Happy Birthday, Mom – I love and miss you!

Dear Mom,

It's August 21, 2008, and I’m writing you this letter on what would have been your 80th birthday. It’s just a note to say “Happy Birthday,” and let you know how much I love and miss you!

It's hard to believe that nearly a decade has gone by since that bright, sunny October day when you passed away. Much has happened to our family since then, some of it good, and much of it drenched in tragedy. It saddens me deeply that you never had the chance to meet your great-granddaughter (now three years old) or witness the wedding of your granddaughter earlier this year; I must confess, however, that I am glad you weren’t here to witness the accidental deaths of your 19-year old grandson in 1999 and 1-year old great-grandson in 2004.

I remember the day of your passing vividly, as if it were only yesterday. Wednesday, October 7, 1998, was one of those absolutely brilliant, sunny, Indian summer-like days in Maine. The autumnal foliage was demonstrating the full force of its color – reds, yellows, oranges, greens pasted against an almost luminescent cyan sky. I got home from work at 4:00 p.m., as always. My wife was already home from her work, busily making herself a cup of tea when I walked through the door. As if on cue, the phone rang. I answered it, and heard the terse voice of my niece: "Mike, I have bad news... your mom passed away today."

They say receiving news like that is like being kicked in the stomach. It wasn’t like that for me. I just felt like everything was suddenly, irreversibly out of control. This couldn’t be happening! I only heard snippets of the rest of the phone conversation: "...what happened?..." ...heart attack..." "...very sudden, she didn't suffer..." "...funeral probably...next week..."

It’s funny how the mind works. I didn’t feel like I was grieving; I felt I needed somehow to regain control…not so much to deny that this terrible thing had happened, but to help somehow assuage the feelings of...not exactly pain, but loss. I decided to call my brother and two sisters to find out whether or not they knew you had gone. Both sisters were aware and gave the predictable "could-care-less" response; my brother hadn't heard, but reacted with an unsurprising coolness to the news.

Well, Mom, I guess it’s just as well you weren’t there to witness the funeral service and its aftermath. The day after you died, it started to rain – buckets – and it didn’t stop until the day after you were committed to the grave. It was as if the skies were vicariously shedding all those tears that none of us, your children, could, from all those years of bitterness, recrimination, and indifference.

Seventeen people, counting the minister, all huddled under umbrellas during a steady downpour, listening to your funeral service taken from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. All four of us, your children, were there at the graveside on the day you were buried. Three out of four of your kids practically estranged from you, and it was only recently that you and I had begun establishing what was steadily blossoming into a new and genuine friendship. My brother and two sisters, with their families, looked on sullenly, silently, apathetically. Did I only imagine that my wife, kids and I were only ones crying that day?

I want to share something I never got the chance to tell you when you were living. Please understand that I do so with all the love and newfound respect I have for you. Let’s face it, Mom, you were not the easiest person to live with when I was growing up. All that physical abuse that your... husband and my... father heaped upon you and me took a mighty toll on our family. I remember when I was nine years old...well, that was probably the worst year. We were living in the New York suburbs then, and good ol' Dad went on a real tear that year, beating the living hell out of both you and me every chance he got. Remember the time he picked me up and threw me across the room, and my head hit yours, and you passed out with what turned out to be a concussion and a black eye the size of a tennis ball? And what did the old man do? Just took off for parts unknown, like nothing had happened. Stayed away for a week! Didn't even make a phone call to see if we were okay.

I think that’s the first time I remember seeing you very afraid, not only of him, but of living. You probably never knew this, but that same day, I made a decision: by God, that old *&%$#@ was gonna have to kill me before I'd let him break me!! I think that was the day I lost my fear of him. And, as I grew older, I began to realize that maybe that’s when you and I began to have the problems that dogged our relationship almost to the day you died. I was stronger than you were, and we both knew it!

Maybe that’s why, as we grew up, it seemed like you constantly tried to manipulate me into being dependent on you for everything. Nothing I did ever seemed to please you. My high school grades were never high enough, my girlfriends were never good enough, the college I was accepted to wasn’t prestigious enough, my wife wasn’t... wifely enough, my choice of an Air Force career wasn’t dignified enough...

In 1985, you came to visit me and my family in England, where we were stationed with the Air Force. You spent most of your time sightseeing, and you appeared on the surface to be enjoying your stay tremendously; but you never seemed to find the time to get re-acquainted with your daughter-in-law, granddaughters... or son. When you left for the States, I had the gut feeling you were angry with me about something, although you denied it when I asked.

The degree of estrangement between us, which we had so carefully crafted and nurtured with a lifetime of unspoken disappointments in each other, was at an all-time high by 1989. That year, my family and I left England after a six year stay, and moved to Florida. I made a deliberate decision not to tell you when or where we were moving. For two years you didn’t know where we were living, or for that matter, whether we were alive or dead. Finally, you got so worried that you called my wife’s parents in Maine. By chance, we were home on leave, and we had our first conversation in over four years. I think that was when our gradual reconciliation began.

For the next eight years, we wrote occasional letters to each other and talked on the phone once in a while. I sensed a diminishment in the level of tension between us. By 1997, when I retired from the Air Force, and returned to Maine, it seemed like we were both anxious to begin anew.

Remember those visits we shared in that short, final year you had remaining to you? That first visit, when you finally got to meet your grandson, and how proud you were of both him and me? Or how about that rainy day in June 1998, when I drove up to help you set up your new computer? We spent the day talking, laughing, crying, getting to know each other; me, a 47-year old father of grown-up daughters and an adolescent son, making friends anew with my Mom and the grandmother to my kids. I remember telling you that day how important family had become to me, and how urgent I felt it was for us to set things right between us. (Did I sense that time was running out?) You responded with a big, warm hug, and that said it all. Little did we know that was the last time we would ever see or speak to each other.

Mom, no words can begin to convey how thankful I am every day that you and I saw the need for reconciliation and grabbed the opportunity when it came. Unfortunately you and your other children missed that same opportunity. I consider it one of the greatest blessings of my life to know that you and I parted as friends on that day you slipped away. I will carry that blessing with me until the day that I myself "slip the surly bonds of earth..."

So, happy birthday, Mom – I love and miss you more than ever.

Mike