Come along, let's get started.
Dear reader:
I confess that processing much of this is still a matter of digestion. My mother passed today at about 3:33PM after a very short but fatal fight with cancer. A small brain tumor was discovered - thought perhaps early, however it was very aggressive.
There are lots of things that are floating through my mind. My relationship with my mother is a complicated one. It seems we are always hearing that about mother-child relationships. Much of the complication in this instance is related to life-long family dynamics. My mother was divorced from my father as I was an infant. I learned in my adolescence that unbeknownst to me, my paternal grandmother had been writing letters addressed to my mother and me. Through the years she had kept these from me in spite of a desire by me to locate my father's side of the family.
I confess that there developed over the later years of my life some ambivalence towards mom as a result of those lost years of opportunity to connect and finally the difficulty to know how to establish anything close to a normal relationship. I can't say that I didn't love her. Hate was never an emotion associated with her personally, though I did hate that I was prevented by here from establishing earlier contact with the Wells side of my family. This had a circular impact on the family dynamic as it did circle back and cause some feelings of ambivalence at times.
I confess that I am experiencing sadness as an emotion. I think one the saddest things I'm feeling right now is that I know one of the things she wanted to do was write a memoir on her days of nursing that went back to the old General Hospital. Mom had written some short fiction - stories, nothing longer. She often talked about the memoir. My wife even offered at times to assist her while she dictated. She had a laptop, her ability to utilize it seemed challenging to her. I cannot believe she has much if anything started on it.
She was quite proud of graduating from General Hospital's Nursing School and working at the hospital. I confess that I am sad that she was not able to realize the completion of her memoir.There have to be few things in this world sadder than a writer with a story to tell that goes untold.
Until next time - love, peace & joy!
PS~ One of the positive experiences of the past few weeks I owe to Maggie Smith. One evening while she was lucid I read Maggie's book Good Bones to her. She like the book very much. Would comment on the poems and was especially interested why Maggie was drawn to write so many poems that contained references to hawks.
