This is a true story about my mother whom I shall address as mom. It is also a story about me. This is a story of life, struggle, beauty, death, and hope. Hopefully it is a story that resonates with others, for I do not for a moment think that our experience was unique.
Mom was born in Washington, DC during the depression. Her mother passed away shortly after her birth, and her father, my grandfather was unable to care for the infant, so she was taken in by her aunt in Bethesda, Maryland. My great-aunt was married to a strapping Syrian immigrant who was working in the trades as a sheet metal mechanic. They worked and raised my mom for her first six years.
Mom had occasional visits from her dad, but he had his own issues which his sister knew all too well. When they and their two other brothers were young, they liked to play hide-and-go-seek. As has been related to me by mom and somewhat verified by other family members over the years, my great-grandfather was a practicing physician in the Maryland and Washington, D.C. area.
Life was good for the doctor’s family, but not so for the doctor. Unknown to him on a day that would transform futures of others beyond comprehension, his children were playing their favorite game at home. My great-grandfather came home, believed he was alone. I can imagine him walking slowly into the kitchen looking around, noting the artifacts of family and life.
He would notice the bric-a-brac of success on shelves and walls. Children’s toys and clutter would be seen. A scene that focused on the expanse of life in the early twentieth century would have been noted, reflected upon with sadness; maybe despair. He should have been optimistic: educated, professional, well-off; but he was despondent. The stock market had not crashed yet; the First World War was just beginning in Europe. America was bustling and vibrant, full of unbridled hope; yet he was removed from this milieu.
My great-uncles were tucked away in their favorite little hidey-hole waiting for their sister to come in from the backyard and find them. Their protective little fort under which they concealed themselves was in the kitchen. The kitchen table with its cloth gently pulled down an extra bit was the hide. They would be squirming and almost silently giggling among themselves waiting for their sister to come scampering in shouting “"All-y all-y in come free" after avoiding her search. Being the youngest, they probably assumed it would not take long.
With his sons hidden under the kitchen table, the doctor slowly, pensively entered the room. He had announced his homecoming but got no response. Believing that his wife and kids were out, he stepped over to the sink. Looking down into the porcelain he was reminded of the sterile areas of the hospital and the surgery. He lifted his gaze and let his mind wander out into the yard. It was warm, the flowers were in bloom, pale green foliage was filling the recently dormant trees…yet he didn’t see these wonders of spring. His view was dark, internal.
The doctor saw tiny undulating microbes coursing through his body. He pictured them breaking through cell walls and dividing into more little beasts as they consumed the nutrients his cells contained. He knew he was sick; new he contracted it from a patient. He also knew that unlike the children’s game there would be no "All-y all-y in come free" for him.
The doctor, their father, mom’s grandfather, my great-grandfather was lost in a world of anticipated pain and misery. He had been hiding from the family this internal torment. He knew what his prognosis was, and it would be painful, debilitating, and fatal. He pictured patients in the hospital that were mentally deranged from the devastation done to nerve tissue by the disease. He knew the misery; it was personal, up close and terrifying. His fort had been his knowledge.
That knowledge that allowed him to hide the uncomfortable for his family, allowed him to shield them from the horrors of poverty and strife as experienced in much of the world and the United States was now betraying him. His scientific medical knowledge and direct personal experience allowed him to see, hear, and smell the reality he was faced with. A cure was not to be had.
Life must have seemed cruel at that moment to my great grandfather the doctor. It is difficult to truly imagine the horror he was living or how his being came to decisions when his knowledge informed him that he had no choice but to suffer and die. I’m sure he must have felt guilt which added to his burden; guilt for not being able to protect and provide for his family for a natural lifespan; guilt for being so clumsy as to let himself get exposed to the known contagion. He stood in the knowledge of his fate foretold.
A quite hush filled the kitchen. Sunlight spilled through the window over the sink illuminating their father. The three boys had not heard their sister come into the kitchen, but they could clearly see their father standing at the sink looking out the window. Curiosity had them in its grip. Father had their rapt attention, wondering? What was father doing at the kitchen sink so long? The middle brother nudges the youngest causing a jerk as the spell is broke.
Hearing something off to the side, the doctor swung his gaze from the window over towards the kitchen table. Not seeing anything, he slowly turns back to the sink. With a steady hand, he reached into his jacket pocket and removed a small black leather case. With great purpose he laid it on the kitchen counter on the left side of the sink. His hand rested on it for a long moment, before he unclasped it and splayed it open. Sunlight flashed with metallic brilliance.
