My Mother is Dead. But I Wrote Her a Birthday Letter Today.

Why it matters to me.

Dear Mom,

It’s almost your birthday, which brings up so many memories. But, over the last two years, as I’ve worked on my memoir, I’ve realized how little I really understood you. You’d say you were only 28 when I was born, and I lived with you for 17 years and was at least in touch for even longer—so how could I not know you?

I’d guess because you never really knew yourself.

You were born on the Solstice, the darkest day of the year, in 1925 Boston. It was the decade known as the Roaring Twenties in the United States, a time of prosperity and optimism after the horrors of World War I.

Your father was a stockbroker and a graduate of Boston College. Your mother, born in 1898, had struggled to become pregnant before your older brother was born in 1923. Having a first child at 25 years old was considered late back then. The Twenties was a time when women were bobbing their hair, working in professional careers, and breaking with tradition. Your mother wasn’t happily married and seemed torn between wanting a career and the traditional path of motherhood. She’d also graduated from Boston College with a degree in counseling, her brother was a professor, and she definitely was not planning on being a stay-at-home Mom.

The stock market crashed in 1929, and your father lost his job, self-esteem, and family.

From my earliest years, I knew that your heart was broken over the loss of your dad to a bitter divorce when you were only five.

With your mother’s encouragement, you refused to spend weekends with your father and lost touch for 40 years. I think you thought it was your fault, but Mom, it wasn’t; you were a child.

Your mother became a professor, and you were one of the few children in your school with what you thought was an unwelcome distinction—your parents were divorced, and your mom had a career.

A few days before your sixteenth birthday, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the U.S. officially joined WWII. Your high school graduation was canceled because of the war and your beloved brother was in the Navy. You and he were very close though your lives took different paths. He became the wealthy owner of a movie studio and an early investor in Lake Tahoe real estate while you moved to Alaska to homestead.

He had two kids, and you had six. I know you tried to navigate the hardships of homesteading but you weren’t able to.

What made you so restless and unhappy?

Do you remember saving all the letters sent back and forth between you and Grandma? The ones you were planning to use to provide background for the story of homesteading?

Well, we still have them. And those letters, notes, and journals provide a window into your life and ours, as I use them to write a story. But, of course, it won’t be your story, and I don’t know if you’d be happy to have it told or not.

Since I was only four when we began trudging up that mountain, I had a limited perspective since I was only three and a half feet tall.

You told stories of the Valley and the mountain as Shangri-La, a remote imaginary place where life is perfect.

You loved the rainbows over the mountain, and we believe we’d find a leprechaun guarding his pot of gold at the end.

Tales of Heidi and Clara, the sick woman, healed by the mountain air—I believed them all—and I think you did, too.

Now, looking back, I think you were chasing fairy tales your whole life, and they destroyed you.

I wonder what made it impossible for you to reconcile imagination and reality? What a sad, sad life to never live in the real world.

Dreams, like goals and hopes for the future, are fine, but children are not actors in your fantasy. And honestly, life is not a movie, as I think you eventually realized. But still, even at the end, I don’t think you understood what went so very, very wrong.

Alienated from your only sibling and your children, divorced, with no close friends, sick and alone in a rented room—I can’t imagine your last birthday.

It was a rough time in my own life, and you and I weren’t speaking that year. But I’m so, so sorry your life ended up that way. I wish it had been different. If only…there was access to mental health care back then in the fifties in Alaska. If only someone had recognized the signs of abuse and neglect and tried to help our family. But as you always said, If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

If you were alive, I’d tell you this.

All six of your children are alive, well, and mostly happy. I know you’d be proud of your 14 grandchildren and amazed to have 21 great-grandchildren. The combination of your DNA and that of our father resulted in physically and emotionally strong people.

We can’t deny, we all suffered from the results of your delusions and abuse, but somehow we were resilient enough to survive. Like I mentioned, I’m writing a book, a memoir. Initially, it was just going to cover The Homestead Years and capitalize on the heart-warming story of the naive young family from California attempting to tame the Last Frontier.

But writing this story has changed my life, causing me to search deep within, research family stories, and learn about resiliency factors.

The journey, and the book, aren’t complete, but Mom, I have more compassion for you now.

I’ll never know what went so very wrong for you, probably when you were just a tiny girl, I don’t think you started out to hurt anyone. But, does that mean it’s all OK? There are no ‘take-backs’ in life, unfortunately.

But if I am willing to forgive myself for things I regret, have compassion for others, and try to believe that everyone is doing the best they can with where they are today?

I have to give you that same grace.

So, Mom, I wish I could take you out for lunch at that place overlooking Cook Inlet, and you’d put too much cream in your coffee, and I’d smell that godawful overpowering perfume you’d always wear. You’d gossip about all the people in the Valley and ask about all the grandchildren, and maybe, just maybe, you’d be happy for a moment, and I’d say Happy Birthday, Mom.

Cindy is passionate loves nature, reading, and learning, and is passionate about well-being. She’s writing a memoir about her Alaskan childhood. Sign up for her short weekly emails to hear what’s new and interesting in Dripping Springs, Texas.