I Know now. I never saw it before, but I see it now. The fact is I am very much like her,( we react the same way to stress.) I have a peculiar insight into her mind. It only makes sense that our relationship for many years was one of adversity. I never gave her a chance really ,never tried to see things from her perspective. The pain and hurt from her actions were too close too new, even though it had been 20 years. Pain demands to be felt and seems to compound until it is. When not given the space and time for expression it festers, like a septic infection of the soul.
I spent years rehashing and “working” on this with different therapist and counselor. This did give me an intellectual understanding of what I had experienced, and survived but never allowed for the space and the time to feel the hurt that was locked up inside with this scared child. I did not even know it existed.
Years later I have been confronted with her death and it all changed. Although there was and still is a lot of pain from my past, it was not until she passed that I realized (and could drop my defenses) there was a lot of love and caring as well. She (my mother) was a hard woman, who did not really know how to express love. I being young took this poor example and integrated it into my psyche. With this poor idea of love, I existed under the incorrect perception that she just did not love. Instead of the truth she did not know how to show it well. There was little to no forgiveness in my heart for this woman who had spent seventeen years of her life taking care of, and loving me the only way she knew how.
Now She has passed and I am left with a cacophony of emotion. Love, hate, forgiveness, justification, and understanding all vortex through my core. I see now how this mistaken perception of love has tainted everything in my life. I see now the healing that needed to take place. This pain that has demanded to be felt for the last 30 years, is now so close to the surface of my life that it can no longer be ignored. I am here and now, I have to face it, walk with it, feel it, and learn to love it. I know that it will not lessen until I do.
The problem with shiny is that it’s usually sharp. When I was a young boy around Christmas I became enamored with one of the glass ornaments on the tree. It was one of those thin glass red foiled ones. I ran up and grabbed it off the tree and in my excitement, and, zeal of the moment I grasped it very tightly. The sound was really what I remember most like thin ice cracking on a lake with that high pitch “Tink” sound. The next thing I noticed was the blood, pain, and, the shattered ornament in my hand. I have the scar to this day. It cut me deep in the fleshy part of my hand. The significance of the lesson was lost on me at that young age.