Grieving is a process, not an event. There is no one cathartic moment.
Thinking about your mother’s influence upon you is a process too. It is more a stream of consciousness process. You just remember things and begin to tumble down the rabbit hole. Even when you should be sleeping. And so here I am again, maybe it won’t be the last time.
You can find out quite a bit about me from my blog. I share stories. I love story, and telling true stories. Especially the Story. There is not much I keep hidden except the sources of shame. Some friends call me King of the Overshare.
My parents were King and Queen of the Undershare. As I noted we didn’t talk about lots of things. Feelings weren’t the only thing we didn’t talk about. History is something we didn’t talk about. She never really talked about herself so in some ways she was very hard to know. You had to follow the clues like breadcrumbs in the forest.
We didn’t talk about religion and faith. This may seem strange because she brought me to mass most weeks and I went to CCD until I was confirmed in high school. I think we started out going as a family, but most of my memories are of just the two of us at the 4:30 mass on Saturdays. I was the final hope as she tried to fulfill her obligation. Like any child I’d squirm restlessly on that wooden pew, bored from the 15-minute homilies from Father Rogers. He must have been one of the good priests because he was there forever. But the worst was the week he presented the budget in lieu of the homily. That was always the most boring mass of the year. Summer time mass was hot and sweaty since there was no A/C in our 70’s space ship looking building.
I was the last hope religiously because my brothers must have begun balking. Though the youngest, I was the only one to be confirmed. But we never talked about it: what was said, what it meant how to live it. We didn’t say grace at meals. It was utterly and completely compartmentalized. It was like the dollar bill she tossed (or allowed me to toss) in the plate: what was required.
I remember little of what I learned. I remember engaging my CCD teacher about 5th commandment. In my early teens I had relatively high moral standards, so I thought. By my late teens that was pretty much out the window. I remember the trauma of having to tell the priest my sins for first confession.
It might seem like a waste, but it wasn’t. Oddly, I owe it my life. The liturgy “saved” me. As a college student facing my selfishness and lust, trying to actually pray for real it came back. “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on me.” Had I not gone to mass all those years, I would not have known there is a Savior. For this I thank my mother.
We didn’t talk politics either. Some of that was because my father hates arguments or debates. Part of it was that my parents voted differently. It has only been in recent years that my father talks politics with me, because we generally agree. As a result I figure she was the Democrat. But she was a pro-life Democrat. I, of course, only learned this after my conversion and interest in the pro-life movement. See, I can’t really talk about her without talking about me. Is that normal?
We didn’t talk about sex. Like at all. Like ever. I learned from magazines found in my house, kids at school and movies. These are not the best places to learn about sex being full of misinformation. As the youngest I was exposed to my brothers’ sins. And my parents grew tired of paying babysitters. As a result I was dragged to movies in the 70’s that they wanted to see. And some of them had sexual situations, like Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. The most egregious was Slap Shot. It is one of the funniest movies I ever saw. And one of the raunchiest. But we never talked about it.
In some ways my parents were laisse faire parents. I was not strictly disciplined though we had a “board of education” as a decoration on the wall. I only saw it come down once, and felt it on my backside even though it was clearly my brother’s fault. She was more subtle. Okay, pulling the hair on the back of my head wasn’t subtle (and thankfully I never did that to my kids). Grounding was more her/their cup of tea. Like the time I was grounded for a week for s
aying Dennis Gilbert pushed me into a kiddie pool on a cold day instead of admitting I was afraid of the neighbor’s tiny, barking dog and backed into it. Grounding and seemingly subtle statements like “We’re glad you aren’t on drugs” (did they know I spent the previous summer smoking pot with my cousin who likely was in trouble for still smoking pot?).
Or the time she found my the beer leftover from a night out which I’d hidden in my sock drawer while in high school. “Mr. I’m Gonna Drink at Home” became a binge drinker and leftovers weren’t common. But she found them “putting things away.” She always found my contraband “putting things away.” I’m still not sure what she was “putting away” when she found the condoms “Mr. I’m Gonna Wait ‘Til Marriage” hid in his desk. Her trouble with boundaries reared its head often in this way. She had her ways of expressing disappointment and using guilt trips.
I’m probably a reader because she was. I don’t remember seeing my father read much at all although the entire collection of Bond novels clearly wasn’t hers. But until Alzheimer’s took its toll she was always reading a novel. I even read some she had been reading, unfortunately. I didn’t need to read the V.C. Andrews series Flowers in the Attic. No one did. But my interests were far wider, and like her I often had a few books I was reading. I’ll blame that addiction on her.
We also watched TV together. When I came home from high school I’d watch As the World Turns with her. It didn’t hurt that a young Meg Ryan was in it. The young Meg Ryan was the reason I watched it. But if I was home in the evening we’d watch shows like L.A. Law. I guess that was how we bonded. It was my dad who took me to movies and games, and mom who watched TV with me. These were the years Dad was in sales and not always home in the evenings.
TV is connected to another of her little tests before reward. For Christmas in my sophmore year of college she gave me a small black and white TV for my dorm room. She wanted to make sure I actually studied first. My GPA was sufficient to warrant the gift. It was on that little TV that I watched the Challenger explode a month later.
The Challenger blew up a few days after her mother died. If I remember correctly the only reason I was in the dorm room to watch it was that I was told not to go to the funeral but stay at school. I still don’t understand why. It was not very far away, but out of the way for them to pick me up. When Nana died there was no funeral. And so you see my family’s strange relationship with death. We want to remember people was they were, even if we aren’t gathering to actually do that. Grief is private so no one learns how to grieve.
