Gold dust woman.

TRIGGER WARNING: Physical and sexual abuse, themes of dominance and control

It’s been two months since my mother died. Almost two months since I drove to Iowa and stood at her graveside in a small cemetery on a hill overlooking empty winter fields, listening to a kindly rented pastor eulogize my mother’s life, mispronounce her daughter’s name, incorrectly name her surviving relatives, and say neutral things in a kind voice about the deceased. No friends were present and no obituary published, per her instructions; just a handful of people standing around a gravestone to remember the newly departed in a quiet, tasteful service, full of decorum.

Rock on, gold dust woman
Take your silver spoon and dig your grave

For me, it’s been two months of digging through the rocks and boulders of an avalanche of photographs and memories and realizing, after much reflection, that I had been an obstacle in my mother’s life ever since she arrived in mine at age three. Even now, fifty years later, it hurts to realize this, much less say it aloud. I suppose we all want to be loved so, despite the fact we should know better, we secretly hold onto some unspoken hope that we might still be surprised at the end. We may hope for reconciliation, but we also steel ourselves for the inevitable disappointment and resign ourselves to our hidden pain. Now, in the aftermath of death, I ask myself, why do I still owe fealty to secrecy?

Heartless challenge
Pick your path and I’ll pray

Mourning is a funny thing. There are many ways to grieve, and it doesn’t necessarily affect each person in the same manner if only for the simple reason that no two people are the same, and no two relationships are identical. Convention dictates we can only reconcile our grief if we embrace the pain of loss, but in reality I’ve been mourning the loss of my parents for decades. The question is what to do with this pain now that they’re both gone. Do I rebury it deep inside and keep the status quo? Or do I purge the poison from my system, laying myself bare in an effort to become clean? Either choice poses a risk. I fear that for me to be able to move forward in light, I must shed the dark truths I hold. I acknowledge this is not a post for the faint of heart; this will be uncomfortable. Imagine how I feel. This will irrevocably change the way you see me. These are the ugliest pieces of me, the shameful secrets deep inside I’m sure will make you turn away. Some will object to this being written for others to read; others will question whether my memories are even real. Sadly, I was there. These are moments that threaten to define who you are. A lie of omission is still a lie, and I am so very tired of being bullied into silence for the sake of others. These have not been their burdens to bear; they have been mine. Perhaps this catharsis will finally put my ghosts — and my mourning — to rest.

Wake up in the morning
See your sunrise loves to go down

My childhood was about survival and secrets. Survival from outbursts of rage. Calculated deception. Emotional manipulation. Mental abuse. Physical abuse. Sexual abuse. I learned to cry very quietly while I was growing up. I tried very hard not to be by myself, because I knew bad things would happen if I was left alone with an adult in my home. My stepbrother, 18, told me in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t do everything he said and keep his secrets, he would have me run over by a car as I walked to school. I was in second grade. I became very good at pretending everything was fine and I was normal. When we got the call a few years later that my stepbrother had died in a motorcycle accident, I believed it was a gift from god, but it was only a matter of time until my father’s unhealthy affection took its place. When we lived in Saudi Arabia, the law required all expatriate children leave the country after ninth grade and restricted re-entry to short family visits. Boarding school was the common solution. My father took me on a trip across Europe to visit potential schools. I cried a lot that week. I was 15. My mother knew what was happening and didn’t stop it; she simply hated me for it. I hated myself too.

Lousy lovers pick their prey
But they never cry out loud, cry out

When I was twenty, I was living at home and commuting into Manhattan for school. One night, picking the next semester’s schedule, my mother decided the classes I needed to take were too late in the day and refused to pick me up at night from the station, 4.5 miles away. I would have to wait a semester and perhaps things would work out then. When I had the temerity to suggest alternatives including moving out on my own, my mother abruptly stood up from the kitchen table and walked away. She came back moments later with a hardcover novel and launched herself at me, book firmly in both white knuckled hands. She swung at my head, she swung at my arms, she swung at my back, she swung at my face. Over and over, blind in her fury. She backed me into a corner, swinging and connecting repeatedly with the full force her 5’2″ frame would allow her, and I could do nothing but keep my arms and hands up, trying to block her blows. “YOU. WILL. DO. AS. I. SAY.” I knew if I didn’t leave then, I might never find the nerve. Later that same week, a friend met me in the city and drove me back to my house in New Jersey while no one was home so I could remove whatever clothes and belongings I could fit in her car. She drove me back into the city and I was suddenly on my own with no plans, no money, and no place to live. My mother had the locks changed that same day.

