Who Was My Mother?Sifting through my mother's belongings for answers
AnnBanks
Posted: May 7, 07 11:55am You don't usually think of someone who dies at the age of 77 as having been cruelly cut down in the prime of life, but that is how I felt about my mother. Widowed for less than a year after a long stretch of caring for my semi-invalided father, she'd been making plans for a different kind of life. It had been her turn. Finally. Among the papers left sitting on her desk were a treatise on clay-making techniques, because she'd taken up ceramics; brochures for cottages to rent in Wales, for a visit to relatives there; instructions for computer French lessons, in preparation for a trip to Provence. Stunned by Mom's unexpected death, I greedily sifted through this evidence searching for answers to a persistent mystery: who was my mother when she wasn't being my mother? While my father was alive, alternately raging and joking and generally chewing the scenery, Mom devoted much of her energy to soothing his temper and serving as a buffer between him and his prickly daughters. By the terms of this unspoken family deal, she tended to keep her troubles to herself. I'd told myself there would be time later to forge a different kind of relationship; to come to know my mother outside the all-consuming aura of my father. Now all I had to go on was her things, and I ransacked them with a detective's zeal. Desperate for clues, I pored over her final "To Do" list; I sorted out drawers and emptied closets. I checked pockets and rifled through purses. Prying into my mother's possessions had been a favorite childhood pastime, and now I was free to indulge it at will. There were poignant surprises. Despite relentless family pressure, Mom had defiantly refused to quit smoking, so we'd thought. Yet tucked away in a bottom drawer I came across: a package of prescription nicotine gum and a book called The No-Nag, No-Guilt, Do-It-Your-Way Guide to Quitting Smoking. So she had tried, after all. Apparently, she'd found it easier to withstand our reproaches than to endure the shame of admitting failure. Forgotten childhood artifacts surfaced as I dug. I was touched to discover that Mom had saved for several decades and through a dozen moves the plaid cocktail napkins I'd sewn and fringed. In the same drawer, I uncovered relics of another sewing project: a set of intricate felt appliques -- each symbolizing a different holiday -- that she had fashioned for my tenth birthday along with a red felt circle skirt. On fancy dress occasions as the year progressed, the appropriate applique would be snapped onto the skirt. I wore it decorated according to the season with: a pink birthday cake sprouting white candles and frosting flowers; a Thanksgiving turkey; a green leprechaun hat with a white shamrock; a mortarboard with a real silk tassel; a bough of cherries; an Easter bunny with pink ears and string whiskers; or a valentine that said "I love you." Overall, my mother's attentions to my wardrobe were spotty, and on many days I left the house wearing mismatched outfits with missing buttons. But there was no denying that my holiday skirt had been magnificent, and I was glad to come across the surviving evidence of it. Discoveries like these made me feel closer to my mother. But I was in dangerous territory, and I knew it. Snoopers find whatever they find, after all, and it's generally thought to serve them right. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling of shock and betrayal: what was the framed 19th century etching of the Royal Treasury at Petra doing stashed in the back of a closet? It had been my last present to my mother, intended to memorialize a dream fulfilled. On her 75th birthday, she had traveled by camel to the remote archaeological site in Jordan. She had sent my daughter a postcard saying, "I've longed to come here since I was your age and it's everything I'd hoped... and more." In my Wanderlust, I was my mother's daughter, and I'd been certain she would love the memento of her far-flung travels. So why had she banished it from sight? Mom had been on the road the very day before her death, completing a solo 3,000 mile car trip across the south. Not knowing she was going to die, she'd failed to call me when she returned, and that missed conversation, that last silence, rippled through my life. As evidence of her elusiveness, this was more than I could bear, and what she couldn't give, I'd set out to steal. In the end, for all my rummaging, I came up empty-handed. Who was my mother when I wasn't watching? Why was my present face down on the shelf? The hardest thing of all was to accept that I would never know. Have Something to Say? |
Welcome! Join for Free
|
Sign in
Posted: May 8, 07 9:47am
When my mother had a sudden heart attack, my husband and I had to do what you did Ann: sift through an apartment filled with 72 years worth of memories. It was so draining that my best friend was called in as reinforcement to work with us for two weeks.
