Feel Good Hit Of The Summer

 “I hate her. I wish she was dead!”

I blurted out those words in reference to my Mother. At the time, I was sixteen, apparently the age during which confrontation with any real emotion leads to a one way street where only exclamations worthy of a Degrassi Junior High script reside. I shamefully spat out that sentence while standing next to a beach volleyball court located at a bar in my hometown called Suds. Yes, I was sixteen years old and at a bar; a bar that was called Suds. At the time, it’s possible the median age of their clientele may have been around eighteen years, three hundred and sixty four days old. So, in comparison I wasn’t THAT young, plus, I didn’t drink alcohol anyway. Still, it was at that establishment filled with “adults” when I said it. “I hate her. I wish she was dead!” I did. I KNOW those were the exact words I said, because I remember the whole event vividly, as well as the isolating humiliation that followed after I realized how childish that must have sounded. I suspect I may have been pretty convincing though, because the reply that escaped from my genuinely goodhearted friend’s shocked face was, “Jeff, you don’t mean that?” Except, you know what? I think I might have.

I had a “Mom” once, though now, she is a very faint memory that becomes thinner with every passing year. “Mom" was a very kind, joyous, creative, and loving woman until the day she wasn’t. I know many others felt this way too. I’ve been told she “…used to be a lot of fun.” That she “…was always out with her friends.” I have scores of old photos of her and said friends from her late teens and early twenties proving those statements true. Almost every frame is filled with my “Mom,” her friends, and their collective smiles. A handful at her parents house, at high school, or out with the people she dated at the time. Photos of get-togethers at the apartment she lived in before she met my Dad, but most exist from the many trips she took across Canada accompanied by what she would often call her “…chums.” It is also very apparent she loved to ski. Mont Blanc. Laurentian. Mont-Tremblant. Something she never did during my lifetime. These photos, and scattered blurry memories are the only evidence I have of that person. “Mom” verified.

I loved her, and I know she loved me. “Mom” was a person I saw faint glimpses of when I was young. She would drag my bored toddler self to visit old friends, where I remember my “Mom” and her chums chatting and laughing. (That laughter also eventually ended. As I sit here thinking about it in the present, I can't hear it. Her laugh has completely washed away.)

Were you to arrange all of those photos chronologically, the faces become less plentiful, and gradually they lessen until time inserts the faces I now know. Family. My Dad. My sister, then six and half years after my sister’s arrival, myself. From that point on, the variety of faces in the photos becomes less and less. Many people disappear entirely. Complete years of photos are gone. For unknown reasons, my Mother marred countless pictures one day, either cutting people out of the photo, or destroying it entirely. Sometimes with scissors, or by simply tearing them to pieces. A few were defaced with matches. The majority of those photos where of my Dad’s family. Any picture from that time I’m lucky enough to possess now exists solely because my Dad successfully hid them in an old cabinet drawer in our basement sometime in the mid-1980’s.

In or around 1983, my world, along with that of my Mom, Dad and sister slowly became an island of reclusive embarrassment. Less and less people visited our home, I’m sure for their own sake, but also ours. In all probability, they likely weren’t being invited anymore. It was easier that way. By then, my Mother’s behaviour had became too unpredictable to be comfortable around. Her erratic moments would influence the invitations to the homes of others as well, until all that remained were the handful of people who still had it in their hearts to tolerate what was left of the friend, daughter or neighbour they once knew.

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On February 27, 2003 my Father informed me as we stood outside of my Mother’s hospital room, that two years prior, during a hospital visit that was prompted by her coughing up large quantities of blood, she had been diagnosed as “functional schizophrenic.”

On February 28, 2003 she died.

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I wasn’t very old the first time I noticed my Mom staring at the sun. Four or five maybe? Others noticed it too. My Dad. Our neighbours. My sister. I noticed myself, except I was a child, and I had no idea that what I was witnessing was unusual. I did however glean from my sister’s embarrassment that maybe something wasn’t right. Even my Mom told me herself that I shouldn’t do the same, that it was “…bad for your eyes.”

