Confession
My mother didn’t apologize for her outright rejection of my lesbianism until just a few short months ago — nearly five years after her death.

My childhood was not unlike others who like me, were raised in the coal-mining region of Pennsylvania in the late sixties and seventies. My ancestors were immigrants from Ireland and Germany, who toiled and died in the mines beneath the Pocono Mountains. Whose homespun beliefs and fervent faith in the Catholic Church ran as deep as those anthracite mines. Catholicism runs through my blood just as thick as my European DNA. My great-aunt was a nun; two of my first cousins entered the convent before I was born; I was sent off to Catholic school at the age of five, and my mother basked in the prestige of her part-time job in the rectory of our church.
The Church came second only to family, but at times took precedence. Seen through my mother’s eyes, the Church was indeed infallible, and she followed its teachings blindly. Even at the expense of alienating her only daughter.
I am the baby of the family, born eight years after my older brother, and twelve years after the oldest boy. I am a prime example of a mid-life “accident” baby, born just short of my mother’s fortieth birthday. My entry into the world prompted my dad to stroll about our neighborhood the night of my birth, handing out cigars in a true example of Americana. Early on, my father was forced to take a job that was hours away from home, living with my grandmother during the week, and coming home on weekends. I didn’t know my father well and wasn’t close to him at all because of his time away during my early years. We just didn’t know how to relate to one another. The role of Head of Household was involuntarily bestowed upon my mother, who cared for my brothers and me on her own during the week.
I spent all of my time with my mother. I idolized her and was permanently attached to her side. As she went about her day, I acted as her shadow, trailing behind like a wisp of her perfume. She was my best friend, and I loved the days we spent together while my brothers were off doing what brothers do. My first day of Kindergarten arrived. The excitement had built all summer long but came crashing down as I realized going to school meant being separated from my mother. I was left screaming in protest as she turned her back and walked down the antiseptic-laced hallway toward the exit. I adjusted, but halfway through the school year, our family moved to be closer to my dad’s workplace. A mid-year move meant a brand new Kindergarten class, and my meltdown was repeated on my second “first day” of the school year — abandoned for the second time.
Moving beyond Kindergarten brought a whole new set of experiences, and involved moving to a new school — first grade gave me my first bitter taste of Parochial school. I caught on quickly — whatever the nuns said or did was always right, apparently as infallible as the Church in my mother’s eyes. She treated the religious figures like all-knowing Deities — worthy of rock star adulation. The nuns progress reports to my parents at what became dreaded parent-teacher conferences were treated as gospel. My almost-certain Attention Deficit Disorder is clear as day to me now, but the condition and my obvious lack of focus were taken as “laziness” — a dissection of my personality that then carried over to my home life. I was deemed a lazy child because the nuns said so.
Growing up was an ongoing lesson in keeping things to myself. Rule Number One — there were things not to be discussed, among them sex. One Sunday after the priest’s homily focused on brimstone and damnation, I asked my mother what he had been referring to when he mentioned fornication. “I don’t know,” my mother lied. “Where did you hear that?” Her scowl spoke volumes, and her tone stung. This was clearly not a topic for discussion. When I informed her that I’d heard it directly from the mouth of Father S. at mass, she went silent. Subject closed. I remember many similar instances. Sex was just not to be discussed.
When I was sixteen, that lack of communication changed my life forever when I became pregnant. Who does a teenaged girl turn to when her life gets turned upside down? Who could I talk to? Who would help me? For me, that person was not my mother. She had demonstrated that the topic of sex was off-limits. The lesson I took from that was that if talking about sex was shameful, actually taking part in it was worse. So, without a word, I ran away from home — my boyfriend and I ran far away — nearly five hundred miles away. Months later, we welcomed a boy and eventually moved back home. My mother was overjoyed to meet her first grandchild with open arms and an even wider heart. I was seeing parts of her that I hadn’t witnessed before.
Convincing myself I was in love, I married my son’s father, and we went on to have another child. But within a few short years the feelings I’d had for girls my entire life refused to be denied any longer. I fell in love with a woman and divorced my husband — all the while refusing to share this part of my life with my mother, whom I just knew would either disown me or even worse, take my children away.
