One of the saddest things in life is the loss of our mothers. Sometimes, we lose them at a young age. Sometimes, when they are very old. But if things go according to plan, we lose them at some point in our lives.
My mother is 81 years old but I lost her a long, long time ago. It makes me sad almost every day. All my friends have lost their mothers to illness, age, or accidents. I lost my mother to trauma, abuse, and insanity. The kicker is that she's still alive, living alone, 55 miles from my house. Yet, she is totally out of reach.
Most people can’t understand why I’m not in any real contact with my mother. Some people believe there is no reason to sever ties. As a mother, I understand that feeling. Unfortunately, I feel I have no other choice. That decision is reaffirmed whenever I stray too far outside of the bounds I have to hold.
My mother had some great characteristics when I was younger. She always brought things for my brother and I to do when we were away from home. We always had paper, crayons, pencils, and scissors. My mother thought it was absurd to have children in restaurants or at other people’s houses with nothing to do. To her, it was so easy to make sure we had something to occupy us.
We also had free range when it came to scotch tape. My brother was very inquisitive and took a lot of things apart. Sometimes, his ability to take something apart was greater than his ability to put them together. Tape was always his go to for putting things back together. His belief in the fix it powers of tape could be quite amusing. Note to self, broken tinker toys cannot be repaired with tape no matter how much is used.
My mother also taught me how to play. I remember going down to the marina in Des Moines at night. We walked and made up stories about the boats or the people in them. I would hum the Pink Panther theme and dart from street light to street light. We would laugh.
One time, my mother and I were in downtown Seattle riding the monorail. We saw this stunning woman. For some reason, I thought she looked Russian. We pretended she was a Russian spy. Then, we pretended she shot me with a poison dart, and she was the only one with the antidote. We jumped off at the monorail station and waited for her to get off.
I was so into the game when I saw her I yelled, “There she is!” And pointed. That poor woman. My mother said, “Oh, what a great spy you are. Now, everyone knows, and we're dead.” Unfortunately, we followed the woman into the department store. She got on the escalator going up and up. We kept following until it became really clear we were freaking out the woman, and we finally broke off the chase. (To that woman, wherever you are, please accept my apology.)
In fourth grade, my mother came to school dressed as Mary Poppins. My mother was an accomplished seamstress and looked so cool. I was so proud. One time, she came to school dressed up with a straw hat, with holey jeans, and a plaid shirt. We both recited funny poems in front of the class.
There was another side of my mother, though. As things with my father’s drinking became more and more serious, my mother became a very sad person. My father stopped coming home after work and would go to the taverns. My mother would wait up for him, crying, and bereft. I would wait up with her acting as her counselor, confidant, and coach. I tried to emotionally support her anyway I knew how. At that point, I stopped being a kid and started filling an emotional and physical void in my mom. We started sharing the same bed. She would spoon me. Enough said.
It was a terrible time. There were other more terrible things. But, this is about the disappearance of my mother. It started when I was 10 or 11. By 12, my own mental health issues began making themselves abundantly clear. I became self destructive and suicidal. At 14, I could not imagine how I could make it another four years until I could leave home. That year, I ran away and did not come back.
That night, I called the police station from a phone booth and asked them to take me to the youth center. Instead, they picked me up and took me to the police station. I wouldn’t tell them who I was. I asked them to take me to the youth center, but they refused. I wouldn’t tell them my name until I knew where they would take me. After several hours of interrogation, I finally told them my name and phone number.
The youth officer called my mother to come down and talk. The officer wanted me to go home that night and come back with my mom the next morning. My grandparents lived across the alley from the police department. I could see my grandparents’ bedroom window from where I sat.
The youth officer said, “Your mother said she would come down and would call her parents. I’m not sure what she meant.” I told her and the police officer who my grandparents were and where they lived. I watched their bedroom light come on.
The police officer said, “Your grandpa is Joe Stockdale?” My grandfather was a well known business owner in Des Moines. I said yes.
My mother beat my grandparents to the police department. She came in, obviously quite angry, and did not look at me. She followed the youth officer into an office. I talked to the police officer, Sergeant Burger, to try to pass the time. After a few minutes, we could hear the youth officer and my mother yelling at each other. Finally, they came out. My mother walked straight to the door and out without ever looking at me.
The youth officer said, “I don’t know what happened to me. I’ve never lost it with someone like that before.” My grandparents arrived and the youth officer made arrangements for me to go home with my grandparents.