I’m positive it was shortly before I turned five though, because it also coincided with my first year of Little League. So, five years old. Old enough that a little one still needs help with a few of the finer details of bathing. At that time, I remember my Mom taking me out of the bath, then standing me up on the wooden, carpet covered toilet seat lid, where she would towel me off. (Remember, it was the 1980’s. People loved to carpet ANYTHING. Hell, I’m surprised the bathtub wasn’t carpeted.) My Mother was towelling me off when she informed me that she, along with my teenage neighbour and babysitter Karen, would be coaching my baseball team. (Like so many of the game’s greats, my first baseball coach was my Mom, and my babysitter. That season, we placed first in second-hand smoke consumption whilst making sure we all got to bed on time.) My immediate response to her exciting news? “Are you going to stare at the sun?” It was completely reflexive. The words spilling out of me with zero thought. (Clearly, even at that age, I was beginning to feel a little unsure of my Mother’s behaviour in front of other people.)

"Are you going to stare at the sun?"

What happened after I posed that question was something that had never occurred before. I wasn’t spanked. Nor did I receive "the paddle," a tool resembling a cricket bat created specifically to inflict pain. My Mom had adhered a piece of linoleum to the back to ensure it hurt just a little bit more, and there it hung in our kitchen for everyone to see. That day, I wasn't told I was being punished, nor was I told what I did wrong. Instead, a slap immediately hit me across my face so hard I remember seeing stars, losing my balance, and having to grab the counter beside me. I have no memory of what she said or anything that happened after, only the complete shock I felt in that moment. I’m not sure I even cried. Given how I operated emotionally as I got older, it’s entirely possible I didn’t. That was the day “…very kind, joyous, creative, and loving…” disappeared. I didn't see Mom again until the last few days of her life.

I was five years old the first time my Mother hit me. Five. I still have a difficult time understanding that, while also understanding completely that you would have to be mentally ill to do so. The last time she hit me I had my back turned, and I felt a fist land behind my right ear. It tore a small piece of my ear lobe away from my skull. I used to have a small scar, that may or may not still be there. I was twenty-one years old. The many times I absorbed blows within the sixteen years between ages five and twenty-one were no better or worse. In some ways, being hit was preferable when compared to what I went through emotionally and mentally. By the time I moved out of that house, all of that abuse would end up becoming the heaps of evidence I would consistently reference in the future when I needed to convince myself that I wasn’t worth much of anything.

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Outside of one visually triggered memory from my early twenties, I began having flashbacks as I approached thirty. Entire moments I had completely erased from my thoughts, or sometimes, larger fragments of events I still stored recollections of. When they happen, I almost always know that what I’m remembering did indeed transpire. On rare occasions, I can’t be sure.

In high school creative writing class, our teacher asked us to write a brief story about “an intense moment” from our lives. I wrote a piece called “Holding Up The Door.” At the time I was eighteen. All that remained in my head was a shard of a memory that began with me sitting in my room, and playing with my toys on the floor. I heard loud voices coming from the front room of the house, followed by my Mom yelling, “Yes I am! YES I AM!” I remember getting up, walking to my door and seeing my Dad restraining my Mom at the end of the hall as she flailed, trying to make her way to my room. “LET, ME, GO, you son of a bitch! I’m taking him! I’M TAKING HIM!” Very briefly, I watched in confused terror as they inched their way closer to my room, until finally, I slammed my door shut, sat on the floor, and pushed back with all of my body weight to no avail. I am absolutely positive this happened, however, my memory of that event is now from outside of myself. I see the entire event from a side angle, like I was sitting in a chair, five feet away to my left, watching my younger self trying to hold the door closed. Is this a side effect of trauma? Is it some bizarre way for my brain to process what was happening? I don’t know, but it’s how I remember that particular moment. It's the only event from my life I remember this way.

About three years after high school I had my first flashback of that particular incident. My Dad and I went “…for a ride.” “Hey, want to go for a ride?” Translated, that meant, “Want to get out of the house, and away from your Mother.” I almost always said “yes.” Most of the time, it was just that. Driving around Essex County listening to music, simply not being at home. It was during one of those rides, on a side road near Point Pelee National Park where what I saw lit a match within my shadows. We were on a road I had not seen since the day I tried to hold up a door. It is a dirt road that eventually reaches a curve, at which point, you are driving on top of a small levee. On one side, marshland, on the other, the side of a hill that slowly descends into what is now drained farmland. I saw that curve, and in an instant I froze and remembered. “Fuck. This is the road from that day Mom took me.” The day my Mom took me. I forgot that part of the story. My Mom took me, or as a therapist once put it several years later, “…kidnapped you.” I still remember exactly what my Dad and I were listening to the moment I saw it. Jeff Buckley’s cover of “Lilac Wine,” from his album “Grace,” crooning through the Dodge Neon's speakers via-my Dad’s discman, complete with fake cassette adapter for your car’s tape player.

