And There She Is

Some things never change, even when you dared to think they might.  The mother I have known all my life made her appearance.

A few months ago, my daughter started her journey with Cervical Cancer.  After two surgeries, we are waiting to see what happens, but this story is not about her as it were.  When I told my mother that her granddaughter was facing cancer, and we did not really know anything other than that at the time, her response was “Well, I guess you have two of us to worry about now.”  I just said “Yeah” and completed the call.  What else was there to say?  I understand she is facing her own health issues, but after two weeks of crying every day after hearing the news, I just did not have the energy to deal with my mother.  That conversation took place in June and I haven’t spoken to her since.  She called once about a week after that and left a voice mail message, she wanted some old life insurance policy my father had for me.  She wanted to cash it in.  I didn’t return the call, she didn’t ask in the voice mail how either me or her granddaughter were doing.  The entire message was about her. 

After I hung up the phone, I laughed.  That was my mother, all right.  Most people, upon hearing the news might offer emotional support, might ask how you are coping with everything, but my mother does none of those things.  Even so, I accepted this is my mother.  Her capacity to relate to others is very limited.  As I functioned in my life, my daughter’s future was always on my mind.  I went to work, did all the things I knew I should do, but my heart was heavy as we did the next thing the doctor advised.  Days went by without me thinking much about my mother at all.  I had a great deal on my mind as it was.  One day, I realized I had not heard from my mother for weeks.  A month had passed without a single phone call.  Then another month passed.  We are now at the third month without a single word. 

My daughter is fine for the moment, but she could not know that.  I have no explanation at this point, no frame of reference I could offer as to why my mother could respond with this degree of selfishness.  I must admit I am disappointed.  My mother lacks basic feeling toward another human being.  It is not that I expected her to be able to offer much in the way of support during this time, but I did expect her to respond with some level of depth.  People who barely knew me would ask how things were going now and then.  My mother can only see life as it relates to her.  What can you do with someone that profoundly damaged?  There is too much going on in my life now to be able to process this.  That is how the days slipped into weeks slipped into months without contact with her.  I have come full circle with her, again. 

As in the past, when my life has been fraught with well, life, I focus on the immediate problem and let everything else slide by the wayside.  My friends and family keep in touch, I return the calls that I can and life goes on.  My mother is not capable of maintaining a relationship that does not revolve around her.  I should know this by now, I could certainly attest to it.  While I am dealing with my daughter facing a life threatening illness, work, my own relationship and building anxiety, my mother is nowhere to be found and I don’t have the energy to track her down.  By the time I settle down at night and think about it, it is too late to call.  And this may well be where the story of my mother and I end.  I would have to say it is rather anticlimactic. 

No amount of understanding my mother changes how I feel, no amount of desire to have a relationship with her changes who she is.  No amount of patience can heal the damage she has suffered, or rescue a soul so lifeless.  For that, I will have to trust that Spirit can disrupt the cycle of evil for my mother.  I was not up to the task.  I ended the perversion for my daughters and for myself.  I cannot go back in time to relieve my mother’s pain.  I don’t regret initiating a call with her almost a year ago, but it didn’t seem to accomplish anything.  I am in the exact same spot as I was a year ago, for all I know my mother died and that’s why she never called again.  If I were to call her only to discover she is just fine I wouldn’t begin to know what to say to her.  One thing I can say about this experience, I am very grateful I did not end up like my mother.  I wish her peace, and freedom from the chains that have shackled her life. 

Pedophiles don’t just kill the soul of the child, they kill the adult that child might have become.  They kill the parent they might have been and the partner they should have been.  They don’t just kill that child, they kill the souls for generations of children.  I am astounded at the significance that one act of perversion proliferates.  I don’t know what a pedophile thinks to justify sex with a child.  To me, there is no justification and when the damage is accounted for, and in accounting that damage, there is no justice either.  You can’t give back a childhood, you can’t give back what a mother should have been or the father he could have been.  So many people cry for the death penalty for pedophile, in recognition of the massive harm they elicit, but there’s no justice in the pedophile’s death, either.  When it comes to sexual crimes against children, there simply is no justice.