Mother
As the years wear on I find myself, more and more frequently, looking back over my long life with conflicting and alternating mixtures of quiet comfort and satisfaction, unsettling regret and remorse, and nostalgic memories of all that has gone before. Though I seldom dwell on the past for long, I often pull incidents, places, people, and things through the cobwebs of my mind for use in my writing. For a writer, drawing from personal experiences is the most valuable reference library there is.
From time to time I consider the influences of the roles that others have played in the shaping of my life – the significance of my father, mother, and siblings, for instance. It took me decades to realize that my mother had more influence on the character of my mind and my personality than my father did. My father was a here and now kind of person, and he was a friend and companion more than a father, for we spent years fishing, hunting, and exploring together when I was a kid – all the while ignoring the love and loneliness of my mother. I idolized him for a long, long, time. On the other hand my mother was introspective, curious about spirituality, and often mysteriously dark and brooding, which frequently brought to her, full-frontal, sarcastic misunderstanding, ridicule, and even derision from my father, my sister, and my brother, but mostly from me. All of us mistreated her verbally and emotionally, and even though she and I were both dreamers full of philosophical and spiritual curiosity, we never acknowledged our common intellectual ground.
Of all the regrets and accompanying remorse over the course of my life that I'm most ashamed of, it is my insolent mental abuse of my mother, for she repeatedly reached out for my love and understanding, but I never gave either to her for as long as she lived. She died instantly one sad day of a burst brain aneurysm when I was in my early 30's. At her funeral I could not stop bawling like a spoiled child even though I had no idea why I cried so; it took me 20 more years to realize that it was because I loved her deeply, and I'd lost the best friend I'd ever had – the one whose friendship I never returned.
Mother, born in 1913 nee Nina Mamie Williams, was a beautiful woman, both physically and intellectually. My older daughter, Corrie Anne, whom my mother dearly loved, bears a striking resemblance to her.
She was forced to drop out of school as a 7th grader in favor of helping out on the family farm, an event that emotionally disturbed her for the rest of her life. She loved animals – especially horses – and owned a beautiful bay gelding named Prince for more than 20 years. Later, her house pets were always an important part of her life.
We were living in Jackson, Wyoming, when something very serious happened to Mother that nearly killed her, though to this day I don't know exactly what it was, for I was just a lad starting out in school and neither of my parents would talk about it in the ensuing years. She had at least one or maybe multiple operations and was in the hospital for a very long time, and I know that she lost her reproductive organs as a result. That incident, too, played a significant role in the remainder of her life adding to her often lengthy dark moods of depression and angst. Sometimes I wonder if my older brother might know more than I do about that dreadful incident, but if he does he's honored for a lifetime the secret that so far as I know was known only to my parents. My little sister was only a cute little toddler, nicknamed Muffy, in those days – just three or four years old. Perhaps she knows the story, too, but if she does Mother would have been the one who told her, and the secret is no doubt forever safe with her as well.
Several years later, in Afton, Wyoming, when I was in junior high school, we were having dinner late one evening, and I recall my father, my siblings, and me ragging on Mother – picking on her, ridiculing her, as we incessantly did. Though I've long forgotten what it was we were giving her a hard time over that particular time, I suspect it was something about how bad the meal was. Suddenly she could stand the abuse no longer, and, in a rage, jumped to her feet lifted her end of the dining room table and shoved it away from her with all her strength. Food, dinnerware, chairs, and people went flying everywhere and the table disappeared down the basement stairs, crashing in a broken heap of rubble on the concrete floor of the basement ten feet below.
That incident held our abuse in abeyance for awhile, but it didn't last, and for years after that she continued to be pelted from time to time with our disrespect and verbal cruelty – particularly my own – enduring our frequent harassment in what I so many years later realized was the mindful strength of a superwoman.
Throughout my high school, military, and college years, my relationship with Mother remained strained and volatile. We would lash out at each other over my behavior or her criticism of me, and I never failed to blame her for our troubles – though I came to realize too late for her to know that I was the one who was really to blame, absolutely 100% of the time, for our bitter clashes.
It was not until Corrie Anne (who Mother loved so much but, alas, died when Corrie Anne was only five or six) was born that we found a common ground that resulted in an uneasy, but bearable truce, and over those brief few years until her untimely death, we built a tolerable relationship with a modicum of respect between us. But not once did either of us ever acknowledge the lifetime of painful battles that we'd somehow endured. She was perhaps too proud, or maybe too hurt, to talk about it, and I perhaps too stupid and stubborn.
Oh lord, how I've wished over these last 30-plus years that I'd been strong enough while she was still alive to have held her in my arms for a little while – long enough to have admitted the errors of my ways and apologize from the deepest recesses of my heart – to have made it all up to her in one brief but poignant declaration of guilt. I would have rested much easier over these latter years of my life, and perhaps she would have known a certain soulful peace within her own heart that she had never known before – a peace that she could have taken with her after her premature death.
In my dream of dreams I believe that somewhere in the transcendent eternity of the pleroma our souls will cross each others' paths once more, and then I will be able to give back to her all that I took away from her during our miserable immanent mortal time together here beneath the firmament on our Mother Earth.