“When I think more than I wanna think
I do things I never should do
I drink much more than I oughta drink
Because it brings me back you”

(An eerie collection of words to consider in the present given almost every one of my flashbacks has involved alcohol.)

So, that ride provided the second piece of the trauma puzzle, even though now, were I to arrange everything in the sequence it occurred, it would be the fourth memory I have of that story.

Over the years, other flashbacks have fleshed out that event. Sitting in the passenger seat as my Mom backed out of the driveway and witnessing my Dad stare at us from the front porch as we drove away. Cautiously watching my Mom gaze out the front of our car with tears rolling down her eyes as we sat idling in a Zellers parking lot in Leamington, Ontario. The winding levee road. Then, finally, a fragment I can’t be sure of, but one that has attached itself to that day in my memory. I’m standing about fifty feet away from our family’s burgundy station wagon, which is parked on the sand of a Lake Erie beach. On the car’s left is a large leaf covered tree. That’s it. That’s the entire memory. It took fourteen years to accumulate that information while other non-related flashbacks made their random appearances. I do however fear the details of that story may not be finished with me. (I have since turned to Google Maps to see where that levee road leads, and I think I found the beach, though I’m still not sure. All I can do is speculate, and I have no intention of further investigating such a thing in person. I don’t think I could handle it.)

This to my recollection was the “beginning,” when my Mom’s eccentric behaviour began mutating into psychosis. That psychosis would not reach its climax for a couple of more years. My life within that multi-year span being a knot of trepidation tied to an angry unpredictable human. I did not feel safe. I had no one to trust, and nothing felt like it was eventually going to be OK. I was six or seven years old.

It’s pure conjecture, but looking back on that day now, when my Mom “…kidnapped me,” I suspect she may have been planning on ending things. I also think that initially, she had maybe planned on taking me with her as well but in the end changed her mind. I’m standing about fifty feet away from our family’s burgundy station wagon, which is parked on the sand of a Lake Erie beach. On the car’s left is a large leaf covered tree. My guess is she was frightened of disappearing. I know how difficult it was for my family to lose her, but sadly, I lived a very long time before I even considered that maybe my Mom understood she was vanishing too. That her mental illness weighed much more than anything she was able carry. That maybe, in the midst of everything that was going on inside her head she was fucking terrified, and could only think of one way to proceed.

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I remember the first time I feared my Mom’s growing illness. It was shortly after her sun staring began. For the first decade of my life, my Mom was a perpetual AM radio listener. Around the clock, CKLW emitted from her Pulsar brand, mono-speaker, silver and brown radio that sat on our kitchen table until I was a teenager. (When I think of my childhood, the song “Poor Side Of Town” by Johnny Rivers is often the soundtrack. In my memory, CKLW played that song roughly fifteen times a day for years. It still holds a place in my heart for all of its cheesy Caucasian soaked charm. “…shooby dooby…”) It was that radio at a very loud volume in addition to my Mother’s talking that dragged me into the hallway from my sleep. That night, I remember getting out of bed, standing in my doorway, and seeing my Mom sitting in the kitchen with the radio held up to her left ear. She was “having a conversation” with the DJ, and laughing out loud. I squeaked out a faint, “Mom?” I remember she stopped, looked at me as though nothing was wrong, and said, “Get back to bed.” I pretended I had risen out of bed to use the bathroom. Again. That’s it. The whole memory.

That is when I officially remember my Mother's strange behaviour beginning. Speaking in tongues. Trying to read my thoughts by putting her palm on my forehead. A brief obsession with The Bible/the devil. Writing symbols next to the time of day in her “journal.” Becoming intensely obsessed with her garden and her various craft projects. Odd phrases repeated again and again. Being “electrocuted” by the wires under our front lawn. I could head into the triple digits with examples. All of them, occurrences that rarely make their way into the average family household. A few of those behaviours became worse with time, some disappeared completely. At any given moment, I was clueless as to what was going to happen. I most certainly was never aware of why it was happening. No one in our house talked about any of this either. There was never a “…are you OK,” or a post-explosion hug to soften the blow. Often just a “stay in your room” until the gale force mindstorms died down. All I had was our dog Punch, who I would hold while sitting against the wall amidst all that was happening.