The flash of light caused the brothers to blink. They watched as their father slowly lifted his hand from the black case and then gripped the front of the sink with both hands tightly as he leaned over it and lowered his head while taking an impossibly deep breath. They watched, seemingly protected by their table and linen fort, as their father, the good doctor straightened up and then unbuttoned his collar. They were not sure what was going on. He reached into the black leather case and ceremoniously withdrew a bright silver instrument that he held between his left thumb and index finger with exaggerated purpose. He gazed at it for what seemed like time enough to run down the block and back…a long time for the brothers. The father’s eyes then looked out the window again. He leaned over the sterile-like white porcelain sink and brought the scalpel to his throat.
At that moment many lives were altered in ways none could predict. The image of spraying blood, gurgling and choking, and the final death rattle issuing from their fathers blood soaked, bluish-white face is an image that those three young boys took to their graves. That one moment of hide and seek brought to them the consequences of the desperate act to control ones destiny. Their father’s anguish ended, theirs began.
My grandfather like most kids did what they have to do and adjusted. He grew up without a father, blocked the images as best he could and tried to escape the pain of that witnessed moment of pure terror. He became a man, and had the gift of easy conversation. Tall and good looking, he entered the larger world of business and starting making a life for himself. His demons were quite, under the table.
He met a very attractive young lady from the Virginia tidewater. She grew up in a close and normal family in a small town surrounded by farm land, forests, rivers and the Chesapeake Bay. Fishing and farming were the main sources of income. Her father ran a small business. As she grew into womanhood, she developed an otherworldly visage. She reportedly told her younger sister that she was going to run away and marry this salesman from Washington, D.C. because she was in love and she knew she would not live for more than a year or so more.
The younger sister being made to promise to hold this secret wished her older sibling well and saw her walk down the dirt road towards the pike that was used to transport the crops and fish to market. As the story goes she met up with my great-grandfather down the road and they drove off to a Justice of the Peace who joined them in matrimony. The young couple, full of love and expectation, then drove the many hours up to Washington, D.C.
Theirs was the short life of newlyweds. The amorous moments of bliss led to pregnancy. The young woman was now to become my grandmother. My grandfather was a good provider, and life seemed normal.
Then the moment of birth came and my mother was born to this world. My grandmother though did not survive the stress of the birth and passed away as she had foretold to her younger sister. So here is my grandfather just losing his new wife while gaining a young daughter. His challenge was to deal with the grief, take care of a newborn infant, and continue to work to support his small family. Like most young men, he really had no idea on how to do these things. He was out of his depth, and the stress built.
One relief he found from the pain, stress, and uncertainty was in drink. As the alcohol killed the pain, the demons began to awaken. His sister who was not in the kitchen with him and her other two brothers was able to escape most of the gruesome horror of that day many years ago when their dad committed suicide. Fortunately for my mother, her aunt was involved in rearing her while my grandfather was at work. After seeing my grandfather start to come home drunk, she talked with her husband and they agreed that they needed to intercede to protect the baby.
Mom was raised by my great-aunt and great-uncle until she was in the second grade. At that point my grandfather convinced them that he was well enough to take over responsibility of raising her. So mom left Washington, D.C. and moved to the Baltimore, Maryland area. Grandfather had met another woman whom he had married and so mom joined the family.
My mother ended up having two younger siblings: a step-sister and step-brother. Unfortunately happiness was not a normal trait in the household. The demons had come back to haunt my grandfather. Alcohol was self-medicating, but it only unlocked the gates to his interior hell. Being a good man, he felt tremendous guilt for his inebriation. The combination of liquor, guilt and an unsettled ghost from his childhood conspired to allow his brain to alter chemical production and create unusual neural pathways which lead him down the road of bipolar disease and paranoid schizophrenia.
Mom was exposed to years of abusive maniacal behavior from her father. At one point when she was a teen, he was telling her and her sister that God was telling him they needed to get on their knees and wash his feet. Mom recounted this to me when I was older, but it brought tears to her then as she said it did at the time. My grandfather developed strong fundamentalist Christian ideations and they fed his insanity. Ultimately, the sickness became apparent to those outside of the nuclear family, and he was committed for a time.
My grandfather and his brothers were committed for mental illness which reportedly stemmed from the witnessed suicide that early spring day many years past. I was made aware of this history by mom around the time my grandfather passed away in 1970. That was my first funeral. My parents wanted me to accompany them to Baltimore for the funeral. It is my understanding that they wanted me to be able to say goodbye to my grandfather whom I had met and enjoyed on several occasions as a boy, and to also start dealing with the cycles of life. I was almost seventeen years old and had not much experience with death.