What I found was astounding: letters I had sent my mom that she had saved in a special box...short stories she had written and most surprising, notes my mother wrote about her new love life. In the 18 months since my father's death, my mother had wasted no time. She was a beautiful, lively 70+ woman and men flocked to her. But it was still a surprise to read her pros and cons list on the various men she was dating...."good dresser"...."can talk to anyone but doesn't listen to a thing I say" "not sure how much money he has." My mother was always someone who cared about appearances so it was touching to me that in her final days she was leaning toward the guy who wasn't loaded, didn't dress particularly well but "really listened to her and treasured her." What a gift.
Posted: May 8, 07 6:12pm
Luckily I still have my Mother, but she'd fallen chronically ill a couple of years ago necessitating an 8 month stay in hospital/in-patient rehab...and my sister and I were forced to go through her things to replenish wardrobe, take care of bills, safeguard treasures left carelessly about her room. Nothing really surpised me (I knew she sneaked a smoke in the garage once in a while and found a crinkled up wrapper in a robe in back of her closet) until I came upon a drawer I'd never opened, stuffed with all sorts of momentos. Photos, old programs from my high school plays, more photos. But what made me laugh was the gigantic plaster of paris Valentine I made for her in first grade -- there it sat, all 5 or 6 pounds of it, without one little chip...she still hasn't told me why that particular art project was the survivor of the many I brought home over the years (although if there was a contest for largest and most difficult to store, it would win). I'm guessing it was because of a memory attached to it - in the intervening couple of years I've forgotten all about asking her this question. Thanks, Ann, for reminding me...we need to ask questions now, not wonder about them later.
Posted: May 8, 07 8:09pm
Thanks Ann for your poignant story.
My 88-year-old mother has advanced Alzheimer's. Three years ago I moved her to a facility near me so I could better take care of her. A strong, dynamic woman, who wasn't a "Leave it to Beaver" mom, my mother has grown mellow as a result of her illness. When she can form words, which is less and less often, she compliments the staff and me--something she rarely did before. It's odd, sad and also wonderful to see this side of her.
Posted: May 10, 07 5:31pm
I'm lucky my mom is still alive.
And this is one of the best posts I have read . . . anywhere.
And I usually don't go for the sentimental stuff.
Posted: May 17, 07 2:29pm
Wow--
This story resonates so deeply with me. My mother also died suddenly - at 71. She also was trying to stop smoking: Nicorettes and an ashtray with a few cigarette stubs were near her bed. As an only child it fell to me to go through her things. Most powerful was the wonderful smell of her perfume and cigarettes clinging to everything in her melancholy closet which lingered faintly for years on the coats, hats and bags I kept. This Mother's Day our lilac tree was in bloom -- lilacs were her favorite flower -- and that scent, too, keeps her close.
Posted: May 17, 07 3:40pm
I still have my mother's perfume bottles on my dressing table, though they have long since turned. My mother loved lilacs too, and I always think of that at this time of year.
Posted: May 21, 07 9:18am
This is terrific. Thank you for sharing it with us.
Posted: May 9, 08 1:25pm
My mom's brother had Parkinson's and was in his mid-eighties. He started having strokes, so his neigbor notified us that they called 911 and that he was in a hospital.
He was a widower and they had not had children. His wife had been very controlling, but it did not matter what anyone thought...........he loved her.
Even though he was younger, he prepared to leaving her a widow.
Because we had to move him out of his house and find out is personal information, financial, legal, etc., I started going through his files, etc.
I found a letter that he left for his wife. He told her how to work in the garden and what gloves to use. But then the letter stressed how much he loved her and what she had meant to him. It went on for several pages. But then the last lines brought me to laughter. He stopped the love letter by telling her that he knew that she wasn't comfortable cooking for herself so he jotted down the phone number of Meals on Wheels and the contact person.
Posted: May 9, 08 1:29pm
Thank you for such a tender and loving post, AnnBanks.
Posted: May 10, 08 6:11pm
Angharad
Your mother was beautiful. She looks like a movie star from the 40's.
Posted: May 10, 08 10:31am
Your words are heart-wrenching and the emotions they evoke are so familiar. The odd thing, Ann, is that even after caring for my mother 24 hours-a-day for 17 years, I still didn't truly know her. I knew every personal possession; every attitude, dream, and whimsy; her likes and dislikes; her loves and losses; her hopes and fears. I knew her body and it's needs. I knew the workings of her mind. And yet, when she died at 90, I stood in her closet and wept--my face pressed to her rose-scented clothes-- because there was no more time to unravel the mystery of her.