Up until about Grade Six, I spent most of my childhood looking over my shoulder in my own house. By then, I had matured far quicker than those in my grade, which is saying something, because I skipped Grade Two. I was a year younger than everyone else. In Grade Six, I weighed 155 pounds. On the last day of Grade Eight, my friends and I weighed ourselves on the wrestling scale in the school gymnasium. At age twelve, I was 5’11”, 172 pounds and had already started shaving, not because I wanted to, but because I had a five o’clock shadow before I was even a teen. Age thirteen, 6’0”, 195 pounds. Sometimes, it feels like my body just made the decision to grow its own primal armour to protect me. Yet, it worked. The older and larger I became, the less my Mom hit me. In fact, I don’t think she did at all while I was in high school. By then, she was just eroding my carefully crafted emotional shell from the inside out.

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Like most people who ignore every piece of their emotional baggage heading into their thirties, all of the “I’m fine's" I had tossed out over the years eventually collapsed, burying me in a jagged heap of anxiety. They were anxieties I had spent most of my adult life shunning. Unfortunately, the moment they collapsed, I was travelling by myself in Europe, on a trip that was established in a low humming dread from the moment I stepped into the airport terminal in Toronto. Once in Europe, that trepidation only snowballed, until eventually, I was no longer calling the shots, the panic attacks were. I had few choices but to bail on what ended up being a very expensive lesson instead of a vacation. That lesson however led me to a therapist. “I need help.” That was the only thing I could focus on. It was desperate. I returned home, went to the doctor the next day, and said the same thing. “I need help,” which at the time was a phrase that did not contribute to my vocabulary. The opposite of, “I’m fine.”

In therapy, I learned about trauma, and its many effects. I learned that I had indeed suffered from it. I learned I wasn’t as tough and emotionally stoic as I thought I was. I learned that certain events in my life were predictably attached to my episodes of PTSD that had started to make themselves known. I also learned that for most people, eating is just that, but for me, it was something attached to traumas the majority of people have not experienced.

Everyone has their “something.” Me? I’m a picky eater. If we’re close, well, you probably already know that. It’s also entirely possible that you didn’t have a clue. My pickiness has been a source of shame and embarrassment so massive, that I’ve lied through my teeth about it for more or less my entire life. Over the years, I’ve done my best to keep it a secret. Perhaps you’ve been on the receiving end of one of my various excuses when an invitation has been extended for dinner? “Maybe, I have ______ coming up. We’ll see.” Or, when offering me something to eat. “No thanks, I’ve already eaten” or, “I’m a super taster.” (That one is actually true, I am, but it was never why I declined offers of food. I had simply learned that it could get me out of many situations. That said, there will never be a world where I want to put a beet in my mouth, and quite honestly, I have to ask, why are YOU doing such a horrendous thing to yourself? Keep your sugary dirt globes to yourself please.) At age forty-four, I regret how much this has caused me to miss out on, and how negatively it influenced the social life of myself, and my former partner of twenty-four years. Saying “yes” should never have been as difficult as it was, but it was. In a way, it still is. I have a genuine fear attached to food. FEAR. It only took me about thirty-five years to figure out why.

My Mom was born in 1945, to a Father of German descent. There was a proper and improper way to do everything, especially when it was time to eat. Table manners were essential in our house, and a mental rulebook was established very early on in regards to what was acceptable at my family’s veneered rectangle. In my memory, there isn’t anything violent attached to table manners, but from the get go, eating was never about eating. It was about consistently being nagged and hounded into doing everything correctly whilst in the process of eating. Then of course waiting for everyone to finish their meals before I could return to a life less scrutinized away from that table. As my Mother’s illness worsened, a serious fear was attached to making ANY mistake, but again, I don’t remember any violence in regards to table manners. Nonetheless, for a child with A.D.D. eating “properly” was a constant effort. I was regularly reminded how I was failing at such a simple thing. Away from the table too. The Munro family motto should really be the Gaelic translation of, “Who's fault is that?”

