ways that mattered. You just checked out and left me to raise myself, to take care of myself. And to take care of you. I was a child! I’d lost everything and I couldn’t even grieve. I didn’t have time to. I had to go to school and cook and grocery shop and clean and take care of you. I didn’t have the luxury of giving up.”
I can see my mother’s chest rising and falling rapidly. The room is silent but for the muted pant of her breathing, no one else daring enough to interrupt our emotional face-off. Mother and daughter, we simply stare at one another until she breaks the taut stillness.
“And now you’ve brought me here to get back at me. Is that it?”
My mouth drops open. “Is that what you think of me? That I would subject you to this horror just to get revenge? After all these years?”
“Then whyyy?” she wails pitifully, rocking faster, bouncing off the cushion like she’s propelled, only to slam back against it, over and over and over.
Suddenly, as though someone has opened up an invisible cavern beneath my feet to sap it silently from my body, my small store of energy dissipates, leaving me to waver on legs made of warm rubber. Before I can fold, however, my sturdier half, my better half materializes behind me.
Nate.
He is never far.
Long fingers wrap gently around my upper arms, providing me with much-needed support. I feel the hot solidity of my husband’s broad, muscular chest at my back and, for just a moment, I lean into him. As always, he’s my rock, my ever-present rock in my time of need.
When he starts to bend, I know to sweep me off my feet and carry me to calmer waters, I stop him by turning to place our daughter into his strong, capable arms. I meet his eyes, my determined brown colliding with his worried green, and nod before I pivot.
When I face my mother, I see the woman who gave up on life when I needed her most. I see the woman who let me care for her when my world had fallen apart. I see the woman who couldn’t find the strength to pick herself up for the daughter who begged her to. She’s still that woman. She’ll always be that woman.
Although the anger is still there, the resentment, the hurt as well, I feel more of something else today. Today I feel pity. For the first time in my life, I look at Patricia Holmes, and I see the broken woman that she is. I see someone who simply wasn’t strong enough to weather the horrific agony that comes with having lost not one, but two loved ones to cancer. I see a woman who was knocked to her knees and couldn’t find it in herself to get back up.
She’s made bad choices, she’s been weak when she needed to be strong, she gave up when she should’ve fought back—yes, she did all of those things. But this woman is my mother. For better or for worse, she’s my mother and although she’s not asking for it, I have the opportunity to forgive her.
And I likely won’t get another chance.
I’ve done right by my mother. I’ve ensured that she’s had the best care, I’ve visited her monthly, I’ve done the best I could for her, but it’s always been out of obligation. I’ve never felt free to love her again. I was hurt, betrayed, and I was happy to hide behind the wall I built to shut her out. But the words of the priest I met in Rome resonate in my head, through my heart, showing me what I have to say, what I have to do.
He would never allow tragedy without purpose, never give a gift without a plan. He will guide you in it if you but ask Him. He waits for you to bring this to Him. Give Him your sickness. Give Him your child. Give Him your choices, and He will make your way straight.”
The tragedy in my life has brought me here, to this moment. I’m dying, but I have so much to be thankful for. I don’t have room in my life, no time for this kind of blackness anymore. There is only time for love.
Love and forgiveness.
Drawing from the love I have for my own child, the infinite capacity she gives me to pardon the sins of others, I move slowly across the room to