I have a prayer for her that goes like this: May Sophia continue to bestow her blessings upon both of us, dear Mother, and in Her way, with Her guiding light and Her compassion, bring us together again for an eternity of peace and love.
vvv
From time to time I consider the influences of the roles that others have played in the shaping of my life – the significance of my father, mother, and siblings, for instance. It took me decades to realize that my mother had more influence on the character of my mind and my personality than my father did. My father was a here and now kind of person, and he was a friend and companion more than a father, for we spent years fishing, hunting, and exploring together when I was a kid – all the while ignoring the love and loneliness of my mother. I idolized him for a long, long, time. On the other hand my mother was introspective, curious about spirituality, and often mysteriously dark and brooding, which frequently brought to her, full-frontal, sarcastic misunderstanding, ridicule, and even derision from my father, my sister, and my brother, but mostly from me. All of us mistreated her verbally and emotionally, and even though she and I were both dreamers full of philosophical and spiritual curiosity, we never acknowledged our common intellectual ground.
Of all the regrets and accompanying remorse over the course of my life that I'm most ashamed of, it is my insolent mental abuse of my mother, for she repeatedly reached out for my love and understanding, but I never gave either to her for as long as she lived. She died instantly one sad day of a burst brain aneurysm when I was in my early 30's. At her funeral I could not stop bawling like a spoiled child even though I had no idea why I cried so; it took me 20 more years to realize that it was because I loved her deeply, and I'd lost the best friend I'd ever had – the one whose friendship I never returned.
Mother, born in 1913 nee Nina Mamie Williams, was a beautiful woman, both physically and intellectually. My older daughter, Corrie Anne, whom my mother dearly loved, bears a striking resemblance to her.She was forced to drop out of school as a 7th grader in favor of helping out on the family farm, an event that emotionally disturbed her for the rest of her life. She loved animals – especially horses – and owned a beautiful bay gelding named Prince for more than 20 years. Later, her house pets were always an important part of her life.
We were living in Jackson, Wyoming, when something very serious happened to Mother that nearly killed her, though to this day I don't know exactly what it was, for I was just a lad starting out in school and neither of my parents would talk about it in the ensuing years. She had at least one or maybe multiple operations and was in the hospital for a very long time, and I know that she lost her reproductive organs as a result. That incident, too, played a significant role in the remainder of her life adding to her often lengthy dark moods of depression and angst. Sometimes I wonder if my older brother might know more than I do about that dreadful incident, but if he does he's honored for a lifetime the secret that so far as I know was known only to my parents. My little sister was only a cute little toddler, nicknamed Muffy, in those days – just three or four years old. Perhaps she knows the story, too, but if she does Mother would have been the one who told her, and the secret is no doubt forever safe with her as well.
Several years later, in Afton, Wyoming, when I was in junior high school, we were having dinner late one evening, and I recall my father, my siblings, and me ragging on Mother – picking on her, ridiculing her, as we incessantly did. Though I've long forgotten what it was we were giving her a hard time over that particular time, I suspect it was something about how bad the meal was. Suddenly she could stand the abuse no longer, and, in a rage, jumped to her feet lifted her end of the dining room table and shoved it away from her with all her strength. Food, dinnerware, chairs, and people went flying everywhere and the table disappeared down the basement stairs, crashing in a broken heap of rubble on the concrete floor of the basement ten feet below.
That incident held our abuse in abeyance for awhile, but it didn't last, and for years after that she continued to be pelted from time to time with our disrespect and verbal cruelty – particularly my own – enduring our frequent harassment in what I so many years later realized was the mindful strength of a superwoman.
Throughout my high school, military, and college years, my relationship with Mother remained strained and volatile. We would lash out at each other over my behavior or her criticism of me, and I never failed to blame her for our troubles – though I came to realize too late for her to know that I was the one who was really to blame, absolutely 100% of the time, for our bitter clashes.
It was not until Corrie Anne (who Mother loved so much but, alas, died when Corrie Anne was only five or six) was born that we found a common ground that resulted in an uneasy, but bearable truce, and over those brief few years until her untimely death, we built a tolerable relationship with a modicum of respect between us. But not once did either of us ever acknowledge the lifetime of painful battles that we'd somehow endured. She was perhaps too proud, or maybe too hurt, to talk about it, and I perhaps too stupid and stubborn.
Oh lord, how I've wished over these last 30-plus years that I'd been strong enough while she was still alive to have held her in my arms for a little while – long enough to have admitted the errors of my ways and apologize from the deepest recesses of my heart – to have made it all up to her in one brief but poignant declaration of guilt. I would have rested much easier over these latter years of my life, and perhaps she would have known a certain soulful peace within her own heart that she had never known before – a peace that she could have taken with her after her premature death.
In my dream of dreams I believe that somewhere in the transcendent eternity of the pleroma our souls will cross each others' paths once more, and then I will be able to give back to her all that I took away from her during our miserable immanent mortal time together here beneath the firmament on our Mother Earth.
I have a prayer for her that goes like this: May Sophia continue to bestow her blessings upon both of us, dear Mother, and in Her way, with Her guiding light and Her compassion, bring us together again for an eternity of peace and love.
vvv
Copyright (2009) by Albert Lloyd Williams
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