As a prelude to the funeral and as a postscript to it, mom discussed many things from her past about her dad. This is when I first heard about my other uncles and my great-grandfather. I knew my great-aunt, but did not know the family history. As time passed, it was like peeling an onion, deeper and deeper we went to the core and the stinging pain and tears welled up.
I learned of my mom finding work at AT&T to get out of the house to be away from the religious mania. She told me stories of her love of crabbing in the Chesapeake Bay. How she would spend hours on little rickety wooden piers dangling line with bits of leftover chicken to attract the delicious Maryland Blue Crab.
This latter led to stories of how she and my dad met. How he was such a good dancer and for a skinny kid was willing to stand up to the biggest bully. It turns out my dad was a good boxer and track star in high school.
As I’ve related in another post, they married, and I was the first of seven kids. We were now a Navy family which meant traveling across country many times and long separations when dad was deployed. On one such deployment my mom had to hide some pretty terrible stuff from us kids.
Her need to hide reality from us occurred in the late 1950’s. We lived in San Diego, California. It was after that period of time when the Navy jet fighter crashed in the small canyon next to my school playground that I witnessed. I remember my mom’s good friend who was also a Navy wife was over a lot and they talked, and were quiet when we kids were nearby. Something was amiss, but I was too young to pin it down. This went on for several days. Strange phone calls came, people dropped over, it was just unusual and disturbing.
Then one day, my mom and her friend who we called Aunt Trudy told us kids that dad was coming home sooner than normal. Turns out his ship was in a typhoon in the western Pacific. He and a bunch of other sailors were topside to watch the huge swells the ship was crashing into. A huge wave swept over the decks and washed my dad and another sailor over. My dad ended up in an anti-aircraft gun turret a deck or two below, but the other sailor was washed overboard.
The Man Overboard alert went out and the crew responded. One man, a young ensign fresh from the Naval Academy put a rope around himself and jumped into the raging waters in an attempt to swim to the struggling sailor. Unfortunately, the captain took over the deck and ordered a turn of the ship in the direction of the fallen sailor. This caused the ensign to be dragged under the ship and he was unable to free himself before he drowned.
It ended up that the sailor and the ensign died, but my dad survived with a gash and a broken arm. The good news was at first bad. Due to bureaucratic mistakes, the original report to the Pentagon and the Seventh Fleet Headquarters was that my father was the one who drowned. Mom was told, but she didn’t accept it. She got phone calls from strangers actually telling her that he should not have been on deck, it was his own fault. But mom told me later that something in her heart told her that dad was alive. She felt it, knew it.
Mom was strong and determined. She raised the seven of us much of the time on her own. No offense to my dad, but he was either on deployment or working a second job to provide for us. This created the normal conflicts that children have with parents as they start to get the hormone surges. My teen years were filled with feelings of abandonment and frustration. I was brighter than the average kid, but always being the new kid in school I ended up having to fight to keep the bullies off my back.
My parents taught me to stand up for what I believed in but not to start fights. Because of their mutual bad experiences with organized religion they both were agnostic and purposely decided not to take us to church. They wanted us to make rational decisions once we were old enough to be asking the right questions and could tell fact from fantasy.
Growing to maturity in the late sixties had to have been a frustrating time for my parents. They were both conservative to begin with, but my mother started questioning when a family friend who was also our family doctor tried to get her involved in the John Birch Society in San Diego. That opened her eyes and reminded her of the fanatical beliefs of her father.
I remember when Kennedy was shot she cried. She was also proud to say that she was going to vote for Robert F. Kennedy in 1968. That was a very hard year for my parents and me. The world was upside down. The nightly news included scenes of butchery and death in Viet Nam. Walter Cronkite had America questioning our purpose in the war. We then saw Martin Luther King, Jr. shot down at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. The resulting riots were an expression of pent up rage and a wakeup call to America. We saw RFK assassinated in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. We saw the riots by the Chicago police at the Democratic National Convention.
This was an interesting and tough time to be a parent with teenage precocious kids. My parents had to navigate the waters filled with contradictory currents. Drugs, sex, left-wing politics, right-wing extremism, racial discord, religious intolerance, and many more forces were tugging at us. Being good parents, they did not want to stifle us, but at the same time they tried to mold us in a positive way. I will admit to being head strong and too sure of myself in my later teen years.
