I’ve spent more time with my adult daughters (3) in the last several months than usual. It has been a time of new growth for me as a mother. I’m not sure about my daughters. My thoughts about this new growth have forced me to revisit my relationship with my own mother (gone now for almost 10 years) and to think about mutual responsibility in these relationships. Does a mother get a free pass (automatic respect and consideration) when her daughters are adults? This has not been my experience, either as an adult daughter or as a mother of adult daughters. I begin this series (no promises as to length or duration) with a letter I wrote to my deceased mother several years ago. It raises the issues that have been reraised with my own daughters recently.
Dear Mom,
Someone asked me this past week how long you’d been gone. I said a few years. Later I counted backward. You’ve been gone for a little over 9 years, since June 30, 2012. You were 92 and ready to go. More than ready, since you helped yourself over the finish line.
I’m am writing to you in the spirit that I speak to you — sometimes aloud, sometimes in my head, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes in the middle of a problem. I’m no longer surprised that this has been the rule since that night. I was surprised, initially, because I thought before your death that the overwhelming emotion I would feel would be relief that our connection was broken, not an ongoing attempt to continue the connection.
From my point of view, our connection was often competitive, and more often conflictive. I don’t think this was true when I was a very little girl, the oldest of your three children and your only daughter. Although I was no beauty — I was a fat kid — I don’t remember competition. As I lost that fat and grew into my teen-aged years, the difficulties started. You had your own troubles, I know. Your husband — my father — was, by then, a full-blown alcoholic. I was attracting his attention in ways that bordered on unhealthy. While he only touched me once in a frightening way — he put his hand down the back of my dress at a cocktail party — he was proud of my school accomplishments and pleased that I’d grown from an uglyish duckling into a pretty swan. He and I would talk about you, disparagingly, when the whole family was in the car going someplace. This could not have been fun for you. Still, you wanted something from me that I didn’t want for myself and you pushed me in that direction.
You wanted me to go to a women’s college that was a glorified finishing school. I wanted to be an intellectual. You wanted me to be popular and a social catch and steered me quite literally into my first marriage to a man you loved more than I did. When I had my sights set on the Peace Corps you would remark to any assembled group that I would snag a fingernail and come right home.
I married the guy you loved. We had three children. Your drinking became more destructive after dad quit, during my third pregnancy.
I divorced that husband, worked at several jobs — some of which I loved, some of which used me well, and some of which you loved to brag to your friends about. “My daughter is a stockbroker at Smith Barney. My daughter is Vice President of an international bank.” Sometimes we lived close together and sometimes not. You would call me for a command performance no matter where I lived. “Please come to talk to the Women’s Club about investing. Could you bring 20 copies of your new book and sign them for the other residents?” I would show up to fulfill your desires. Wind me up, I’ll perform.
You didn’t like husband number two. You didn’t think he was a good choice. You were right, but for the wrong reasons. When I told you I didn’t think I could stay with him, you were supportive. You were still having infrequent lunches, phone conversations and exchanging Christmas cards with the husband you did love.
I had a long bout of therapy after my second divorce with a gentle man who told me over and over again that I didn’t need you. I would respond, for several years, that I did need you. Finally, I got it. But it didn’t change our dynamic much.
I took you to South Africa on a safari in your 90th year. We saw lions and wildebeest, water buffalo, and so many beautiful elephants. I think that was our happiest time together! By then you were willing to be the child to my adult. My daughter Blake made you an album of that trip and it formed the basis of talks you gave at your retirement community about it.
You were getting frail physically but there was no diminishment of your will. You decided to die in your 91st year. You’d evidently been talking about this with my brothers for several years before this. You announced on my 68th birthday, another command performance, that you planned to die the following year. Suicide does not express your positive determination about this planned action. After your announcement, you asked me to visit you every six weeks. I was still working full-time. But every six weeks I’d make the six-hour flight to Baltimore from San Francisco and the one-hour drive from Baltimore to the Eastern Shore of Maryland where you lived.
You didn’t quite make a year. You had what was becoming a frequent bout of pneumonia in June and you just didn’t want to go on. You called us — me and my two brothers — to your home for your last act. My third husband, a retired lawyer, wanted no part of it. He was afraid we three would go to jail. We might have if your physician hadn’t signed your death certificate, stating that the cause of death was pneumonia. I’ve always believed he knew what happened generally, but saw no point in making a fuss.
So you died that night. Your children and one beloved daughter-in-law were at your side. When it was over, there was a tremendous thunder storm. You made a grand exit.
I wasn’t surprised to find that I felt immediate relief. What I have been surprised about is that all of my anger, all of my perceived hurts at your initiative, quite literally disappeared with the storm. What I’m most grateful for, and what I talk to you about still, is the peace that I now feel with you.
