It’s been over a decade, yet I still remember that scene as clearly as if it happened yesterday.
I was standing in my kitchen, talking to Sarah, the mother of two children I was fostering. We had known each other for over two years, enough time to build trust carefully and gradually. We started sharing memories that aren’t often shared. Among other sensitive topics, we talked about our childhoods and our mothers. Not trying to compete over whose was worse or better, but to listen to each other’s stories and offer support when we could.
Sarah’s family history was all painted in gloomy colors of violence and uncertainty. Her grandmother’s death was sudden and shocking, possibly by suicide, but more likely she was killed by her husband or by his proxies when she tried to leave. The family was connected to the Sicilian Mafia. Traditionally, you were not allowed to leave unless you had died. The true cause of her passing was never discovered.
Sarah’s mother, Mary, was just a child when it happened. Growing up under the shadow of her mom’s disappearance, Mary struggled with alcohol and mental health issues. When she became pregnant with Sarah, Mary was convinced that the child’s biological father wasn’t fit to raise her baby and chose another man to marry instead.
Tom became a decent partner to Mary but a lousy father for little Sarah. He often treated Sarah harshly and unfairly. It became unbearable after they had a biological son together. She constantly felt unappreciated and outcast. The last hope of connecting to her own family vanished after Sarah was told that Tom was not her real father. Suddenly, years of miscommunication and disconnection made so much sense.
Sarah ran away and married the first man she met. That man later attempted to kill her and their firstborn. He was sentenced to life in prison. Sarah found another man to cling to shortly after. From there, Sarah’s life only grew more complicated. Her mother, Mary, was unable to offer Sarah any support. The communication between these two turned from toxic to simply non-existent. Sarah felt complete without that relationship until that day…..
That day in my kitchen, she told me she was going back home to care for her dying mother.
Then, she began to cry.
I was stunned. That woman was one of the strongest people I had ever known. She had lost all nine of her children to foster care. Her husband had abandoned her, leaving her heartbroken and homeless, representing herself in multiple court hearings and fighting for visitation against social workers’ contempt. Yet she never complained. Moreover, she survived all of it. She traveled relentlessly across Los Angeles County by bus and train to visit each of her children, always composed, clean, and hopeful, carrying small gifts. Neither cold nor heat ever stopped her. It seems like nothing could break her spirit.
“Why?” I asked her, gently but honestly.
“Your mother turned her back on you when you needed her most. Why are you crying?”
She continued sobbing like a little girl. Mind you, we were both in our forties.
“I don’t want her to leave,” she whispered.
I felt her sorrow because I had grown to care for her. But deep inside, in a somewhat parallel reality, a quieter thought rose: I won’t cry when my own mother dies. I’ve had enough of her. I have paid my duties. I should be fine when her time comes.
Ten years have passed since Sarah’s mother’s unfortunate departure. Much has changed. Sarah and I are no longer in contact. Her husband eventually returned and dismantled the fragile sisterhood we had built. He poisoned her relationship with her two younger children, the ones I was caring for. Contact with both biological parents turned so hostile that I realized the only way those children might have a chance at a normal life was if I adopted them.
So I did.
Now it is almost time for my own mother to leave this world. She is fading slowly, piece by piece. I am unsure if this is her punishment or her blessing.
It began a few years ago with memory lapses. Oddly, as her memory faded, my mom became kinder. We could manage something we had never really had before: normal conversations. I was nearly fifty when I first felt I had a mother I could talk to. I thought perhaps she had finally wised up. As a mother myself, I tried to imagine how she must have felt, believing her only daughter was a failure. She wanted me to be like her, yet I was the furthest thing from everything she valued and cherished. She felt ashamed of me for most of my life. That must have been a terrible burden to carry.
Then I realized that it wasn’t wisdom. It was the first clear sign of dementia.
