The Last Call With Mom

It wasn’t like the movies but it didn’t have to be

I was at work when the call came. Although the readout on my phone showed my sister’s name it was my niece calling.

“MeeMaw has slipped into a vegetative state but won’t let go, Aunt Tammy.”

My mom and I had a classically complicated mother/daughter relationship and hadn’t spoken in over seven years other than a brief call after Hurricane Sandy when I let her know I was ok. I didn’t hate my mother. I adored her but there were too many times when she — and I — looked the other way while abuse was happening to me and other girls in the family. If I couldn’t talk to her I could send postcards which I did with unfailing regularity for all those years. She always knew I was ok. I figured that if it came to that, she or someone else in the family would reach out to me.

My niece did on November 9, 2016.

“I think she needs to hear you tell her it’s ok to let go. Will you talk to her? I’ll hold the phone by her ear.”

I had long wondered what I would say to my mom given exactly this kind of situation. There was a whole basket of things, dirty laundry, that I could have flung all over the place but who does that? Someone still hurting and angry. I had long since moved past my anger at my family of origin. I simply removed myself from their reach and hope they find some kind of peace.

So I told my mom how much I loved her. I told her that everything good and strong in my life I learned from her. I didn’t waste our precious few minutes on empty apologies. I poured my real love for the badly wronged child who grew up to give birth to me through that phone and into her ear. I sat in my office at work with tears running down my face and told my Mommy how much she meant to all four of us girls, her daughters.

Two hours later my niece called back. Mom had died.

I didn’t cry then until Leonard Cohen died a couple of days later when, for whatever reason, I began to grieve.

“You’re coming to the funeral, right?”

Right.

Even though I knew some family members would not welcome me, I went to my mother’s funeral at a small chapel outside Wadsworth, Ohio. I saw cousins and aunts and uncles I hadn’t seen in decades. There was a certain stiffness that eased as we spoke together. I was not surprised when one person backed away from me and refused to even speak. She has ample reason to be furious with me and all I can do — and have done — is tell her that she was right, I was wrong and I’ll be sorry for that to the end of my days.

Here we are after another election night and my mother has been dead for four years now.

I miss sending the postcards. I don’t miss the agony of Mother’s Day when I had to figure out some way of expressing my love from a safe distance. When I got sober I heard many people talk about getting their families back. I heard many stories of reestablished relationships. That has not been my experience.

My experience has been that my family of origin has every reason and right to shun me. I have every reason and right to accept that and live my life fully and joyfully and tearfully and with great compassion and mindfulness.

I’ll always be grateful to my niece for giving me that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a loving, present daughter to my mom. And I express that gratitude by not forcing myself into their lives. Some of the people in my immediate family continue to live in the wreckage of my past. I can’t change my past. I can — and do — use that damage to reach out to other wounded people and demonstrate how we can live and give and laugh and cry and be present for the people who do choose to be in our lives.

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