Hey, Ma -- where'd you go?

I think the most revelatory moment I ever had in terms of my mother came at the end of the reception at my first wedding.

“Aren’t you going to kiss your mother?” asked my pretty new bride.

“Why?” was my response, because I was a bit dumbfounded by her suggestion. I didn’t remember having ever kissed my mother, and the idea sort of grossed me out. Oh, I don’t mean in an oedipal way, it was just that it wasn’t an experience I had any recall of having, so why start now?

When I wrote a few weeks ago about my father, I said that I would gird my loins and write something about the materfamilias. However, in so doing, I didn’t want it to be one of those ‘poor me,’ kind of things. I hate that stuff, where people whine about something that happened in the past and how hard-done-by they were, when in current context, there isn’t a damn thing they can do about it. So, they can continue to wallow, or they can move on. I chose many years ago to move on.

That I had moved on came to me when she died (far too many quarts of Smirnoff to the bad) in 1992. When I was notified, I couldn’t really think of what to say. “Hey, that’s the way it goes.” Seemed a bit too callous. But, seriously, my problem when I heard the news was, I just did not know how I was supposed to feel. I knew I was ‘supposed’ to mourn, but I couldn’t really find the right emotions.

When my mother-in-law had died about five years earlier, I was quite devastated and certainly filled with grief. When my grandmother died when I was 14, I was blown away, and I still miss her. But, with Mom it wasn’t there.

And, you know, finally, and it has taken me a few years, I think I’ve come to grips with that. What I have done is to try to sort out who she was, and maybe why I responded in such a manner.

I’ve concluded that some women are ‘meant’ to be mothers. The adoration for their children that emanates from a lot of women I know in real time certainly shows that, as does similar adoration by some of my female blogger friends. My aforementioned mother-in-law was a walking maternal instinct. Not that she didn’t have a life of her own, because she assuredly did, but her two daughters were vital to her. My second wife was a Mom from the top of her pretty head to her toenails, and still is to her now grown only child. Mom never was. Mom should have stayed single, traveled the world, written books and painted pictures. She should have lived in a London garret or a SoHo loft, but not mired in domesticity, and especially not with children. Ultimately it was both her loss and her children's loss that she chose the conventional route.

So, she never had the Mom thing within her. Not a lot of cuddling going on, and not a great deal of discussion about how my brothers or I might be ‘feeling’ at any given time. Her sisters (my aunts) had it, and I was crazy about them. My Mom just didn’t seem to issue forth emotionally. She didn’t abuse us, and she didn’t neglect us in any material sense. We weren’t beaten and we weren’t starved. We were just there.

In my teens I developed a certain intellectual attachment to my mother. She was a smart cookie and she and I would discuss books and movies as we sat in the kitchen drinking coffee or if she slipped me the odd glass of sherry when I was in my late teens. It was obvious even then that she preferred the sherry or anything else spirituous to coffee. But, we were kind of pals, I guess. Not much more.

Ironically, she was obviously jealous of girlfriends I acquired and would always find something wrong with them. In fact, she didn’t even like most of my male friends and weirdly, she was resentful of time I would spend with them.

Eventually, her drinking got worse and worse (as alcoholism always does) and she, a former fashion-plate became sloppy and neglectful of her appearance. She and my father battled more, and she also got into contretemps with old friends, and siblings, and everybody else all of whom, wisely, drifted away, and left her alone with her vodka and her bitterness.

And then she died.

I had always wanted to do something about her drinking, and even suggested an intervention long before such things became trendy. My father wouldn’t hear of it and steadfastly refused to accept that ‘his’ wife was a lush who was destroying both her physical and mental health.

So, when she did die, there weren’t many to mourn. That’s mainly because nobody really knew her any more.

I don’t think anybody really knew her – ever. I know I didn’t. She wouldn’t let me in.

What shall we do about Barbara?

My mother died in September 1992.

With an impeccable sense of timing she shuffled off this mortal coil within a few weeks of the cessation of my first marriage. I don’t think she knew about my separation, since she was pretty much non compos mentis by that time. Anyway, she didn’t really like my first wife.

I am always struck on Mother’s Day by the fact that I have never grieved her passing. That realization bothers me – a bit – but not a whole lot. I have grieved the passings of many others in my life: grandparents; my father; friends, even pets. But, for some reason, with Mom, the emotion doesn’t genuinely exist.

Anyway, I have made oblique references to my mother periodically in this blog, but I thought today I might elaborate a bit more. Who knows, I might even find it cathartic?

This blog isn’t, by the way, a ‘poor me’ offering. We all have had ‘stuff’ to contend with and furthermore, I don’t believe in blaming anything whatsoever on a lousy childhood. We set our own courses in life with what tools we have. Fortunately, I have a few, even if I didn’t realize how many until I’d gotten a firm grip on myself.

Anyway, my mother (whose name was Barbara, and I’ll refer to her by name henceforth, and who looked a little like the woman in the accompanying graphic when I was a small boy) was an alcoholic. That’s OK. There are lots of them, both active and recovering, and I’ve known many, including some very fine people. But, my mother was an unrepentant alcoholic, and that is difficult to deal with. I’ve actually written published and well-received articles on unrepentant alcoholics, but in them I suggest no answers because, even in my years as a professional counsellor, none ever really manifested themselves.

So, long and short of it was, she drank herself to death and that was that.

Barbara was a very bright girl. Raised in an impoverished colonial British gentry family, and one of seven siblings, she was smart. She skipped two grades in school and could have gone on to a PhD if she’d had the will. She didn’t. Siblings accomplished many wonderful things. She didn’t.

Barbara was also very pretty, classy looking and speaking, witty, well-read, artistic and capable of accomplishing much. She didn’t.

She settled into some sort of ennui and seems to have lost focus along the way. She had three sons. I think she liked us. None of us is sure if she loved us. She never showed it in any sort of overt manner, like hugs, or kisses. She read to us at bedtime, tended to us when we were sick, and when we were little she was never threatening. She was just amazingly aloof and regarded the world with a sort of Mona Lisa half smile. Sort of bemusement and amusement combined, if you will.

My dad worked hard. He was a professional and gained a lot of accolades in his academic calling. He kept Barbara very well, even though I was convinced they detested each other. Their arguments in my childhood were frightening. In later life they settled into a sort of torpor in which he worked and she drank – more all the time.

I got to know Barbara best when I was in my teens. She introduced me to lots of literature and I began to read voluminously so we could discuss books. We had a kind of companionship of similar intellects, I guess. We were kind of equals, but not Mother and Son.

And then, by the time my brothers and I left home and she was left with just her and my father, the boozing got worse – and worse – and worse, and was eventually punctuated by hospital stays and bizarre 4 a.m. phone calls because the drinker nods out during the day in winter, awakens, and doesn’t know if it’s 4 in the afternoon or 4 in the morning.

And, eventually she died. We knew it was going to happen. I’ve often wondered in retrospect if an intervention might have helped. But, when somebody is in such a state of denial, I doubt it. She chose her path for reasons best known to her, I know not why.

I doubt if I ever will.

Thank you for your patience on this Mother’s Day.