I hate to say it, but my Mother also wasn’t a very good cook. Overcooked and undercooked were her specialties. Overcooked mostly. Yes, there were a few things she made that I remember enjoying. (And, still find myself missing.) She was a pretty good baker too, but overall, I don’t ever remember wanting to stuff my face with what was placed in front of me at dinner. So, I don’t know if I started off as a picky eater, or if I just didn’t like how my Mom cooked. I remember chewing dry, rubbery hamburgers for what seemed like minutes before I was able to swallow them. Ketchup being used as a lubricant more than a condiment. (If it wasn’t for McDonald’s, I probably would have spent my entire life thinking hamburgers were some sort of meat-based edible gum product for people without tastebuds.)

Our kitchen table had an L-shaped booth that sat up against the wall, along with two stools. My parents sat on the stools, my sister on the long part of the L, and myself, wedged into the L's smallest part between the dishwasher, and my sister. The only way I could leave was if my sister wasn’t sitting there. I was trapped in discomfort. 

When my picky eating became an issue, my Mom decided to approach it by making me sit at the table until I finished everything on my plate. It didn’t work. Some nights my family sat in the living room watching TV, while I sat in the dark, trying to gag down cold food I didn’t want to eat. A couple of times, I even tried the old sitcom trick of feeding it to the dog under the table, but even he didn’t want it. Most times, I didn’t eat anything. I just sat alone until one of my parents, (usually my Dad) told me I could get up. There were nights I would go to bed without dinner. There were days I didn’t get dessert, which was particularly painful seeing as it was a true rarity in our house at that time. I was often told by my Mom I was being stubborn, while not knowing what that word meant, or really caring. I just wanted it all to end. Maybe I WAS being stubborn? I honestly can’t remember. What I do remember is the fear I had attached to food and eating amongst others from a very young age.

I wasn’t very old when I was told where beef came from, and instantly associated it with eating my dog. From then on, unless it was roast beef (which for some reason, never bothered me) I would gag on any meat. I could sometimes eat it, but it was always an effort, and oftentimes, required large gulps of milk just to swallow. Taking meat out of my diet as a child WELL before vegetarianism was common only complicated my issues even more.

As the years progressed along with my Mom’s mental illness, my sister became a teenager. Like most teenagers, her emotions were worn emphatically on her sleeve, and those teenage emotions when added to my Mother’s behaviour often led to colossal familial eruptions. Dinner time transformed from a constant Gestapo-enforced tension to a raging fire creeping closer to the propane tank within a couple of years. That teenage yelling appeared out of thin air. Yelling that didn’t diminish until my sister moved out of our house at a pretty young age. (I was in Grade 5 when she left the first time. It scared the shit out of me. I was left alone when I needed all the help I could get.)

I was probably nine, and my sister had already moved out the day I remember my Mom abruptly erupting. Why did she snap? I do not remember, though there likely isn’t an answer that would make sense to anyone. I remember her picking up a pot of chilli and smashing it down on the table in front of my Dad; the giant pot shattering all of the dishes below, as my Father sat in his usual stunned silence ignoring the milk and chilli that spilled over the table’s edge. Me? I just sat there crying. It was at that same age my Mother demanded we start eating in the dining room, which until then was only for special occasions. I have no recollection of what actually happened that day. What little I do remember is that we were eating oven fries, and fish sticks that were not thoroughly cooked along with some canned vegetables. It ended with me choking down my food in tears while simultaneously trying not to cry and pretend everything was OK. That was the last time I cried in front of either of my parents until my Mom ended up in the hospital fifteen years later. I was nine years old when I decided I was going to try and wall up my emotions for good. I was done crying. I was too old, and too strong for such a childish display. I was determined to make sure no one could defeat my emotions, and I maintained that choice for a very long time. Unconsciously, I chose to be just like my Father, who in the entire time our lives overlapped, I did not once see cry. Ever. Not even when my Mother or his own Father died. It would be another twelve years until I had no choice but to cry after my Mom punched me so hard in the back of my head she tore my ear. At age nine, I decided numbness was the most effective method to exist through life. 

I remember so little of what occurred at that table. It’s an odd thing to consider since I would have sat there thousands of times, yet only random slivers of memory still exist. I am a man with a memory that many times has been referred to as “creepy.” I know I remember more than the average person, and often in great detail. Still, I possess so few memories from that table, and what DOES remain is largely from when I was much younger. If I’ve learned anything from therapy, there’s likely an unpleasant reason for those blind spots. (Side note. My earliest memory is from when I was 538 days old. I'm serious. I remember quite a bit of it too. It is an entirely routine recollection with zero trauma attached to it, so I have no idea why it remains. I know how old I was because I was able to look up the specific date it took place. So, as you can see, my brain can travel pretty far back.)