The chasm between my mother and me, created in my teenage years, intensified after I came out to myself. My mother never acknowledged my relationship with the woman for whom I had left my husband. Not a word was said when we bought a house together. I was met with radio silence when the woman and I broke up and I moved to Colorado to be with another woman. Sure, there were passive-aggressive remarks against all gays in general (“they’re all nuts!” She sneered while watching a news update on a March on Washington), but never a sound, a sigh, or a word to me directly.
My girlfriend and I moved back to the area, and I found my mother had softened — oh, she liked this girlfriend! It struck me that the indifference she’d shown to my previous girlfriend wasn’t entirely because she was a she, but had plenty to do with my ex’s disposition and gruff personality. My new girlfriend was the polar opposite — kind, friendly, engaging. Despite my mother wanting her to be a man, she actually warmed up toward her. Granted, she still wasn’t accepting, but the air felt lighter — and it was easier to breathe.
I remember one time after my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer, cancer that took her from us faster than any of us could have imagined. My mother had taken to sleeping downstairs in a reclining chair each night. This was before Hospice stepped in to provide her with a bed, centrally located in her living room. My now-wife and I drove to my mother’s house, where my brothers had also gathered. We all planned on sleeping at my mother’s house that night, which made my mom very uncomfortable. The two bedrooms upstairs were eerily empty and quiet, but while my mother offered them to my brothers, she insisted that my wife and I sleep downstairs in the living room with her — one of us on a sofa, the other on a twin of the recliner my mother planned to use.
I put my foot down, and my brothers backed me up, telling Mom she was being ridiculous. “There’s a perfectly good bed upstairs. They should use it!” My brother argued, nodding toward the two of us. It took a half hour of discussion, but my mother caved and my wife and I slept comfortably in my mother’s bed upstairs.
And then she was gone. She just climbed into her Hospice-provided bed one afternoon and never got up. I was hit with so many emotions and wracked with guilt. How much of her rejection had been my fault? Should I have told her outright about my lesbianism and given her a chance to react? Of course, I should have — there’s no question in my mind.
At her viewing, my cousin walked up to me and tried to comfort me. “Don’t hold it against her. She had to deal with so many things — what her church told her, things her generation believed…it wasn’t her fault.” And he was right. My mother played the cards she was dealt for the entire eighty-eight years she walked this earth. She lost her own mother at the age of fourteen. She had only her father, a sister who was close in age, and two siblings who were considerably older than she was. She followed her religion blindly, and that contributed to her small-minded way of thinking. But it didn’t make her a bad person. My mother had a big heart — bigger than the state she’d grown up in, an enormous sense of humor, a rare knack for being able to laugh at her own flaws, and an overpowering streak of over-sensitivity.
And yet, as another anniversary of her passing moved closer, I still found myself hurt and angry by her actions, even though my sensible side told me she was only human, and that she treated me well overall. After all, she didn’t disown me. Nor did she refuse to allow my partner to accompany me on my visits. All she did, I told myself, is voice her displeasure, albeit in her typical passive-aggressive manner.
Recently, I found myself having a string of dreams about my mother. In those dreams, I was reliving my youth. One placed me back in my teenage years when I had run away from home. Another took place when I was with my previous girlfriend. But there were two common threads throughout the dreams, which occurred every night for almost a week. One was that my wife played the role of my then-boyfriend or my then-girlfriend. The second was that my mother was attempting to get closer to me while I pushed her away.
I mentioned the dreams to no one, but they took over my thoughts during the day as I grappled with understanding their meaning. Surely, my mother was trying to send me a message, but what could that message be?
On the night after the last dream, I began to fall asleep and out of nowhere, I was jolted awake. I had heard it, but more than anything, I had felt my mother’s voice, deep inside my brain. “I’m sorry,” she said. It resonated in my head, as I woke fully and basked in the enormous sense of relief, happiness, and love that surrounded me. Sleep came quickly then. The next day, I recounted everything to my wife — the dreams, the nagging feeling of why I was being visited by my mother every single night, and finally, the apology. She understood what this meant to me.
It’s been nearly two months since the dreams came and left. They have not returned, but feelings of understanding, forgiveness, and regret have taken their place. And now, I’m able to say something that I couldn’t say while my mother was still alive — that I’m sorry too.
