What My Mother Wanted to Tell Me
My Mother’s Dying Message: The Other Side of a Fraught Relationship
She wasn’t all bad or all good — Here’s the proof
My feelings and thoughts about my deceased mother are complicated. She put me through a lot, including systematic child abuse and indoctrination to “unconventional” belief systems during my formative years. She made a significant contribution toward making me feel small and unloved (and unlovable).
I am convinced that one of the reasons she focused so much on turning me into an experiment was that she was bored. She had more time than she knew what to do with. I became her main focus, much to the chagrin of my sibling who felt neglected and resentful toward me for getting so much of the attention that they deserved. Little did they know that the attention I was receiving wasn’t the positive kind, and I would have gladly given all of it away.
When I turned 18 and left home, my relationship with my mother stagnated and then started changing for the better, continuing to evolve until she died of brain cancer at age 59.
A few years before she died, she took the initiative to drive three hours every week to Atlanta to attend massage therapy school. She finally found something constructive and positive to do with her time. She made friends for the first time in her life.
It hurt that my mother never took responsibility for her actions, but I still loved her. I treasure the memories of going together to Olive Garden, which back then was a new and decent place. We had adult conversations about life, school and our feelings. Our relationship had evolved.
I felt horribly cheated when she received her cancer diagnosis and died shortly after. I finally had a mother, but only for a handful of years. Her death made me sad, angry, and full of contradictory emotions.
She never stopped believing in and embracing the bizarre “medical” treatments. The only difference was that because I was an adult, she couldn’t impose them on me anymore. She turned herself into the guinea pig, eating vast quantities of home-grown mold, de-magnetizing her food, traveling to see a healer who lived in the mountains with no running water or electricity, who pumped her full of…something that wasn’t water that induced diarrhea. She called it a “cleansing experience” and made the trek several times to repeat the procedure.
Below is a photo of the routine she settled upon to delay (stop?) the dying process. She never subjected herself to urine shots, like she did to me, but her own routine was almost as bizarre and intense:
I miss her. Or rather, I miss who she became a few years before her death. As I approach 59, I realize more how young she was when she passed away. I don’t know what happens to a person after they die, if anything, but I imagine that if there is a way for her to send me love, she is doing so. During the dying process, before she lost the ability to talk, she made a cassette recording with a long message to me. She instructed her cousin to give it to me only after her death, which she did.
I have listened to it twice. Once after she died, and once yesterday, to transcribe it. I know there are people who demonize her when they hear about the abuse. She was a complex person, and I’m not justifying what she did. I just want to illustrate how radically a person can evolve.
Can you hear me? It’s mama and this is my voice. And I know when you hear this you might be thinking, “Well, I couldn’t hear my mama’s voice anymore.” Well, you can. And this tape is by no means the only way. Because you’ll hear my voice from all these years we’ve loved each other and that I’ve spoken to you. Sometimes I know you’ve heard me when I wasn’t there and you were far away.
When your life was going through many changes and you would be making choices, I know you’ve been able to hear my voice because I’ve always loved you. And I know that you will go on living with a mind and a heart and a being that is so wonderful. I give thanks to God now and always that you came into my life. That you are who you are. You are my beautiful child. And while you are my baby, you are anything but a baby. You are mature in some very special ways. Some very unique and beautiful ways. You are a unique and special and beautiful being, my son Douglas.
I look into your eyes, I look into your smile, I look into your intelligence, and I’m so excited that even though I’m not here when you hear this, this magical, wonderful, unique and special being in the world is here, who is my son, who carries inside of his heart my love for him.
And I know that while I cannot imagine all of the things you’ll be doing in your life, I know that my love will go with you and that someday when you come home, when you’re ready, when you’re finished, and you come home and I hug you again, we will have a lot of laughter and a lot of joy to share. You are so special, I’m so thankful for every day and every year that you are in my life.
My feeling is that your beginning here and your growing up here on this planet, in this body you are in now, was difficult for you and was hard. And I wish I could have made it even easier than I tried to make it. And I know it was hard.
But my feeling, thank God, is also that now whatever that was for will be serving you and that it will not be that way in the future. My feeling is that you are here for a real purpose and that you are achieving that purpose. I feel your love. I know you are a being full of love that God has created. And I know that that will affect the world and the people who meet you and know you. You are special to me.
And wherever I am outside of this body, my love will still be with you. My memory of you, my love for you. It can never die, Douglas. It can never die. It will be with you. My heart will be with you. My love will be with you. And any way that I’m allowed to offer help if you ask for it, it will go to you. I’m certain of it.
I like to imagine that the time is coming when you have all the close friends you need and the people that are really comfortable and a joy to be with. That you have work that allows you to be the creative person God made you with the unique ways of seeing things and creating things and making things more blessed and beautiful.
I hope your music becomes all you want it to be. And dear Lord, I hope I can hear your songs. I hope I can hear you singing and I believe I will. I know I will. I’m so glad you have music. You are music. You are music. And it will be beautiful on many levels, heard and unheard, felt, experienced. And all of the other things you do in your unique and special way that I have watched over your lifetime, even from the time you were just a little boy in your room.
The way that you worked at things, so many creative, patient things, even the numbered picture of the last supper, very few children would have stuck it out with something like that. And all those letters that you wrote to people who were also John Lennon supporters. And I remember the day you and I went downtown because of him. And I remember too, one day you told me you weren’t sick, you were honest, but you didn’t want to go to school that day. And the next day, and I let you stay home, and the next day when you came back you found out a brick had been thrown through the window at the seat where you would have been sitting.
There are so many things about you that I know you’re tuned in, in a special way to who you are and what your purpose is and what you’re doing. And I love you with all my heart and want in whatever way God lets me to help you any way I can. And I look forward to there being wonderful people in your life and for you to be able to do the creative, imaginative, excellent work that you are capable of doing and having close relationships that are fulfilling to you.
Because you have been a soul a long time with many connections. And each one of us is different each lifetime. And this has been a hard start, but it’s for a purpose and God loves you. And you are protected. And I love you. And we will see each other again. And I want you to hear my voice. And I want you to know that I love you with all my heart. And there’s nothing you need to be or do differently for that.
I am with you. And God is with you. And angels do protect you. I’m so thankful, but also I know that where we don’t see them when we’re in these bodies, there is love, there are beings that have known you and loved you that still do. And in the time that it’s necessary, you will come back and see that and know that too. So I’m going to sign off right now for this day and I’ll be back on this tape and talk to you again. You are in my heart, son. You are in my heart.
