the throes of depression, turned off the oven when her once empty threats swole. I took care of my brothers, protected them, when our mother was too sick or weary to do it herself. I nursed her back to health whether she had a common cold or cirrhosis. Stepped into voids she created, defended her, lied to protect her.

She told me I was the “glue that held our family together,” that she didn’t know what she would do without me. Her validation was like a drug. I craved it. I was addicted to the knowledge that she needed me.

I studied my mother’s life as if it were a cautionary tale. Mistakes she made, opportunities she passed up, unhealthy risks she relished with abandon, were lessons in what not to do.

But there were other lessons, too. My mother was a force when she wanted to be. Strong willed and fiery, a fighter who did things on her own terms. She allowed herself to remain beat down for only so long, until she'd had enough.

I watched her collect the fragments of her life, some with jagged edges like an aloe leaf, others smooth like sea glass, and piece herself back together. She quit drinking, went back to school, and secured a full-time job. She emerged like a chrysalis from a long and intense period of darkness to build a life for herself and her children. Life got better. We grew closer. I felt like I was finally getting to know who she really was.

But it was too late.

Her cancer diagnosis arrived like a sonic boom. There was no question what would happen next.

My Mother’s Keeper
I became my mother’s caretaker. It wasn’t a new concept. I’d been taking care of her in some form or another for most of my life.

Nevertheless, I braced as the tectonic plates shifted beneath my feet, as the sudden, irrevocable reversal of roles locked into place. Suddenly, my mother was not my mother anymore.

We weren’t prepared for the impact her insidious disease would levy. Nor the suffering it would introduce, the resentments it would breed, the seeds of fear and pain it would propagate.

Her suffering was immense. Unspeakable. It eroded her like sand carried offshore by storm waves. It mercilessly transformed her from beautiful, young, and vibrant to decrepit and broken. She had so much life left to live at just forty-four, and she fought ferociously for many months.

The day her legs gave out signaled the beginning of the end. She would never walk again and would be couch bound. Fluid collected on one side of her body, making its limbs swollen and misshapen, while her other side grew skeletal and concave. Bones protruded from under her sallow skin like jagged shells beneath sand. She morphed into an alien creature.

The daily routine of feeding, medicating, changing diapers, bathing – keeping her alive – wore on us quickly. Every day was a battle. My mother was a petulant toddler, and I, a parent who was on the brink of committing the unthinkable.

She compared herself to a suffering animal that should be put down. And she screamed and cursed, accused me of deliberately trying to hurt her, of conspiring to take her sons away from her, while I struggled to fit diapers around her grossly deformed body. I allowed her to channel her anger and frustrations toward me. Deep down, I knew she didn’t hate me – it was anger and fear prompting those outbursts – but sometimes it felt like she did. I’d be lying if I said that, at times, I didn’t hate her, too.

Her illness threatened to tear us apart. But the intimacy involved with taking care of her drew us closer still. It was always Kathi and me against the world. We fought, as we always had, together.

In the end, cancer was the only opponent this dazzling duo couldn’t beat.

Promise Me
While she was still able to talk lucidly, before the disease garroted her thoughts and turned her brain to pulp, she asked me to promise her two things:

1. That I would take care of my brothers

2. That I would write a book about this experience

Little Girl Lost
I’ve managed to eke out a life without her. I didn’t think that was possible, not at first. I thought my life was over, too.

I wasn’t ready to lose her. There was still so much I wanted to know, so many questions I hadn’t asked, so much advice I hadn’t sought. I wish I’d talked to her more, especially toward the end.

Losing a mother at any age is difficult. At twenty-one, I was old enough to take care of myself but not so grown that I still didn’t need my mommy. I was just becoming a woman and learning how to navigate life. I felt cheated that I would have to do that alone. Eventually, I found my way, but it took me a long time to get my sea legs.

I’m approaching the point where I’ve lived longer without than with my mother. My brothers have already surpassed that milestone. It’s a weird juncture. When once, I couldn’t imagine life without her, now I find myself struggling to visualize where she would fit in.

I wonder what our relationship would be like had life turned out differently. I miss having a built-in friend. Someone to talk to, someone to encourage me to be brave, someone who knows me better than I know myself. When I overhear conversations between mothers and daughters, see them shopping together, laughing over coffee, the anger returns with a vengeance. It’s a sobering reminder of what we could’ve had, what we could’ve been.

As I get older, I realize that I haven’t fully grieved my mother. I sprung to action after she died, intensely focused on taking care of my brothers and grandmother never stopping to care for myself. Busying myself with details shielded me from emotions and horrors that I didn’t want to – or couldn’t – face. Her loss is more palpable now. I find myself needing her more now than I did then. Perhaps it’s because, with time and maturity, I understand her better. Or perhaps I’m still a lost and lonely little girl.

Guiding Light
I continue to work hard toward making good on my promises to her. Writing the book, though arduous, has been a labor of love that has helped me to reconnect with Kathi and our unique story. Her request – that I write the book – has become my dream – to publish it. In that way, we’re still inextricably linked.

My brothers and I have been through so much together, and we’re unbreakable as a result; we hold one another up in good times and bad. And my mother now has a namesake in her granddaughter, my niece.

We are good, well adjusted people who lead honest lives. It could have gone different, but we chose to carry on with grace, in a way that would make our mother proud.

But I also like to think that some of it is by design. That Kathi continues to guide us.