My sister Lisa messaged me on a beautiful, blue-sky Sunday in June that it wouldn’t be long before my mother was gone according to the hospice nurse, so I cancelled my plans and drove directly over. But let me be clear, this wasn’t inspired by a loving dedication to my mother. As my ex-husband (and now close friend) David once noted, “You’re not the long-suffering type.” When something is destructive, unhealthy, or simply not working, I generally stop doing it. It had been many years since I’d ceased engaging in any way with my mother, or honestly even caring. And as challenging as my relationship with my sister had become, I still love her and feel grateful for her. She saved me actually, just by sharing this life with me. Growing up, she had her own room but always stayed with me in mine. Lying in bed together as teenagers- “sleeping off the hunger” (How do y’all stay so skinny??) so we wouldn’t have to go into the kitchen/face anyone else in our family, fantasizing about burning our own house down… (Ah, fond memories…)
I wanted to show up just so that Lisa wouldn’t be alone in this process.
Upon arrival, I walked dispassionately into the room where my mother lay dying, sat down, positioned myself with impeccable posture on the uncomfortable bedside chair and watched Lisa perform a long list of tasks, doting on my previously savagely-mean mother like she was a delightful and beloved 3 year-old child, kissing her head, stroking her arms. Confusion morphed into disbelief as I continued to watch the scene unfold. How in the world was Lisa doing all this? How could our experiences with this woman be so divergent as to create this lavish love display that I could not remotely connect to? As I observed the various horrors of encroaching death overtake my mother’s body- the gargley-wet breathing, the jarring, involuntary movement of her one working arm, the far-away gaze- I willed myself to find some measure of tenderness.
After completing her latest round of medical and emotional duties, Lisa asked me to be in charge of my mother’s morphine while she took a break. So I sat like a professional next to my dying mother. I was there to help my sister, not be some bitter, foreboding entity in the corner. So I got practical with myself, philosophical. “Let’s think about this. How would you treat this woman if you had never met her before?” I squeezed my eyes into a half-mast position, studying my mother’s face, tilting my head to the right, trying literally to gain a different perspective and feel some kind of love. But I couldn’t trick myself, couldn’t force myself to feel or to act differently from what was inside of me.
This hurtles me back to being 14. I had just ventured out of my bedroom door into the hallway- something I tried to do infrequently- and my mother had materialized out of nowhere like a sniper- screaming violently, accusing me of God-knows-what. Well aware of the risk, I screamed back because I was sick to death of everything. I even displayed the audacity to put up my arms up to shield myself as she ferociously slapped and smashed at my face and tried to pull my hair out- so she lost it even more, grabbing my forearms, yelling, “Put your goddamn arms down!!”
That was it. In one furious motion, I twisted free, and somehow remaining conscious enough to not strike- I shoved her back, roaring, “Get the fuck away from me! Never touch me again!!”
Then, in that slowed moment after, something unfathomable took over her face, a look I never dreamed of seeing which has mystified and chilled me since… a smile of both hatred and wild-eyed, ferocious pride, in me, for being the fighter she needed me to be. Her mission had been a success. She’d pushed me to the edge- and now she knew- I could survive in a world where nobody cared and nobody would.
In the aftermath, my sister who is so much like my peace-at-any-cost father, greeted me in my room with one simple question because she truly didn’t understand:
“Why don’t you ever just say ‘ok’?”
This was how my father and sister managed my mother's machine-gun persona. Hands symbolically up, with steadying words of appeasement and supplication, always.
"Ok Rebeca."
"Ok mom."
No matter the occasion, regardless of how far from “ok” anything was.
This was not my way.
And now, in my adult body, I scoured the recesses of my consciousness for something to help me extend grace towards my mother. Around and around, my mind circled my life circumstances and all I emerged with were episodes of vitriol, darkness, abandonment, abuse, my mother’s unmitigated, nearly ever-present rage. Savage attacks I was culturally forbidden to defend myself from weren’t the worst part; it was her showcasing, in signature flare, the laughable pointlessness of my existence.
