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

Yes, the circle is now broken! (Dear Dad...)

"I know that I’m a prisoner
To all my father held so dear,
I know that I’m a hostage
To all his hopes and fears . . .*"


Dear Dad,

Not long ago, I witnessed an event that broke my heart.

It happened as I was walking through a local department store on my way home from work. I saw a parent abusing his child in public.

It’s something I’ve unfortunately witnessed before, and it saddens me every time I see it. In this particular instance, I actually heard the sounds of child abuse before I saw anything. In the next aisle over from where I was shopping, there came the harsh growl of a male voice, followed by a loud smack, and then the unmistakable "yowl" of a small child in pain.

I hesitated for a few moments, not wanting to intervene. But when the sounds of this small child’s public humiliation continued unabated after a few minutes, I decided I had had enough; I walked over to the next aisle. There I saw a slight man (who I assume was the child’s father) in his mid- to late twenties, with his back turned toward me, shaking his daughter hard enough to jerk her head back and forth violently. All the while he was cursing her and berating her in harsh, guttural tones. The little blonde girl, who was probably no more than three years old, was wailing inconsolably. "Hey," I said to him barely above a whisper, but with a tone that indicated I meant business. "Stop shaking her!"

The man stood up and turned around to face me. His face was a mask of hostility. To me, he seemed to possess an arrogance far bigger than his diminutive stature and slight build. He opened his mouth as if to snarl something at me, but stopped. I can only surmise that, seeing my 6’3", 240-pound frame dressed in full postal worker's regalia, he must have figured discretion was the better part of valor. He harrumphed, turned on his heels, snatched his still sobbing daughter by the wrist, and stalked off.

Do you know why that incident saddened me so much, Dad? Because it so much reminded me of you and the way you treated your family when we were growing up. I remember how physically and verbally abusive you were to everyone, especially Mom and me. To this day, my earliest memories are of you constantly beating me, screaming obscenities at me and telling me I was no good. The year when I was nine years old was probably the worst of my life. We were living in the suburbs outside New York City, and every day you were commuting to the city to work. (I recall you saying how unhappy you were in your work, even though you had a good-paying white collar job with a pharmaceutical company.)

Well, I guess you had to take all your unhappiness out on us, eh? In the spring of 1961, it seemed like whenever you were at home, you spent all your time pounding on Mom and me. The incident I remember most vividly happened on a Saturday morning in the spring of 1961. As hard as you try to deny it, I’m sure you must recall the place, the time, and the incident. I still remember the sinking feeling in my stomach when you hollered for me to come into your bedroom. That’s where most of those beatings took place.

This time I was barely through the door when you picked me up and flung me across the room and onto the bed. You started out by pummeling me with your fists, and then continued on by lashing me repeatedly with your wide leather belt. You were incoherently screaming and cursing at me. Mom tried to stop you (for one of the few times she dared), but you pushed her away and kept on. It seemed to go on forever. Later, Mom and I counted on my body 103 welts from the leather belt , as well as an indeterminable number of bruises. I never did find out what I had done wrong!

Dad, you know as well as I do that this was not an unusual event in our family. How many other times was I beaten almost senseless? Your verbal abuse may have been worse than the physical stuff you meted out. I remember one month when you refused to call me by my name; it would always be "hey, s__t head," or "you little s__t" – in that instance, all because I disobeyed you one evening when you were out, by asking the baby sitter for help with a math problem.

Yeah, Dad, that’s quite a legacy you left me. Not only me, though, but your other three children as well. It’s been almost forty years now since our little family split up. Mom has passed away now; you never did apologize to her or attempt reconciliation. Somehow, though, you’ve managed to reach a level of rapprochement with the four of us, your children. I wonder if you know how much of a struggle we are all still going through because of your violent behavior?

I have always heard – and believed – that abused children tend to become child abusers themselves, thereby perpetuating a vicious and painful circle of violence that can only be broken by extraordinary means. When I was a young adult, just starting a family of my own, I lived in mortal fear of turning out to be an abusive parent myself. Maybe that fear is ironically what stopped me from abusing my three children; even then, though, it was a terribly close call. As I look back on my children’s early years, I can see with great clarity the times when I almost crossed the line from strict disciplinarian to child abuser. Today, the only reason I’m sure I never did cross that line is because my wife and children constantly tell me so...with their love and respect.

So, I guess I just want to let you know, Dad . . . I am alright. All those bruises you left me with – the physical, psychological, and spiritual ones – are all faded away and healed. From the depth of my heart, I’ve managed to forgive you for the pain you caused me and our whole family. That despite the fact you’ve never once admitted you were wrong, or apologized.

So, Dad, that vicious circle is now broken! Today I live my life without excuses. I understand that my failures are of my own doing, and not yours. I’ve taken full responsibility for my life and for the care and nurturing of those entrusted to me. I don’t try to hide behind the label of "victim," because "victim" is one thing I am not. I live with the knowledge that the past is past, and there’s nothing I can do to change it. I can – and do – learn from the past, though. Perhaps it will be a comfort for you to know that your greatest legacy to me, and the greatest lesson you’ve ever taught me, is how not to be a parent.

And for that, you have my eternal gratitude.

Love,

Mike

"So don't yield to the fortunes
You sometimes see as fate.
It may have a new perspective
On a different day.
And if you don't give up,
And don't give in,
You may just be OK.

"Say it loud, say it clear
You can listen as well as you hear.
It’s too late when we die
To admit we don’t see eye to eye. *"




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* NOTE: Lyrics from the Mike and the Mechanics song "The Living Years." Words and music by Mike Rutherford and B.A. Robertson. Copyright © 1988, R & BA Music, Ltd./Hit and Run Music Ltd., (BMI) and Atlantic Records. Used with permission. All Rights Reserved.

Whispers

‘Twixt whispers of my heart and whispers of creation,
The screech of raw ambition, the shriek of earthly cares
Intrude upon my soul, impelling ever forward,
To grasp with youthful ardor a wealth of worldly wares.

And in my days of youth, eyes blinded by desire,
Unheedful of his heart, unmindful of my soul,
I stride with purpose onward, eyes focused on the now,
Ears attuned to cravings that urge me toward my goals.

But soon, too soon, arrive those far-off, dreaded years,
And lines and grays begin to hold unyielding sway
O’er countenance once smooth, unmarked by time or tears.
And autumn’s golden beams begin to mark my way.

I hear with growing clarity newer, nobler whispers -
Ideals so long neglected, oppressed by youthful strife.
I heed with new-found wisdom as heart and mind resolve
The whispers of creation and the whispers of my life.


~ mkp1151