Alright. The checklist of rules, and accompanying punishments for breaking said rules. The endless pressure to eat “correctly.” The explosions. Being abandoned in the dark. Gagging down food so I could win permission to leave an awful situation. Going to bed hungry. I also remember being hit at the dinner table too, but I do not think that violence is where my food issues come from. I think they largely derive from the need to achieve the impossible amongst constant tension, while never being able to do so or ever feel at peace. One day, I hope I can end that.

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Several months ago, I asked my former partner a question I had always been afraid to ask. Sadly, it took some bravery to present it. I’ve confronted a lot of ugly things in the last year or so, and many of those things feel “processed” now. Outside of my family, she is the only person I’m still in contact with who was exposed to my Mom and Dad. And so, I presented the question, “What do you remember about my parents?” It should have been a very simple thing to ask. It was the opposite. I learned at age forty-four that I still felt embarrassment in regards to my Mother. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know the response, but as an adult, I have become curious how people saw her; both before and after her illness. I also asked because my parents, they are fading. I still remember a great deal about the both of them, but it is almost starting to feel like they were just a dream. Even thinking about myself and the person I was then doesn’t make sense in the present. I was a conditioned instinctive reaction in the form of a human. A cornered animal, who instead of clawing back resorted to constant moodiness and smart-ass comments. My Mother has been the great puzzle I’ve been trying to reassemble for years, trying to understand “why?” I know the simple answer will always be, “schizophrenia” but I think I’m just trying to discover another reason for her behaviour. It's wasted energy, I know that, but I am also curious about the person I never had much of a chance to know.

The answers I received from my former partner weren’t unexpected. She saw them very much as I did at that time. When remembering my Mom, her response was along the lines of, “It always seemed like you were trying to keep me away from her.” I was. That was true. It was the same for all of my friends growing up. I became a rude, fearful fortress wall between any guest I had over and my Mom. I heard “I can't believe how you talk to your Mom…” several times during those years. I thought I was simply protecting them from her, while also protecting myself. I never knew how she would respond to anything. Would she explode, embarrass me by saying something weird, or by being her usual boundary ignoring self? So, being a complete dick was how I shifted her focus onto me. It left everyone else alone. Oftentimes, I would direct visitors straight to my bedroom, pushing them right through the kitchen from behind. That’s not an exaggeration. I would put a hand on their back and say, “Go, go, go!” like we were cops who just busted down a door. Or, I would take them straight to the basement, sometimes through the side door which bypassed the kitchen, where my Mom was parked smoking in her chair the majority of the time. Eventually, I became the friend who fled to other people’s homes.

By the end of high school, I was hiding at my friend’s houses more than I was there to hang out. Homework became optional. Grades did not matter to anyone other than my teachers. In Grade 12, I dropped out of school. I then returned a semester later and failed two of my three classes. Then O.A.C. year, I did the same. Maybe passed three or four out of six classes? (For you young folks, O.A.C. was an acronym for Ontario Academic Credit. Back then, if you had plans to attend university, you needed at least six O.A.C. credits. Yes, the government would actually provide funding to help further your education! It was a real thing! I promise.) Then, a return for the “victory lap.” Turns out, that grade I skipped was all for naught. I returned for “Grade 14,” not because I had any hopes or dreams for university, but because I knew exactly where I didn’t want to be. School was the easiest escape, and by that time it had ZERO expectations attached to it. Once again, I passed four out of six classes. My last report card contained both the numbers 95%, and 37%. (I’m not bragging, I promise, but I still find that impressively lopsided.)

It was around Grade 11 when my parents basically just left me alone to raise myself. I made my own dinner, because time spent together eating as a family had LONG since passed. I did my own laundry, because no one else was doing it for me. Grades, good or bad were no longer discussed. By then, I had burrowed myself thoroughly into music. By the end of high school, I had intended to become a “musician.” Outside of making an album in “Grade 14,” and playing open mics a couple of times for free beer, I did exactly nothing to achieve that goal, nor did I possess the drive to do so. Everything I did at school from Grade 11 on was for attention. It was why I made any effort to attend. I was there to perform. I made music because I knew I was good at it. I knew I could sing better than most. I enjoyed writing, mostly for the grades and awards I was able to achieve. I was constantly looking for a laugh, and would go to great lengths for it. I acted silly so people would notice me. Attention clearly equalled love. As Marc Maron once said, I was “…trying to fill the hole my parents put inside me.”