Four years after M'Dear's death, her bedroom is much the same as it was the night she died. Books are still neatly arranged by subject and size; her writing desk still sports her precious laptop, and blue Crane's stationary and fountain pens are still in the drawer; a half-knit Fair Isle sweater spills out of a basket by her bed. I know that my mother was brilliant, beautiful, creative, mercurial, magical, and so much more, and I loved her deeply, but I never found the key to that elusive center of her being.
Perhaps it's the same for all of us. Perhaps children can never really know their parents, no matter how long or short a time they have together. As hard as we try, we can never inhabit another person's skin. I think that's the cross and the wonder of being human.
(BTW, my avatar is a picture of my mother taken in 1937 or so.)
Posted: May 10, 08 10:51am
My mom passed away three years ago this summer. I was completely enriched through having her as my mother and I can say this despite the fact that she struggled with alcohol especially in later years. When she left her earthly body, a part of me went with her.
Posted: May 10, 08 12:33pm
Ann, and others, thanks very deeply, for sharing your heartfelt, poignant memoirs of your dear mothers. Going through their belongings and mementos can really be sad; yet so meaningful.
My mom happily married my dad shortly after WWII.
However, the fairy tale became fractured.Somewhere in there, during the stress of being lonely, and rasing four little kids, she started drinking. Unfortunately, even though my dad did try to help her, in various hospital and rehab programs, sadly, she continued to drink, and passed away due to fast- moving peritonitis.
Mom and I were friends, despite many painful episodes and some tough times. She would often pull herself together, and cook typically delicious southern meals,with homemade biscuits, fried chicken, and she somehow also made holidays special, with lots of wonderful baked treats and surprises!
Shortly before her passing, I especially recall that, during the OJ Simpson trial, we would phone each other every day, and commiserate about all of those bizarre events.
When I was going through her things, I found cards that my three brothers, my aunt, and I had sent her over the years; her wedding album; her yearbooks, and especially the photos. The memento that I most treasure, is the book that was on her, "Reading" chair, titled, "Poems that Touch the Heart."
VERY interestingly, I had put this book of hers away, out of sight, in a trunk, and four years later, my son actually gave me the exact same book!
There is a beautiful tbd thread all should check out, titled, Happy Mother's Day, with lots of wonderful quotes.
I'm also sending all moms,and surrogates here, good wishes, and may we remember and cherish the very best about our moms.
Posted: May 10, 08 12:59pm
Anne, You were very fortunate to have her as your Mother and obviously, she did a great job in that role. One day, you will know all that there is to know about her. Right now you already know her in her most important title, as your Mother. Thank you for sharing !!!----HD
Posted: May 10, 08 5:04pm
Ann, thank you for sharing. Your discussion title touched a nerve with me and I hope you do not mind if I share a discovery I made while rummaging.
Like you, I had spent time as a child exploring Mom's hidden treasures... boxes of old pictures and jewelry she kept in an ancient cedar chest. Because I had no sisters, I would play dress up alone. I fantasized with my imaginary friends about all the wonderful places I'd seen in those photos. One afternoon Mom caught me. I was scolded severely for being "silly" and "nosy" and I did not bother her things again. My imaginary playmates disappeared forever.
When Mom passed on in 1998, I inherited that cedar chest. My hands trembled as I reached to lift the lid. Why? What did I have to fear now? I laughed out loud, and with renewed courage set about investigating the depths of the chest for the very first time. The pictures were all still there. California, '40s and '50s, before my time. The jewelry - even more beautiful than I had remembered. Linens, knick-knacks... and every childhood work of art I had ever given her. She had saved those? I smiled.
Mom had been a stranger to me in so many ways. I recalled a green metal box that had held old letters and cards. Things that had not interested me as a child I now ached to uncover. Yes, it was still there, at the bottom of the cedar chest. Now I could know her. I fetched the box and carried it to my bed. Sitting cross-legged, I carefully emptied its contents and began to sort through the musty, yellowed envelopes. One was clearly newer than the rest. I opened it first.
Dated 1988, it began: "Dear Kay (last name), I am the daughter born to you in Los Angeles, August 1952..."
My sister and I have been reunited since March 1999. I love her, and I love you, Mom. Thank you.
Happy Mother's Day everyone.
Posted: May 10, 08 7:46pm
This is a beautiful tribute to your mother, Ann, thank you for sharing it with us. My own mother passed away ten years ago and I still long for one more conversation with her. We were always close but I didn't realize how totally connected I was with my mother until she was gone. I am grateful that I was able to care for her while she was ill and that my children had that opportunity to spend those last months with her as we all built memories that will never fade. When my daughter Tracy died in an accident four years after Mom, it was comforting to me to know that my mother was there waiting for her and that she wasn't alone.