Long before cell-phones and Uber, I was a 19 year-old undergrad- rushing from British Literature and Abnormal Psychology classes at UT to get to my job at Child’s Day where I wrangled a gaggle of sweet, adorable, and brutally hilarious 2.5 year-olds, “the Turtles”. But my car was not in its assigned space- or anywhere else. Freaked out and confused, I sprinted back up 3 concrete flights of stairs and dialed my parents to see if they’d spoken to Lisa or knew where the car that we shared might be.
My mother answered in her thick Colombian accent, calm and imperious.
“Lisa is here with us in Houston. I told her to just take the car.”
“What?! Why?? I’m scheduled to work right now and I don’t have any other way to get there- she knows that! You know that too!”
My face contracted in disbelief as my heart registered the familiar stab of abandonment. Fiery hell-filled lava threatened to explode from the epicenter of my being- or perhaps I would just die on the spot from yet one more (nearly-hilarious in its predictability) insult to my spirit.
“Why are you ‘working’ anyway?” she sneered.
“Because I want to make my own money- and I love these kids- why wouldn’t I?!”
She laughed, called me low-class, and summed up her disgusted distain saying,“Only poor people make their kids work.”
Then she hung up.
More humiliating still, the phone clanged sloppily against the receiver a few times before the final click of disconnection, like she’d already looked away and was on to something worthwhile.
Snapping myself back from this reverie, I looked at my mother, now in this horrific helplessness- this person who made much of my life hell- who was now as soft and defenseless as a blind little baby bird. My mind cycled- unstoppable- through memory after horrible memory with nowhere gracious to land. And as I gazed into her face, suddenly I heard inside my mind, snarling words of burning hot hatred, directed at her- so sharp, so clear….
“How fucking dare you.”
Even I was a shocked by the extremity of this mental outburst, disappointed that my tremendous will could not create a feeling of benevolence even in this final, exceptional time. The thought had almost felt like it belonged to someone else, like I was there, separate- just witnessing it. Fortunately, my knowledge about the impact of trauma- the natural biological fury it creates, helped me understand and not judge it.
The following moment brought something else: the sadness of all that my mother and I never got to have and the gravity of that. “Not even on her deathbed can you think of something positive about your life with her. How heartbreaking.”
And right then I was flooded by the next words I heard in my mind, from the Real Me, to her ....
“I’m so sorry.”
I was suddenly accessing the compassion my mother’s inner-child deserved for the life she had endured.
In graduate school I was asked to interview my mother about her early years. If it weren’t for that obligatory conversation, I would never have found out that at 7 years-old, my mom had learned one day that her father was taking her on a long boat ride to Cartagena to give her an opportunity for an education- something unavailable in their small town of Lorica. What he didn’t tell proud little Rebeca that morning as she gathered her courage to walk into a new school in an unknown city was that when she emerged that afternoon, he would be gone. No explanation, no good-bye. She moved in with distant relatives, strangers essentially, that her father promised to pay for her care but didn’t. They resented her and made her pay for the burden her little self imposed upon their already dirt-poor existence. After her father left, she said, “I felt abandoned by life.”
Amidst this jarring succession of thoughts and memory, Lisa walked back into the room and asked if we wanted to hear some music. Of course we do. So she turned the station to my mom’s favorite artist- Julio Iglesias. The first song that came on was “Moonlight Lady”, and it made every system in my body freeze. Then, some unidentified emotion, some inexplicable warmth pushed through me, starting in my heart and moving out into each cell in galloping waves.