Well, did she make you cry,
Make you break down,
Shatter your illusions of love?
And is it over now?
Do you know how?
Pick up the pieces and go home

I couldn’t finish school, but I had a job that paid most of my bills, and there was safety in the obscurity of the city. After six months, I let my parents know where I was. After a year, my mother started talking to me. I reconnected with a guy I’d met in Texas, and he was refreshingly — what was the term? — normal. The day I called my parents to tell them I was engaged, I was met with disapproving silence. My mother’s advice on marriage: You don’t have to marry a man who is rich; he just has to have the ability to become rich. I wanted to marry for love, not financial security, and I married him anyway. My mother believed in the importance of a life lived well: big houses, tasteful clothes, expensive jewelry, and exciting tales of travel and amusing anecdotes. This was no longer my life, although my mother was certain she could fix that with sheer will and determination. She continually called with suggestions of places to move closer to her and forwarded job opportunities for my husband. It’s amazing he didn’t divorce me. Eventually the cognitive dissonance of both past and present came to a head, and clinical depression landed me on the couch of a therapist where gradually I discovered there are words for what I’ve endured. Abuse and prolonged trauma. Codependency. Narcissism. Trauma bonding (aka Stockholm Syndrome). Psychopathy. I never understood how truly dysfunctional my family was. It’s difficult to recognize dysfunction if you don’t know what normal looks like. You think every family is like yours; you think you are living a normal life because for you, it’s what you know. Once you see your life through these new lenses, however, they reframe your world view into crystal sharp focus, and things suddenly make sense. The normal you knew was most definitely not normal. I was very damaged goods.

Rock on, ancient queen
Follow those who pale in your shadow

Becoming a mother myself was a terrifying mantle to assume. I had no idea how to raise children. I couldn’t fathom what a healthy parent-child relationship looked like. I wasn’t sure how to enforce rules without pain. My parents visited several times and my mother stayed a week when my daughter was born. She took control while I lay on the couch. You need to let her cry, she said. She needs to learn your schedule and become self-sufficient, she said. My daughter was a week old. When my second child was born, they visited when he was six months old. She looked disapprovingly at my daughter, now two and a half. I knew that look all too well. You need to discipline her, she said. Children need to learn to be seen and not heard, she said. Spankings are good for them, she said. I realized then there had to be boundaries. There would be no unsupervised visits. There would be no grandparent punishments for my children. My kids needed to be safe to grow up, to be free from fear, free from abuse, free from retribution. The cycle of abuse had to be broken, and so I put myself in the path of my mother’s fury. In true fashion, she rewrote the story and made me the demon of her exile. I became persona non grata. But I shouldered it, because it protected my children and kept my family safe. My children don’t know their maternal grandparents, and my parents both died having never met my youngest son. He’s 24.

Rulers make bad lovers
You better put your kingdom up for sale, up for sale

My mother specifically named me in her will so that I could not contest the fact that she was specifically excluding me. She left me nothing. It was the final punishment she could enact, to treat me as a figment, a specter, a boot scuff on the floor, an afterthought not worth acknowledging. I knew that would likely be the case, but it still stung when I received the official notification. The estate would go to my sister (who deserves all of it and then some) and my father’s daughter from his first marriage (effectively my replacement but without the scars to prove her loyalty; she only lived with us for a summer). As for me, also her husband’s daughter, legally adopted as her own, who lived with her for 18 years; I was simply erased, as though I’d never existed at all. She kept me out of her pre-approved eulogy, just as she made sure I was deleted from the family photo memorial at my father’s service several years ago.

Well, did she make you cry,
Make you break down,
Shatter your illusions of love?
And is it over now?
Do you know how?
Pick up the pieces and go home

It’s been two months since my mother died. I’ve used this time to distance myself from haunted memories once more, and to regain some sense of peace and equilibrium in my life yet again. It helps to be back with my family, in a safe place full of love and laughter. I still dream a lot. They aren’t happy dreams but then, they never have been. There are days where I’ve briefly imagined contesting the will if only to force someone to legally recognize my existence, but then I come to my senses. My parents are gone; there’s no love to win now, if there ever was. I think it speaks volumes that my mother felt the only thing of value to inherit from her was money. Maybe she was right. But my life is so much more, and while I’m grateful I found another path, I mourn she couldn’t celebrate what I was able to create. I do mourn, because life is complicated. I mourn what was. I mourn what might have been. I mourn a life lost to bitterness and rage, a mind enveloped in suspicion and retribution. She’d had opportunities to travel to places far across the globe, collecting stories, treasures, and gold. If she’d only been open to the treasures right in front of her. Instead, she died without knowing them, alone, because those who knew her best also knew they had to protect themselves first.

Well, did she make you cry,
Make you break down,
Shatter your illusions of love?
And now tell me is it over now?
Do you know how to
Pick up the pieces and go home
Go home, go home

I mourn the life not lived in love.