Then, high school ended. I hid in my childhood bedroom as my friends moved away for university. I watched them start careers and families; buy houses. Along the way, I met a person who accepted that mess of a human into her own life. Most of the time, I emotionally leaned on that person in the most unhealthy of ways. With nowhere left to go for my daily doses of attention, that was my desperate way of staying afloat. She carried that mess for far too long a span, and for many years, I was a shit partner, until the day I know I wasn’t. However, by then, the damage was done. Once the well is poisoned, you're never going to be comfortable around the water drawn, no matter how long ago it was tainted. For years I was a person who had walled up all emotion, and when those walls cracked, that very emotion became the fuel for most (or all) response. Emotion was reflex. The slightest fissure in my numb exterior poked a hole in the dam, and oftentimes the resulting emotions (or lack of) flooded in her direction. That past behaviour is, and will always be on my “biggest regrets” list. I became an extension of the mess I was raised in. I turned my new relationship into a similar mess, and that behaviour in turn paved the way for the rest of that relationship until the multiple times it frayed, and eventually ended. As a child, you live to learn. As an adult, you live what you learned. I was poorly educated.

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Since I started writing this, I have rewritten it twice. It began as a collection of trauma porn. A pity checklist of all of the abuse I went through as a child, including several horrific events I have chosen to omit. It read as nothing more than resentful finger pointing. I am not writing this to blame my Mom, because I simply don’t anymore. She was never the person making the choices during our time together, her illness was. I read what I had written, and it basically said, “I’m this way because of YOU Mom!” Yes. I am this way because of her, for better or worse. However, at age forty-four, it only pains me to consider what she must have suffered through for all of those years.

If you’re asking “why?” “Why are you doing this?” I am writing this, and throwing it on the internet for anyone to read because I have spent far too LONG a time pretending I was something else. That I was “fine.” I need to live the rest of my life. Fine was a facade. No one is fine. Every single one of us is not fine. I am not fine just as you are not. Yes, I am doing OK, but everything is most certainly not “fine.” This is me cutting away a very old anchor.

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Do I think my Mother “…did her best.” That really doesn’t matter, because I understand she did not have that choice. Do I think my Dad “…did his best?” I do not. I also don’t want to throw him under the bus either. Knowing now what I do about his childhood I’m sympathetic to his responses in some regards, but no, I do not think he did his best.

In 1994, when I said, “I hate her! I wish she was dead!” I meant that. My Mother was a monster in my life for many years. Even when evidence to the contrary was sitting right in front of me, I blamed her. Years later, likely when I started allowing cracks into my shell and drops of emotion to seep out, I forgave her. At the time, I was not young. However, there was never anything to forgive. It wasn’t my Mother doing what she did. That wasn’t her. It was her illness, yet, for years my Dad did nothing to protect himself, his children or his wife from that illness. To put it simply, he just waited for the monster to die. It was like he watched our house burn down, then called the fire department after the smoke cleared. That is a difficult thing to forgive, and I don't know if I'll ever find that forgiveness. I wish I could just "...let it go," but I can't understand his actions. I don't think I ever will. My Mom’s actions were an illness called “schizophrenia.” I’ve read entire books filled with information about it. It would be a lot easier if the “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” had an entry for “stagnation” but it doesn’t. To this day, I don’t know if he made ANY attempt to get my Mom help, mentally or physically. The last two times my Mother went to the hospital occurred only because my sister and I made the calls to do so.

Forgiveness is not always easy.

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The last time I visited my Nan, my Mom’s mother, was about a month before she passed away. She will always be one of my favourite people, and was without doubt, the most loving person that existed in my young life. My Nan was a woman who watched her Father disappear into alcoholism when he returned “shell shocked” post-WWI after fighting at both Vimy Ridge, and the Second Battle of Passchendaele. She watched her older sister die relatively young after an accident related to her alcoholism; her Father’s sister, my Nan’s Aunt Edie, also suffered from mental illness. She was institutionalized at least once for what was suspected to be severe bi-polar disorder. With two young sons at home in bed, Edie walked into Lake Ontario late one night and disappeared until her body washed up the next day. My Nan’s maternal Grandfather was institutionalized at least twice for mental issues according to newspaper archives I have found. Her Father’s Mother may have also suffered from mental illness, though no one is quite sure, even though that rumour exists within the family. In her lifetime, my Nan watched a lot of love fade away. She shared none of that information with me; just as I, her Grandson, would never have shared the things I have just written about my Mother with her, or anyone else. I too watched love fade away; then, the little that remained in the form of family would mostly die before I was even thirty.