But right in the middle of my teens I had a break from my parents. Mom, dad, forgive me for that knuckle-headed adventure. I took a sabbatical from the family unit the summer of 1969 without permission. I hiked and hitchhiked from Manassas, Virginia and ended up in Enid, Oklahoma. I witnessed man’s first steps on dirt somewhere other than earth. Apollo 11 on the moon was awesome. By the time I was through being a wild kid, I had earned enough money to get myself home with a suitcase of clothes after having left with just the clothes on my back. I had lost my virginity, been shot at twice, committed no crimes other than drinking underage and running away. And I got home to the farm in northern Virginia in time for my junior year of high school to discover my parents had sold the farm and moved to Maryland.
I got home by the goodness of one of our old neighbors who called my mom and told him I was there. Dad was in Norfolk on Navy business so I didn’t see him for another two days. My mom asked why I didn’t call and ask for help in getting home, and I simply said I couldn’t do that. I left on my own; I would come home on my own.
After that my parents and I talked more than we had in years. My appreciation and guilt grew, but they accepted me back with love and understanding. I was juvenile and emotionally immature enough to not really have considered what hell I put them through with that stunt.
Nevertheless, we survived that and then the tumultuous years of anti-Viet Nam War movements, high school graduation, working, getting real drunk on Christmas Eve though not driving; still nothing illegal or bad…though my politics started sharpening a bit.
I became involved in a group that was trying to get a stronger student voice in public education. I ended up being the Prince Georges’ County Coordinator for the Maryland Student’s Alliance (if memory serves me correctly…it was 1970). That little endeavor almost resulted in my being expelled from high school in PG County, but the PG County Public Schools Superintendent had a meeting with me in Upper Marlboro. After I explained why I was at Suitland High School during afternoon school hours organizing students and recruiting for our organization he understood we were not a bunch of radicals trying to burn down the schools. We actually had teamed up with the state Democratic Party and were attempting to get students in High School a voice in their education.
My parents could only shake their head at their son once again. How many boats could I rock? The irony was that at the time I was living in a basement apartment of family friends since my parents moved to the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I lobbied to stay in Lanham to finish out my junior and senior year. I also had met and was madly in love with this wonderful girl who had moved to Maryland from Bermuda. The PG County School Superintendent had been asked by my school’s assistant vice principal to not allow me back since my parents no longer resided in the district.
That vice principal and I had some history at Duval High School from which I did graduate. I was part of the group who convinced the Student Government Association to dissolve itself using parliamentary procedure. We then formed a student government constitutional convention to create a new Student Government Association. I was elected chairman of the convention and earned the dislike of a certain vice principal. I will for the record state that the principal had principles and held no vendetta towards me. I was also vocal on civil rights issues and was involved in a school sit-in for a day in my junior year to get Black Studies brought in. The principal agreed, and in my senior year we had a Black Studies course that I was privileged to take. In addition to that I was a columnist on the student newspaper and had a basically left wing bias and routinely took on the administration on issues of governance and academic freedom.
So my parents are called and questioned about my attendance in a county in which they no longer reside. My parents pointed out that they still owned the house in Lanham, so property taxes were being paid. They also pointed out that in essence I was an emancipated minor living with friends (father of family was a West Point grad, and CIA officer; great people.) I was so proud of my mom and dad; especially my dad, because at the time he was a staunch Richard M. Nixon Republican. They taught me to stand up for what I believed in. Now they were supporting me in that effort.
I wish I could remember the Superintendent’s name, because he was a gracious and level headed gentleman. He made the decision that legally I was entitled to attend school in PG County, and he exacted a small concession on my part. If I promised to no longer organize on other school premises during school hours, he would forgive the event at Suitland High School. I felt that he was being honorable, and I really didn’t want to leave all my friends so I agreed.
Fast forward ten years: I’ve dropped out of the University of Maryland because of a broken heart. Yes, my love from Bermuda left me for a mutual friend who was a U of MD senior. I’m out of the Navy, and now working in law enforcement and finishing my college work at Roanoke College. I’m married to an ICU Nurse Shift Supervisor and living in a nice little ranch house with four cats.
I had become closer to my parents in the intervening years and much was learned both ways. We all really liked and respected each other. Life was good. I was doing very well in school. I was in my senior year, and had plans to go to law school. Had already taken the LSATs and scored in the top 94 percentile. But life has a way of shifting under our feet causing us to lose our footing and falling down while trying to hold on to all that is normal.
