Hello mom,
If you were alive today, I would welcome you with warmth in my eyes and tell you how much compassion I have for the woman who struggled to raise her children while living with an alcoholic.
I think you carried much sadness with you, perhaps from childhood? I would like to learn about your life, and try to understand the choices that you made. I wonder what happened in your life that you ended up with my father who was an alcoholic before you married.
In so many ways you were a brave and remarkable woman, learning to dance when you were diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, and then building a successful and large dance studio when you were a young woman.
I wonder what reasons led you to giving up the dance studio when my sister and I were young children, and choosing to become a realtor. And you stuck with this career despite the tremendous anxiety you so often experienced in sales.
I wonder if you somehow knew that you would not be able to depend upon our father to support us? When I look back at our family photos I wonder if it’s disapproval I see on your parent's faces. Or maybe just resignation. I wonder what they said to you when one more time you would show up at their doorstep with my sister and I in tow, having left our father again. And always to return home a few days later.
I always thought that when dad died your life would change, and while you still had the same mental health challenges of depression and anxiety, I think maybe you did have a few good years with Ken. I’d like to think this anyway.
Mom, what I would like mostly to say to you is how very sorry for how our relationship turned out. I imagine that you were confused by my distance and scorn.
I spent so much of my adult life trying to figure out our family dynamics and I so often felt angry. I feel like I punished you for the problems in our family and for the hurt that I felt. What I didn’t see was a woman trying her best under such difficult circumstances.
I especially would like to say to you how sorry I am that during the last year or so of your life I spoke too many times to you with frustration and not with the compassion that you needed.
And in that last week of your life, it haunts me that you likely died feeling alone and unloved by your daughters.
I am so sorry that I was not able to be the daughter who could say that you were very much loved, and that you would be missed.
I would like to think that I am a more compassionate and kinder woman today than I was 23 years ago.
Your daughter