I was transported to being my 10-year-old self, listening to this song in our Houston living room with my mom and dad: hearing beautiful, sophisticated Julio singing with his gorgeous, singular voice, this cheesy-romantic, somehow transcendent song and how much it all meant to me as a kid without ever understanding why. Looking at it now, he was like a breath of life itself- a respite from all that was wretched and unchangeable in my world. Through our mutual adoration of Julio- I could connect to my mom. I loved him so much, loved his music, felt captivated by all he seemed to be: so open, passionate, ecstatic- totally alive. She probably loved all this about him too. The infatuation my mother and I shared for this man, (creepy as it sounds, I get it) this business-suited, all-smiles, sexy, middle-aged pop singer gave me the hope that something somewhere was actually ok. Listening to his music, my mom was happy. She wasn’t raging. She wasn’t acting crazy. In these times, when my dad would turn on the record player and my mom would translate Julio’s Spanish lyrics for my greedy little heart- (I wanted to know his every thought and word) she was as close as she would ever be to a normal human being that I could relate to and enjoy.
Through the years, in conversations I have had with women, they share presumed-basic little “truths” about mothers. They assume I’ll understand.
“You know how when you went shopping with your mom and…” No.
“You know how you could just tell your mom anything?” No.
“You know how it is with moms and daughters- you may fight, but at the end of the day you still know how much you love each other?” No.
“You know how moms do X or Y or Z or any other fucking normal thing?” No.
Nothing in my life with her had been normal, almost nothing even bearable. At 8 years old- after yet another physical/emotional beat-down, I unleashed a scream onto her from the depths of my pain-ravaged soul, “I hate you!!!!”
She replied, casually, “I hate you too.”
So as Lisa pressed play and, “Moonlight Lady” began:
“There were beggars and kings in a magical sky
There were wings in the air and I learned how to fly
There was me
There was you in a world made for two
Then you were gone”
For reasons unknown even to myself, I began to cry.
A minute or two into the song, the background singers began cooing, “Sexy, sexy lady, you just drive me crazy…” And as I let the words of this most bizarre and unlikely elegy wash over me, I wept at the beauty, the devastation, and the surreal strangeness of life. I’m sitting with my dying mother- who at countless points in time, I despised and vowed never to see again, who is definitely not at her most sexy, and I’m trying so hard to love her despite everything, and all of these complex processes are happening inside me while this song fills the air with so much sweet, raw emotion that doesn’t line up appropriately with the moment we’re actually in- yet somehow does…. I recognize that this is the whole nature of life, encapsulated.
It’s everything, all at once.
And none of it makes sense.
Amidst this reckoning, I remember suddenly that, however fleeting or rare, I had experienced goodness and connection with my mother.
My first memory: I’m 2 years old in Montreal sitting, wordless, on my mother’s stomach as she lays on the couch studying medical journals. I’m gazing intently at her while her focus remains steady upon the material. In a moment of characteristic impatience and demanding-ness, I grabbed her journal and hurled it forcefully across the room and then resumed looking at her. Caught off-guard but laughing with appreciation, she paused- really taking me in, and said,
“Jenny, you have such an interesting look in your eyes…What does it mean??”
As chaotic as life became with her, moments like this of genuine interest, tolerance, and affection in these very young years- how could I ever meaningfully calculate what that gave me?
But as Julio sang and the tears flowed down, I knew I wasn’t grieving my mom. I mourned something else- never getting to know what a healthy, loving relationship with a mother might feel like. I told myself countless times throughout my youth, “At least I’ll never have to grieve these people.” Sadly, that turned out to be true. My tears were not about losing her- they were about never really having had her, except in glimpses.
Friends tell me they really liked my mom. In fact, most people who lived at a comfortable distance from her did. What people say they most appreciated, beyond her no-bullshit ways, was how “loving” she was. Though she was in near-constant fights with each of her 7 siblings, she unflinchingly paid for all of them, and all of their children, to complete school to become doctors, lawyers and architects. If someone was hungry, she dropped everything to cook them a meal. If she liked a person, she loved them: focusing entirely on a them- solid and powerfully capable of seeing only their best (if only for a time). She was generous. And though she bought almost nothing for herself besides plants of every description, if you complimented her on a ring or anything else she happened to have acquired, she gave it to you on the spot. She did this not to validate her own worth, not to manipulate and make you owe something later- just to make what she had worked so hard for, (sledge-hammering her way out of abject poverty where “dinner” was garlic with water), bring some happiness to you. Of all the strange and hurtful paradoxes existing inside of her, this quality of authentic generosity was unequivocally true.
