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December 7, 2005
sleep in heavenly peace
Many people romanticize the dead. Misdeeds are forgotten like credit card debt, and even the most hateful people are beatified. Like so many social niceties, this ability eludes me. Bitch in life, bitch in death, I say.
Which brings us to Mom.
In all fairness, my mom had a brutally hard life, and not coincidentally she wasn't much of a mother or human being. She was an orphan at 9, raised by cousins. She married my abusive dad and bore five children, three of whom estranged themselves from her. By age 8, I was taking photos of her battered face, as evidence. I thought this was normal. An impoverished single mother at 45, and with only a degree in home economics (!) to fall back on, she wiped butts for a living until she finally contracted cancer and checked herself into the hospital where she worked. Cancer, remission, cancer again. One morning, she was driving herself to her radiation treatment when a guy turned right on red in front of her vehicle, clipping her and sending her car careening off a 50-foot high bridge on to a rock embankment below. The impact pulverized several of her vertebrae—in between breakfast and lunch, her height went from 5'5" to 5'2". In addition to the aforementioned poverty and several flavors of cancer, now she battled paralysis and acute claustrophobia until her merciful death at 52.
Right. In her shoes, not many among us would be a great parent. You have to have your own house in order before you can help build someone else's. For that reason, I give her a pass. Although I can't pretend she was kind, I can understand why she wasn't.
But.
Like many mothers, mine nailed herself to a cross every Christmas. There was screaming. Bawling. Jealousy. Guilt trips. If we kids so much as spent Christmas Eve with Dad, cue the histrionics. One year, my brother and I spent Christmas Eve and morning with her, intending to head up to Dad's Christmas night. I knew I was getting a bike, and I had every intention of collecting. The theatrics were otherworldly. We were "hateful" for going. My brother, putting himself through school, spent a week's salary on a new phone for Mom. She opened it and snorted, visibly disgusted. "I wanted almond." We stared at her. "This is beige." I, meanwhile, had spent vast sums of grasscutting monies on a butcher block. Mom's knives rolled around freely in the utensil drawer, you see, and her doctor had warned that in her condition, any cut could be fatal. "What a waste of money," she snapped. "I already have knives." And on and on. While my brother and I played cards in the living room, thanklessly running out the clock until we left for Dad's, my mom bawled in her bedroom, at one point opening the door so that we could hear her better.
The next year, she slid into a coma on Christmas Eve. The Wailing Christmas would effectively be her last, the indelible yuletide memory of herself she implanted in her kid's memory. I've thought of her pathos every Christmas since.
The lesson has been lasting. I have an allergic aversion to my mother's sort of theatrics. Since I don't know when my own time is up, I try to treat every holiday and milestone as my last. Not for me. Not even for my loved ones. For my legacy. Who wants to be remembered every Christmas hence as a miserable, self-pitying, jealous person who's better off dead?
Merry Christmas, Mom. You always did find the perfect gift.
posted by john at 7:18 AM • permalink