This coming Friday will be the 20th anniversary of my adopted mother’s death. Twenty years have passed but I can still hear her screeching voice and hurtful words in my head. I think I hear them close to every minute of every day. I hear that voice so often that it has become just background noise joining in the cacophony that is my world.
I have found forgiveness for the wounded soul that raised me. I no longer have screaming nightmares that she’s trying to kill me. I no longer shed tears over her and what should have been. God probably saved my life by removing her from it when he did. It took me seventeen years to address my childhood, face it, understand it and find forgiveness for my parents. Forgiveness however does not mean that I’ve forgotten and all week, my mother has been in my thoughts. I finally decided I needed to commemorate her passing and I need to ask her to please stop residing in my head. She’s finally gone from my heart and I’m learning to heal from her abuse, but I’ve never been able to quiet her voice in my head. She still reigns as head bitch in there and it wasn’t until a recent workshop that I participated in that I understood that it’s her voice that I still hear.
In this exercise, we were asked to make a list of words that were encouraging and true about ourselves. We were also instructed to look at ourselves in a mirror and tell ourselves whatever positive affirmation we had decided we needed to work on. For example, I was supposed to look in the mirror and tell my reflection: “I love you, I forgive you and I understand you did the best you could.” I tried. I really really tried. I couldn’t do it. I could sort of mumble it under my breath while looking down but each time I looked myself in the eyes and tried to recite those fifteen little words, I would go mute. My tongue would be glued to the roof of my mouth and I would see panic in my reflection and know that I couldn’t say those words out loud. I did start paying attention to the dialog in my head and that’s when the realization came that I have my mother’s negative tirades embedded in my head.
She’s the one that tells me how worthless I am and belittles me for having accomplished so little in all the years I’ve been given. She’s the one who tells me that I’m crazy for believing in a dream, for believing in the future. She’s the one I hear when I’m feeling lonely and unloved. Her voice echoes in my head repeating all the reasons why my life is not my own. She’s the one who tells me that I’ve aged and that the gray hair isn’t attractive and she asks how I let my weight get out of control. She’s the one who makes sure that I don’t leave the house without make-up because she was always the one to call me her little ugly duckling.
When I was growing up, there wasn’t a day that went by that she didn’t make sure I knew that I had been thrown away like garbage by my birth mother. There wasn’t a day that she didn’t remind me how unlovable I was and how grateful I should be that she took on the job of raising me. She used to threaten me with sending me back to the orphanage and seeing if anyone else would want this ugly little girl. By the time I was a teenager she had stopped with the threats, because at that point I think she understood, if given the choice, I would have chosen anywhere else, including an orphanage over having to be her daughter.
I used to want to be un-adopted. I used to want to be un-born. I used to ask God for a do-over, a second chance. When she went into the hospital for that final time, I felt this evil little spark of hope. When the doctors called me after the overnight surgery and said I needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible and that her prognosis was terminal, my heart flipped over in my chest a little. No, a lot. It flipped over a lot. I didn’t show it, that would have been inappropriate, but I felt it. For the first time in my life, I felt hope. I felt like a prisoner has to feel after being in chains for more than thirty years and finally knowing what it’s like to be free.
I remember driving to the hospital twenty years ago and imagining a world without my mother in it. It was a wonderful thought and I prayed that she would indeed die and leave me in peace to live out my life. She lingered for days after that surgery and the phone call advising me to hurry back to the hospital. The doctors were convinced she wouldn’t make it past an hour or two at the most. She had surgery on March 24 and after being called back to the hospital following the surgery, I was there with her except for a quick run home to shower each day. To my mother’s relatives and friends that came and went, I appeared to be a dedicated, heart sick daughter that was at her mother’s side and it was touching. I slept in a recliner in her room in ICU. I stood for hours at her bedside, holding her hand and talking to her. She never regained consciousness, but she did nothing in life without great difficulty and she was no different in death.
The real truth about the devotion and the bedside vigil? I was afraid she wouldn’t die. I was afraid that she would recover and have to move in with me at my house. At the only place I had refuge from her. I was afraid that my prison sentence would not end and that I would have to care for her for the rest of her life. I was petrified that if I were not there to witness her death, that it would not be real. I had to be there when she died and I had to know that it was finally over. She finally took her last breath at 2:50am on the morning of March 28, 1994. And, I was there. Four days after surgery. Four long days of standing at her bedside. Four long days of hoping and praying that she would finally be gone from my life.
When I decided to write this morning, I wanted to celebrate my mother’s death and I wanted to write about a favorite childhood memory. I sat here before the sun came up and I allowed myself to bring up the memories that are usually best left buried and I went through a slide show of my childhood looking for a special memory that I have of me and my mother. I sat here. I sat here. I sat here some more and the sun came up. The good news and proof of a lot of growth in the past three years since I finally confronted her ghost and found that forgiveness, is there were no tears this morning. She no longer hurts my heart. She no longer can make me cry.
But, I realized while writing this post that her voice is still in my head. I still hear the negative, demoralizing, demeaning words that she used with me. I can still hear that angry, crazy, woman yelling at me and see her looking at me with such profound hate. I still hear the words of useless and ugly and her favorite adjective of heffer. Yep, my mom called me a heffer because I reminded her of an awkward female cow. Most days, I still hear that voice when I look in the mirror. Most days, I still hear that voice the minute I wake up and it’s only with effort, a lot of love and an overdose of positive thinking, memes and whatever other happy crappy stuff that I can find, that allows me to not wallow in a pit of self-hatred. Yep, her voice is still there. She’s been dead twenty years and I can still hear her voice.
So, we’re gonna celebrate this milestone anniversary. I’m going to a Broadway show this coming Friday and I’m going to spend the evening with one of my favorite people in the world. We’re going to sit in the beautiful Orpheum Theatre and I’m going to celebrate hearing nothing but the music and words on the stage. This celebration is going to kick off the year that I evict the screeching, awful voice from my head and I replace it with all the beautiful words that she never knew. This is the year, to shed the last vestiges of that woman from my life. This is the year I finally find my own voice and find that forgiveness that I managed to grant to even her.
My favorite memory: It’s a hot, summer evening and my mom is going through another separation from my dad. It’s just me and her in the house and she goes in the kitchen to make dinner. She turns to me and says, “Let’s go and get some pizza, just us girls.” We drive into the next nearest little town and we go inside a Pizza Hut. I’ve never had pizza from there before and we order a square little specialty pizza and take it out to the car. We roll the windows down and sit in the car and eat pizza. We don’t talk, we just eat our little square pizza and it’s a very nice summer evening.
sumwatsumwhere 