Mother’s Day Special: To Mothers, From Authors

“My mother, Teddy Hedges, a professor of English, imparted to me a love of books and writing. She was the first one to publish my work, in a booklet she typed and bound when I was a child.”

– Chris Hedges (from War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning)

“For my mother,

Dell Temple Jamison

Who gave me life not

once, but countless times”

– Kay Redfield Jamison (from An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)

and

“To

My most patient reader

and

most charitable critic,

my aged mother.

This volume is affectionately inscribed.”

– Mark Twain (from Innocents Abroad)

 

PSA: If your mother is alive and good to you: hug her, give her a call, treat her to whatever; do the most you can do to let her know you appreciate and love her. If your mother is gone, whether literally or she is emotionally or physically absent because she is abusive, addicted and using, mentally ill and untreated or whatever the case may be, thank her in your mind for giving birth to you, and treat yourself for staying strong in spite of your loss. Everyone is born from a mother, and everyone deserves today to celebrate.

From And They Said It Would Never Last by Curtis Sittenfeld

Meanwhile, in my head, I can still hear Sam’s voice. I think about the things I’d like to tell him, and I imagine what he’d say in reply. This isn’t the same as if we were having a real conversation.

(more…)

From “The Seals” by Lydia Davis (2)

“I could share her when she was alive. When she was alive, her presence was endless, time with her was endless, time was endless.

(more…)

From “The Seals” by Lydia Davis

“I did not go over for the funeral. I had good reasons, to me they seemed good, anyway, having to do with our old mother, and the shock of it, and how far away it was, across the ocean. Really, it had more to do with the strangers who would be at the funeral, and the tenderness of my own feelings, which I did not want to share with strangers.”

I’ve never faulted our parents for not attending Amanda’s viewing and memorial in Tucson. Months before the viewing, I had already bought them plane tickets to visit me on the east coast. They were to arrive just 14 days after the day of the viewing, 22 days after learning their oldest daughter had taken her own life.

Once I’d arrived back home, I began to plan the memorial. Because our parents stayed with me for months, we got to talking a lot during my planning. Our mom had no desire to attend the memorial. Our dad was entering year three of his serious depressive episode, the first twoish years of which plagued by paranoid delusions. I had taken over his care and he was still trying out new medication. It was jointly decided that they would go ahead of me to California to arrange the inurnment.

In large part our parents’ absence from the viewing had been the result of the unexpectedness of there even being a need for a viewing in the first place. Their absence from the memorial I helped form into plan and effectuate. So I have no objective reason for faulting them for not being in attendance. But I felt emotionally compelled to do so much right away, I also never understood why they could just seemingly so easily have stayed away.

And now, 13 months after the memorial/inurnment, 17 months after my sister’s death/the viewing, I’ve just stumbled across the passage above that provided me a view into the reason(s) why someone might choose to miss the funeral/memorial/viewing of a loved one. Reading has long been great to me, but occasionally it grants me a precious and rare treasure, and that is the gift of new emotional understanding. I’m incredibly grateful for unexpectedly gaining some perspective. I know this much: keep communicating and keep learning, we’ll all be the better for it.