Grandma’s death reminds me of another of my mother’s subtle/not so subtle passive-aggressive attempts to change someone. Grandma was a chain smoker: unfiltered Camels. She was old school and hard core. Her house smelled of cats and Camels. My mom hated smoking, and that her mother smoked. She cared about her mother, and wanted her to be around longer. She expressed this by buying her cigarettes with filters. Grandma would cut them off and smoke them. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn she died of lung cancer.
Family did matter to her. Both grandmothers were about 45 minutes away. When I was young we’d go visit them regularly. While we only saw my father’s sister on holidays, we’d see some of her brothers on a fairly regular basis. We lived less than a mile from her brother Dick. Rick, my cousin, was only a few months younger and we spent a lot of time together until the infamous summer before 8th grade. We talked about sex. And drugs (only later). And rock ‘n’ roll, he introduced me to Van Halen. He could get away with cussing as long as it was in an English accent like on Monty Python. My mother allowed me no such leniency.
Her brothers Norman and Ronnie were single through much of my childhood. In addition to family get-togethers where Norman would tickle me mercilessly, I would sometimes spend time with them (sometimes with Rick). I remember Norman taking us up to Manchester to go to Wendy’s (a special treat in his eyes) and to see Midway in sensurround so we could feel the theater shake when the bombs went off.
There was a failed attempt to go to the Deerfield Fair as well. Norman got the weekend wrong. I can’t remember what we actually did but we enjoyed listening to My Sharonna. I never did go to the Fair to see the freaky animals.
There was a weekend with Ronnie that included a trip to the drive-in to see Orca (for us kids) in which Bo Derek kept her clothes on, and Shampoo (for him) in which I think Warren Beatty didn’t. It ain’t easy going to a drive-in in a Firebird if you’re in the back seat. This strange detour is to indicate that some of her brothers had big roles in our lives.
It had to have really hurt her when her mother died and Ronnie (so the story goes) was discovered to have gotten the house put in his name. A lawsuit followed and he became “He Who Shall Not Be Named”. After the lawsuit she never mentioned him in my presence. He was cut off. I wondered what became of him until this past fall before Norman died. Ronnie came to say good-bye to his brother, but was too late to say good-bye to his only sister who no longer remembered her brothers. Turns out he moved to Winter Haven, FL and I wonder if we lived there at the same time.
It hurt her that we aren’t close as a family. She’d triangulate by trying to get me to tell my brother she’d appreciate a call. Yes, she had a phone. But she saw it as a token of love if he called. Like any mom she wanted to feel loved and appreciated. Her move back to NH for the grand son was disappointing in some ways because she didn’t see that grand son as much as she anticipated. There was a geographical closeness to my brothers that didn’t seem to be matched relationally. This pained her though she wouldn’t come out and say it. At least to the parties involved.
Families are messy and complex. Sin, especially when not owned up to, creates distance. All families have their issues, their flaws and pains. They also have their good stuff. I suspect that if you’re close it is because you see more of the good stuff and because you’re close you discover more of it. When you aren’t it is often because you’re focused on the not so good stuff. And because you aren’t you don’t see the good anymore.
I struggled in my relationship with my parents for a few years. There were past hurts I wanted to talk about that they didn’t (and who could blame them). I didn’t want a pound of flesh so much as acknowledgment but it probably looked like I wanted a pound of flesh. I had to learn to accept them as they were, warts and all, and not demand they be who I wanted them to be. That demand drove me away for a time. When I let it go I could draw close again. Mom and I never talked about that time of frostiness. She was just happy I was calling again. She loved me, and was happy that I loved her.
At times my wife critiques my driving, noting that I “break late.” One friend nicknamed me “Tailhook” because I didn’t slow down until entering the decellaration lane to enter our subdivision. My mom was worse. I remember frequently being in the car on Broad Street approaching the red light by the old Nashua Mall. We were going downhill. I would keep pressing my foot onto to the floor boards as if I was breaking. So, CavWife, it could be worse.
She couldn’t drive a manual transmission. As a teen I was told it had to do with arthritis. I recall an accident in the same Nashua Mall when someone t-boned us in the parking lot. Being in the backseat, and being young, I’m not sure if her driving precipitated it but that is a strange place to be in an accident.
This one looks very much like ours but has a real hood scoop.
The “best” car she drove as an orange and black Plymouth Duster with a fake hood scoop. She drive this while Rick and I were in a bowling league. There were many cold winter mornings when she drove us to Leda Lanes in that pseudo-muscle car.
Sadly this car was gone by the time I learned to drive. I learned on a grey Ford Grenada. This was an utterly horrible car, particularly in the snow. I rejoiced with we got the Subaru station wagon instead. Unfortunately, though, this assisted in my seduction by the girl would be my first girlfriend. Since she didn’t drive and rode her bike to work, she asked me for rides home. This was during the summer before she went off to college, so we’d sit outside and talk, until she made her move on me… betrayed by my hormones I was.
Cooking was a blessing and a curse where my mom was concerned. She grew up with a Polish mother. Food was likely … bland (apologies to my fellow Poles). When she got married she learned how to cook Italian food for my father. There was plenty of pasta in our house growing up. She handled that pretty well.
One thing she didn’t handle well was chili. Hers was like watery tomato soup with beef and kidney beans tossed in. Maybe there was a molecule of chili power in there, but I seriously doubt it. When I learned to make my own, it had lots of meat, was thick and spicy.
For many years I thought I only like chicken that was fried. When she baked it the chicken was often bone dry. Eventually I learned that I liked chicken, as long as it wasn’t bone dry.
I do miss her “magic bars” from the Christmas holidays. They were great, and CavWife refuses to make them for me since they include coconut. Thankfully her sister makes them as a treat for me.
That’s all for now. There may be more.
Cavman Considers 