When her memories briefly returned, so did her familiar harshness. But I was different, and it did not hurt as much. I concentrated on and was grateful for those moments of peaceful communication. I felt a strange appreciation toward Dementia and Alzheimer’s, those “unlikely ghosts” who escorted the cruelty and shame out of the room, if only for a while.
My mom’s mind is fading, time, geography (once her greatest passion), faces, names. She even forgot how much she hated my father. That, oddly, was a blessing and tremendous relief for me. My dad and his wife were the ones I could trust with the most time-consuming and emotionally charged tasks related to my mom. They honored every wish, preserving every document and memory I felt were important to preserve.
Thinking about her passing pulls me back to my early childhood. For reasons I never understood, I believed my mother needed protection. When she divorced my father, she was lonely and cried often. I was not even three years old when I promised her I would “take care of” that something or someone who might have hurt her feelings, whatever that meant in my toddler’s mind.
Something shifted once I started school. I needed my mom to be my “safe harbor”, but she stated I should learn to solve my problems. To survive, I built a world around me that had very little to do with her. Life was hard, and I carried a constant sense of discomfort that I blamed on her. I watched her closely, judged her harshly, and kept a secret list titled What a mother should never do.
The distance between us grew into a canyon when I met the man who would become my husband. My mom pulled every possible string to sabotage our relationship. It worked. I was too young to see and straighten out my preferences. Eventually, we divorced. Despite my mom’s expectations, it did not bring us any closer. For years, I kept my distance and only dealt with her emergencies out of a sense of “daughterly duty.”
Armed with my long list of “what a mother shouldn’t do,” I realized I had no idea what a mother should do. So, I focused on my career instead. I managed a contractor’s office, ran a nightclub, launched my own business, and eventually moved into radio and television productions. I became known and respected in my field and finally gained my own self-respect.
My mom and I maintained a fragile peace that gave me a temporary sense of normalcy. Still, I was very much aware of how temporary and fragile it must have been.
When I later moved to the United States to help my ex-husband raise his children, I didn’t tell her. I was wiser. I knew better not to give my mom a chance to sabotage my life again.
Strangely, being so far away from her eventually helped me to accept her for what she was.
After years of being a proud career woman, I was caring for my husband’s children around the clock. Suddenly, my life made so much sense! I was physically drained yet happy and fulfilled at once. I might have a gift for mothering! The exact opposite of what I had always imagined about myself. It became my call.
I have raised my own children, adopted, and given temporary shelter to dozens more. I have met many mothers: loving, broken, dangerous, failing, learning, and trying. I understood that none of them became who they were deliberately. I learned forgiveness so I could teach my children the same.
It took over a decade of caring for others before I finally saw my mother as a person. She had no childhood, no parents, only a long string of harsh circumstances. Born just before WWII, she lost most of her extended family members, her father, and her older brother. Her mother became clinically depressed and merely managed through her days. My mom raised me the only way she knew, the hard way, because that was how she survived. She trusted no man and stayed intentionally single for fifty years after my father left. She feared any man interested in me would hurt me. She wanted to act first to keep me safe. She believed success required a university and perfect grades, while I treated school like a social club and couldn’t care less about my grades. I was terrible at math and physics, her strongest subjects. I started dating at sixteen; she remained a virgin until marrying. I was everything she never expected, and she was scared and treated me like a failure.
Until she began forgetting.
Now, did I finally see her clearly: a little girl who never had toys, never had a safety net, never had enough of anything, despite being very well educated and having a respectable job.
By now, I know she was not a bad mother. She tried. She loved me in her own language: no hugs, no praise, only criticism meant to sharpen me and make me a stronger woman.
She is leaving me now, piece by piece, and I am ready to cry.
You can go in peace, Mom. You did well. You raised me strong enough to help so many others. You thought you failed, but you didn’t. You carry photos of your seven grandchildren in your purse and show them proudly, even if you no longer remember why.
I hope your next life will treat you better. You deserve that.
Your one-and-only daughter