It was during that last visit when I walked into my Nan’s hospice room and found her sitting on the chair of her walker, staring at the wall in the distance. It was a look of complete enveloped sadness. I entered and asked, “Hey Nan, how are you? Are you OK?” Her response was, “I was just thinking about your Mother.” “Oh.” I said. Her reply was immediate. “It's a good thing that she died.” It was said matter-of-factly, with no malice attached. I understand that’s quite an opener to any conversation, especially one about your  only daughter and the Mother of the man you are currently talking to, but I knew the pain from which it came. It wasn't harsh, it was the truth. I saw how my Mom’s illness devastated my Grandmother. I left my Nan’s house far too many times as a child, watching her face break into tears as we walked out the door after my Mom’s latest display of what she was becoming. 

What my Nan said that day did not shock or offend me. It made sense. She wasn’t happy my Mother was dead. She recognized a pain had been erased; not only the terrible anguish of her daughter, but for everyone her daughter’s life had touched during her last twenty years. It was nothing close to the wishes of an emotionally inept sixteen year old who once wished his Mother dead. It was fact from the mouth of a woman who had lived eighty-five years and had seen too many familial fragments charred and scattered by mental illness.

I was young when my Mom slipped away the first time, but I would bet good money my Mother’s death was easier for those in her life than her descent into schizophrenia. There were more people at her funeral than there were visitors at our house during the two decades of my Mother's suffering. Visiting her in death was easier than witnessing what she became in life.

When my Mother passed, I did not “…wish she was dead.” All these years later, I can say the same. Am I happy her pain is over? Yes, I am. Am I thankful our family’s pain is over? Very much so. Yet, I miss my Mom. It sounds unbelievable, even to myself, but I do. She left me with a wealth of scars that have assuredly hindered my life, but a part of her is a part of me, and it hurts to feel that dissipate with time. 

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It was during my Mother’s last days that my “Mom” returned. The appearance was very brief, only a day or two. In that I.C.U. room, four rooms down the hall from where my Father would pass away two and a half years later, my family watched the monster die before it’s host. There she was. “Mom,” entirely dependent on tubes and wires after everything the monster had ravaged. I was in the room with her as I watched her interact with a handful of people for what would be the last time. They knew it. She knew it. Even though she couldn’t say much with a vent and feeding tube down her throat, she communicated with a pen and a notebook. For the first time in my life, I saw kindness written onto those pages. No symbols, or abstract doodles over arrangements of random words, only what was left of her affection. She tried her best to laugh at jokes. She pet my head like she did when I was a child. She held our hands. I watched her say goodbye. Her brother. Her childhood friend. My Dad’s brother. Me. My sister. “Love each other” is what she scrawled to my sister and I on her last day before she slipped into the sleep that precedes death.

We all saw what the monster left behind, and though what little remained was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever witnessed, those of us who recognized the monster knew it was gone. “Mom,” returned. “June.” She understood why we were all there. My “Mom” knew the monster had destroyed her, but in the end, I think she won. What remained of “Mom” shone through for a few hours at the end of her lifetime, just as I hope it may have gleamed for the first thirty. It would end up being her last two days of consciousness, but yes, the monster was gone. Two days might not seem like much, but I had my “Mom” back. She left pieces of that monster in those of us who had no choice but to live through its torment, but she won.

June beat the monster. 

Maybe we can too?

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Shortly after her goodbyes, the tubes and wires were removed and she was transferred to palliative care. As my “Mom" began drifting into her final hours through the pain meds, the last words that left her mouth were, “Mom.” Over and over again. “Mom.”

I watched crying as she called out for a Mother who was not there, knowing myself how terrifying and lonely that feeling is. The next day, my Mother disappeared for the final time. 

It was a good thing that she died.

Mom & I - Jack Miner Migratory Bird Sanctuary - 1980