An Apology to my Mom — Too Late. I’ve realized now that I was a bad…
By: Melissa Oltman
Tags: Love, Daughters, Relationships, Mothers, Family

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I’ve realized now that I was a bad daughter to my mom — and it’s too late for me to do anything about it. She died in 2001. I was there at her bedside — both my daughter and I. She died peacefully and I believe I followed what her wishes would have been, could she have articulated them. My shortcomings were in the things I expected of her throughout our life together. She could not meet them, of course. And I could not forgive her for that.

My birth was a big surprise to my parents. My mom was 36, and had had an ectopic pregnancy and lost a Fallopian tube before then. My dad was 39. The odds were against me being born and yet there I was, arriving two months early, on Father’s Day in June, instead of on my father’s birthday in August as planned. Family lore is that I was so small, I wasn’t expected to live. But of course, I did.

I remember very little of my early childhood. I know that both my parents were alcoholics, and fought horrendously. I had a very foggy memory of my father coming home, my mother being in bed while I was in the living room playing, and him dragging her violently out of bed for leaving me alone. We moved from Chicago to Iowa, where my father’s family lived, and shortly after that, my mother left.

I learned later that my father told her to leave, and told her that she could not take me. I’m told that he threatened her, and told her that I would be better off if she left me alone and let me forget her. The only thing I remember is the day she left. She awakened me wearing her coat, and crying, saying she was leaving. I cried as well, and went to get the pot holder I had crocheted for her in Brownies, thinking that would entice her to stay.

But she left, and I remember sitting on my dad’s lap, shell shocked, sick to my stomach, not understanding how she could leave. I was seven years old, and my brain responded by slamming an iron door shut on every memory before that day.

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To be abandoned is a f*cked up thing, but this story is about her.

I did not hear a word from her for ten long years, and with the whole brain shutting down my memories thing (called “dissociation”, I learn now), I couldn’t remember what she looked like. We never spoke of her, and sometimes I would see red-haired women and wonder if that was her. My stepmother hated my guts — honest. That’s a whole ‘nother story.

I kept in touch with my godparents in Chicago, and the year I was seventeen, for whatever reason, I’ll never know, in my Christmas letter I said something like, “If you see my mom, tell her ‘hi’.” Within a week, I got a letter back from my mom, a long one, saying that she had been waiting all those years for me to express a desire to have contact with her.

I think about that now — how in God’s name did she ever not jump off a bridge? Pushed out of her house by a violent husband, separated from her child, and forbidden to contact her? I wouldn’t have made it. She had no family in the United States, no nothing. She went back to Chicago and somehow started working and putting a life together. She met a very wonderful man and eventually married him, my Poppi. He knew all about me, and I think he stood beside her in her pain.

I went to see her over spring break. I had no memory of her, no sense of connection with her, but dear God, I wanted to. To me, she seemed fancy and beautiful and elegant. And I was trying to be whatever I thought she would want me to be — without really knowing what that was.

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We tried so hard to be mother and daughter.

We needed each other so badly, and neither one of us had any clue how to be what the other one needed. We had 23 years together. I had no idea what a mother was supposed to be, truly. But with her alcoholism and her learned independence, she was more Mae West than June Cleaver. And with my disastrous attempts at marriage and family life, she could not understand why I didn’t get my sh*t together, me being brilliant and all.

My daughter, her granddaughter, was the love and the redemption of her life, and she quickly decided that Britt was a better investment than I was. She took her to Italy one summer, and bought her a Mustang convertible after I had told Britt it wasn’t practical. My boys, she loved, but always from a wary distance, as if she didn’t know if they would explode or malfunction or pee on something.

She was so cool, and she was so brave, and I couldn’t see that, because I was too hung up on how she wasn’t like the small town mothers and grandmothers around me, my only role models. I couldn’t understand why she moved to Florida after her husband died — just bought a car, packed up, and bought a house where she knew no one because she’d always wanted to.

And she had a blast in Florida. She joined the Elks, becoming the first female in the fraternal organization there because, come on guys, this is 2000! She started dating and told me she had bought little teddies at way past seventy years of age! She got an OWI, and the story of her time in “the slammer” as she called it was, in retrospect, hysterical.

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And then she died.

Actually, she got drunk, fell, and broke her hip. She laid there for two days until she was found, and then I flew there while she had surgery. I found the best skilled nursing place I could for her to get rehab and stayed while she got settled in. We actually got along great then and really enjoyed each other. Maybe because I was showing the appropriate filial loyalty for her, and maybe because I could finally be in charge of her, for me.

She did great, but when she went home, she did not follow through with her therapy, got pneumonia, and ended up with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and respiratory failure. They put her on a ventilator and said she would likely never come off of it. Her granddaughter and I were the ones who made the decision to withdraw the ventilator, and who sat with her while she breathed her last breaths.

I think about her a lot now. She was also a writer — it’s where both I and her granddaughter get our native abilities. She had a travel column for the Chicago Tribune. She would be so proud of my daughter now — for her strength and her resilience.

I wish I would have told her that I was sorry for the pain she experienced when she had to live without her child, and that I didn’t blame her for leaving. I wish I would have let her know how funny I thought she was, and how smart, and how much I admired her courage and her pluck. I accept as my due the fact that my kids don’t see me as me either, but as their Mother-with-a-capital-M, and all the places that I don’t meet their criteria. It’s my karma for doing the same to her.

I’m sorry, Mom. I wish I would have loved you better.