There is such a bond between mothers and daughters--more powerful than anything else on earth.
Thank you to all the rest of you who have also shared your stories. Mother's day is hard for me and your stories are very touching--thank you.
Posted: May 10, 08 8:11pm
I was 19, pregnant with my first child. My daughter was due in August. My mother had a stroke the end of July. That was that. My mother was 56 at the time and the woman that came home from the hospital was nice and friendly but a different person. She had a hard time remembering who I was exactly. She did not relate to my baby, when she was born, at all. My mother lived to be 76 and died peacefully in a recliner at my brother's house. So really for me my mother died when I was 19. I have memories of her when I was very young and they are good. She loved Gardenias and so do I.
Posted: May 10, 08 9:06pm
* includes photos
This is my Mother.
Happy Mothers Day Mom..
Darroll
Posted: May 10, 08 9:15pm
darroll
Your mother is beautiful.
Posted: May 11, 08 4:49am
* includes photos
Who was my mother? The question alone brings some tears to my eyes, because I still miss my mother every day. My mother had Bipolar Disorder and refused treatment. It frightened her for some reason. She had over 40 suicide attempts during her 43 years of life. Ironically, she died of an accidental overdose of barbiturates and narcotics when I was 18 years old. We had been through an estrangement, instigated by my step-mother and father, from the time I was 15 to 18, but I re-established contact with her, she in FL and I in NYC when I was just turning 18.
The following summer she called and told me that she'd left her husband because he was beating her and was staying at a hotel on Miami Beach. I told her to get on a plane and come to NY and she did. Long story short, my husband to be and I detoxed my mother slowly off of all the drugs she was taking with the help of her psychiatrist in FL. When that difficult task was done, I met my Real Mother for the first time in many, many years and the first time as a young adult. She stayed for still another 6 weeks and we put some weight on her (she was 5'4" and 100 lbs), as she had been drinking so much that she just didn't eat. She looked so fragile and covered in bruises when she first came to NY - they brought her off the airplane in a wheelchair because she was having difficulty walking.
My mother, when not under the influence of additional medications and alcohol, was exceptionally intelligent and although she wasn't able to go to college, she was self taught and appeared to be well educated. She could converse with you intelligently about nearly anything. She was incredibly funny, which is clearly where my sense of humor comes from. She loved theater and loved to go to NYC with my dad to see plays there on occasion and had the soundtracks of just about every play that was or had been huge on Broadway. She was a gourmet cook, when she was in a mental place where she could cook. She was an artist and had done murals in people's homes and commercially as well for companies. She began to teach me about art by the time I was 5 and presented me with my first pastels and art paper as well as drawing pencils and a charcoal smudger. She didn't trust me with actual charcoal for another year. When she was well enough, she'd spend hours with me doing art work, teaching me about perspective and color and all types of things and also reading. My mother was a very avid reader. I began reading at 3 and loved reading and my mom would actually read to me which was just incredibly for me and a huge treat. When she was well, she'd go book shopping for herself and me and it was like Christmas. My love for books also comes from my mother. She also loved clothes and shoes and was always in fashion and flaunted it when she was able to go out. (i'm a bit more like my mom than i realized, when she was "well"!)
Most of her time was spent in bed, drugged to some extent. She had very severe migraine headaches, and perhaps something more like I have, (spinal degeneration, spinal stenosis, etc.), that was just never diagnosed. Her pain was severe and she ended up going to different doctors to get even more medication. My father would fairly often have to take her to the hospital ER for a shot of Demerol for the pain. She literally had about 200 bottles of mostly filled bottles of sleeping pills and narcotics. The amount of medication she was taking would have knocked at 200 lb man out for days! My husband to be unfortunately attempted this! He was out for 2 days! She was taking medication prescribed by her psychiatrist (finally!) but taking too much.
Finally, we had her together, coherent and detoxed. It was the very best time having weeks with her in a "normal" state. But she relapsed after leaving us and all the plans we had made with her were out the window. We attempted an intervention and she went into a rage and left. It was the last time that I saw her. Six weeks later the phone rang one night and my husband to be answered it, but before he picked up the phone, I told him that my mother was dead. And indeed, it was a family member calling about it.