At five in the morning, I was settled into a spare bedroom at my grandparents. I cried and cried and cried until it was time to get up and go to school at seven. I lost my mother that night. I never lived with her again. She was no longer trustworthy.
In an ironic twist, I was grateful that my mother couldn’t hide her mental disturbance when she met with professionals in my life. My mother couldn’t pretend to be normal which ended up facilitating my ability to get help. It was both helpful and immensely sad.
Over the years, spending time with my mother was problematic, but I kept trying. She married another alcoholic the summer I graduated from high school in 1976. At that point, she lived in Olympia. He was a truly unpleasant man. My mother met him while taking care of his aging mother in their house. When he asked her to marry him, it was an opportunity she felt she couldn’t turn down. He was wealthy and owned his family's successful business. We slept in the same bed the night before the wedding. She asked me, “Am I doing the right thing?” What was I to say? It wasn’t like I could offer her something better. They got married and started a roller coaster of drinking, traveling, and spending lots of money.
By 1980, she started trying to separate from him. At that time, I had moved to Olympia. She would leave him and move in with me with her boxes of stuff saying she was done, done, done. Then, 24 hours later, she would go back to him and try it again.
For many months, she went through this process over and over. Moving in with me saying she was done with him and then moving back with him. I found it very stressful. This was probably a replay of her separating from my father. Finally, I told her that she needed to go to the women’s shelter. She couldn’t keep on moving in on me. She left and didn’t speak to me for six months. I decided it was an exchange I could live with.
In 1986, my daughter was on the way. Knowing I was going to be a parent forced me to start really looking at and dealing with the abuse and trauma of my childhood. I was in contact with my mother. In February 1987, my daughter was born. I wanted to share my daughter with my mother. I wanted her to get to be a grandmother.
I began to notice my mom’s physical touching of me. I realized I didn’t like it and it made me feel uncomfortable. So, I told my mother I wanted her to stop touching me so much. I said, “You can hug me and kiss me when we see each other. And, you can hug me and kiss me when we say good-bye.”
My mother said, “What about hair sniffing?” It’s a thing in my family of putting our nose to the top of our loved one’s hair and taking in the smell.
I responded with a sigh, “Okay. One hug, one kiss, one hair sniffing when we see each other. And, one hug, one kiss, and one hair sniffing when we say good-bye.”
She agreed. But, I noticed she didn’t stop touching me when she was visiting. She would sidle up to me and touch me when I was in the kitchen doing dishes or sitting in the living room. She stepped up to me, hugging me, looking up into my eyes. She looked at me like I was her lover. I asked her to comply with my request to stop touching me. However, she could not control herself.
Because of my childhood, I became worried about her touching my baby daughter. I realized that if I as an adult could not get my mom to stop touching me, there was no way I could make sure she didn’t inappropriately touch my daughter. I had to stop contact. It just wasn’t okay that my wish not to be touched wasn’t respected.
Through the years, my mom and I have tried to reconnect at times. My mom would send me upsetting letters or cards. She accused me of manipulating my counselors. She accused my grandparents of stealing me from her. She denied that my father abused me. Once, she invited me to a family therapy session and offered to pay like it was this big magnanimous gesture. I had been self paying for my therapy for years. I said no. I added I was offended at the apparent disregard of my own history of therapy on my own dime. Our contact was invariably hurtful.
When I tried to talk to her, within five minutes the conversation would be filled with accusations from her revisionist family history. My mother could not control her conversation with me. It was so painful that it wasn’t worth the contact.
For the last ten years, we have settled into cards for each of our birthdays. Her's in May. Mine in December.
The last couple years, I have sent her flowers which she has really, really appreciated. There is not much I can give my mother. If I initiate more contact outside our birthdays, it results in strange boxes of things coming in the mail that I have no use for. I call it poking the bear. I say to myself, “Don’t poke the bear.” Contact twice a year seems to be our max.
Over the years, I have drafted so many letters to her either in writing or in my head. I crave to tell her I love her. I want to tell her the things I appreciated about her. I have less of a need to tell her what hurts me from my childhood.
I keep a file of her mean or strange communications. I want to look at it when she is gone so I will remember why I couldn’t maintain contact. I don’t want to torture myself with, “Why didn’t I try harder?” I have tried harder many times. I have learned, though, not to poke the bear.
I guess these words are all I can say to my mother at this point. I love you, mom. I’m sorry. I wish you the best. That’s all I can do.
L’Chaim.
Joceile
1/25/17