Her generosity, unfortunately, did not include the willingness to introspect.
One of the final questions I was charged with asking my mother for an “Aging Interview” graduate project was, “What in life are you most proud of?” Her answer stunned me, though it shouldn’t have.
“I’m most proud of that fact that I never changed.”
It explained so much about my relationship with her and highlighted our most essential disparity. Though I had been so emotionally troubled as a young person, my one determination was to learn everything I could about life so that I might have a chance to conquer at least some of the patterns and unconscious fears that ruled me. I wanted more than anything else I could imagine- to change myself and my life. I can only surmise that my mother desired to prove she was infallible, indestructible, and subject to no one- not even her own potential acknowledgment that she had ever been wrong about anything.
Reflecting on the confounding paradox of her character, and still at times, of mine, I mourn the parts of ourselves that we humans hold inside, beyond the reach of those closest to us- all the loving capacity that is us- at the heart of us- that we hide, that we waste, that we deny to the people who need and deserve to feel it most.
When I went to visit her about a year ago, after years away, someone in the nursing home who I’d never seen before called out from one hall over, brimming with enthusiasm: “Are you Dr. Dawson’s daughter?!” Bracing slightly, I answered, “…yes…?” The stranger called back-
“Oh wow- you look just like her!!”
Not what I was aiming to hear from her nursing home attendants at this late stage, honestly, but ok. As much as there are strong parallels between us, somehow I managed to value personal growth more than anything- evolution that is as terrifying as it is rewarding- an arduous process that lasts an mf lifetime.
My 11 year-old, Rainer honored me this Mother’s Day with the highest complement possible. In addition to saying how much he loves me, and writing me a precious little poem about how cool and funny I am, and that I take great care of him, he said he notices that I’m always working on improving, and he appreciates it. It means a lot to know he recognizes this dedication in me. For so long, I was ashamed of my family, my life, myself. But as I sat there with my mom, I had the strong visceral awareness that whatever we went through, ultimately, I’m proud of who I am now. I’m happy to be myself and appreciative of all the strength she infused me with, however it happened. Part of that was the real energy of love she was able to step out of her own suffering long enough to offer me- and part is my own fierce tenacity (that I inherited from her) to just keep fucking working- tooth and nail, to become someone my wounded younger self could only vaguely imagine.
My biggest pleasure these days is spending time with my two beautiful sons, and music is a huge part of our enjoyment of life. Last Tuesday, we were in the pool and I was trying so hard to remember an Elton John song that Ellis used to sing as a young kid, which I thought was so cute. Finally it hit me, so we all began belting out the words to “I’m Still Standing”- Rainer, who’s almost as big as me, on my hip- Ellis beaming and water-dancing beside me, suggesting we start a family band… (Oy.) All of us just loving life. My neighbor Christena remarked later that she loves to see how close I am with my boys, “Not all parents are like that.” she added.
I hadn’t shown up for my mother on that day in June, and perhaps that sounds like a pitiful fact I shouldn’t readily admit. But I showed up. And as I let myself move through the reality of my experience and keep reaching for a more open place within myself, my feelings towards her, towards being there, changed. There was a moment where I thought she might be thirsty (she was no longer communicating verbally and spent most of her time staring off towards the right side of the room with a deeply pained expression on her face) so I took a lollipop-shaped sponge full of water and squeezed it slowly into her open mouth. She then said some of the few words I’d heard since she screamed at me years ago that I was dead to her.
She shifted her gaze directly into my eyes- her eyes that look just like mine- and said, “sank you”.
Then she reached for my hand, and I held it.