Today is a very ambiguous day for me because I so terribly miss my mother but I am also a mother to two incredible boys/men. I lost so much time with my mother and she had so little time to be a mother to me. I see her life as being very tragic and despite her past suicide attempts, she died just when she was was turning a corner and was actually happy. A grandchild was on her way (my brother's child), and my upcoming marriage that December and a baby asap. We all believed the worse until the ME explained to us how it was absolutely not a suicide. Regardless, it stung badly and my distraught was a gross understatement.
But, my mother, was a woman ahead of her time and would often talk about that and how she wished that she'd been born was I'd been born. She would talk about being in the wrong "time zone". And everyone believed her. She was an extraordinary woman and I wish to God that I'd had more time with her, time where she was normal and not manic or depressed or in horrible chronic pain.
It is very difficult to lose a parent at still a young and tender age and I've needed my mother so many times since that I could never even count them up. Born in 1929 and she left me in 1974 at the age of 44 just before her 45th birthday.
I love you mama, where ever you are!
HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!
Mama at age 21.
Posted: May 11, 08 6:11pm
Dotcom
Thank You..
Darroll
Posted: May 10, 08 9:33pm
My grandmother died 4years and 4months ago. She had been my real life hero and the source of my belief in unconditional love. Every child should have that person whom believes they hung the moon and stars. My grandmother thought that of me and I believed she could do anything. We stayed so close as I grew up and had children of my own. She saved my oldest sons life when he stopped breathing in his cradle.
She died when she was 86 of a broken hip. Till then she had been strong and self reliant so her death came as a shock.
In her will she left me her diaries. After we had cleaned her drawers and sorted all her things. I got to sit down and open the windows into her life and soul. This has been the greatest gift,seeing how she thought of her family, friends,and her romances.She has shared her deepest secrets with me even if it was from the grave. The glimpses into her past showed me the girl she had been and the woman she became. I have shared out takes with family members I thought would be comforted by certain passages. I have even thought of writing a biography for the family so they could see what an amazing woman we had in our mist. I count myself so lucky to not only have her blood in my veins but that she called me her closest friend.
Posted: May 11, 08 3:49am
Anne, thank you for sharing.
I hope that you do write about your grandmother for the sake of your family. Perhaps, even generations from now, her message of unconditional love will continue to give strength and comfort.
Bless you and yours. Happy Mother's Day.
Posted: May 11, 08 4:29am
Ann, this is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing it, and to all the others who responded.
I still have Mama, but she's 78 and has had two strokes. When I see her in her chair--one of those automatic jobs that rises and tilts forward, so that she can get out of it--by the light of the lamp she reads by, she looks and acts like her old self.
It's just when I take her shopping or to lunch and I see her in the light of day, that I realize how fragile and tenuous she's become.
When she had the first stroke and couldn't talk or open her eyes for three days, I got a clue as to how lonely I will be like when she's gone
I stilll have Daddy, too. Your description of your father sounds exactly like him.
Posted: May 11, 08 6:26am
Anne, Thank you for this lovely personal tribute to your mother on Mother's Day. I do not feel that it would serve any purpose to play "Can you top this" so I'll save my own memories for another time and place.
We can never truly know our parents as whole people. We get to see them only through a glass darkly in their role as parent to us. Sometimes, I regret that my own son and granddaughter cannot ever know the me that interacted with so many people outside the family and can only see the role I played in their lives which was substantively different and smaller than the sum total of my interactions with friends, clients, colleagues, wife ... Nor, can they know the person inside who was never shared with anyone. My son, by virtue of birthdate missed the first thirty years of my life altogether, and my granddaughter didn't enter - stage left, drumming - until I was in my fifties.
When we come right down to it, no one ever gets to see the whole picture - not even if we are sufficiently egotistical to write an autobiography. Even that is slanted by what we want people to see.
In the end, we are a sum of so many parts than no one save God can ever really know us and He isn't talking!
In your wisdom and courage, you searched for more than you experienced, and for that, you deserve thanks. It is something that few do ... sometimes because they don't realize there is more and sometimes because they are afraid of what they might learn and thus, destroy their well-preserved illusions.
Happy Mother's Day to all who risked bringing children into this amazing and difficult world ... or obtained them from those who couldn't or wouldn't raise them - just as trying a task. Bless you all. And Mom, wherever you are, this one's for you!
Posted: May 12, 08 12:36pm
Thank you, everyone, for these wonderful responses. The process of discovering my mother continues. I just returned from my uncle's (my mother's brother) memorial service and his widow handed me me a file labeled "Isabel." "I don't know what's in it," she said, "but I thought you should have it." I'm waiting for a good time to open it and see what messages there may be for me.