Mom went in for some medical tests. I really had not heard much about her not feeling well, but that evening I found myself in her hospital room with my wife Mary (now ex), dad, and several of my sisters. I hated hospitals. My aversion to them was almost pathological. I don’t know what the cause was, but the fear was almost debilitating.
So there we all were, sitting about the sterile, plastic room, feeling uncomfortable while trying to converse in a normal fashion. The laughter was forced. The tension was palpable. We played cards while waiting for the doctor. Mary and I had played bridge with my parents for many years and it was a real passion for all of us.
Then the Doctor arrived. Dr. Burch was a Neurologist and a friend. He and Mary were colleagues as many of his patients were in ICU at times. He asked if we would step out so that he could talk to mom and dad. Mom said that she wanted us all to stay.
Then Dr. Burch showed real emotion as he broached the subject of the tests with us. Mom had ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s disease. The silence was nudged by quite sniffs, shifting in chairs, deep breaths.
What did it mean?
He continued, “Mrs. Galvin, may I call you Jean? – Jean, the prognosis is not good. I wanted to run a collaborative battery of tests to confirm what I suspected originally, and I am now certain that the diagnosis is correct. I would encourage you to get a second opinion, if you wish.”
“What is the prognosis?”
“The disease is a debilitating one,” said Dr. Burch. “It affects the nerve connections to the muscles. Typically it will start at the feet and work up. In your case, it is more pronounced in your hands and arms. It will affect your speech, giving the appearance of drunkenness.”
Mom said, “I told you I was not getting drunk!”
Dr. Birch continued, “The loss of motor control to the facial muscles can be confused for intoxication. You will note an increase difficulty swallowing as you have already complained about. Choking on food could become a real problem. Now when it comes to that point, we have options. We can use feeding tubes and other methods to make sure you are nourished.”
“Is this going to kill me,” mom asked?
“As I said, the prognosis is not good. The disease is incurable, and it is terminal,” said Burch.
“How long do I have?”
“That is hard to say. Some patients with symptoms as advanced as yours have lived a year.”
“Please give me your honest opinion,” mom asked?
“I think we’re looking at six months, but that is a guess. I just cannot be sure. There are too many other factors which will have a bearing on it.”
“How will I die?”
Dr. Burch choked up a bit then continued, “I don’t want to sound like I am denying you any hope. There is always a place for hope. There is much research being undertaken. Truthfully, I don’t think it is reasonable to expect any breakthroughs in time for you, but I could be wrong.”
My mom looked at him long and then he continued, “Typically as the disease progresses, muscle tissue dies from the lack of use. The nerves are not sending messages to them, so they do not contract and relax. They atrophy. Eventually this process will affect the diaphragm. With the diaphragm not working one cannot breathe without mechanical assistance.”
“No tubes! No machines! You have got to promise me that you will not let me die in a hospital plugged into a machine!”
“No, I do not see any reason for that, “said Dr. Burch. “ There is no realistic hope for recovery. There may be a time where I would recommend a tracheotomy with respiratory care to keep you comfortable. You need to realize that as your breathing becomes compromised by a weakened diaphragm and throat you will likely suffer an increase in cold symptoms that can be dangerous. A buildup of mucus can be life threatening.
Looking around at my dad, me, and Mary, mom says, “no tubes…please.” She had tears in her eyes. My heart was broken.
Dr. Burch said, “Putting you on a ventilator would just be postponing the inevitable without any chance of improvement on quality of life. As a matter-of-fact, if you go on a ventilator you in all probability will never come off of it.”
The doctor continued, “Eventually your diaphragm will become weakened and breathing will become harder and harder until you die from respiratory arrest.”
“Will that be painful?”
“We can do a lot to make you comfortable. That should be the key to your treatment. We want you to be comfortable and get the most that you can out of life before you become an invalid,” said Burch.
He added, “One thing, this disease does not affect the mind. You will be alert, aware.”
“Can I still have my martinis?”
With a wry chuckle Dr. Burch said, “You can have all the martinis you want.”
We were all attentively following this conversation, holding onto mom’s hand, touching her shoulder, tears in our eyes. I looked over at Dr. Birch and said thank you.
Dr. Burch was now crying and apologized. “I’m blessed to be part of this with you. You are so strong and the family is so close and supportive. I’m not usually emotional, I hope you will understand.”
We all felt like Dr. Burch had become a part of our family. Mary’s professional ties and to a lesser degree my social relationship with Dr. Burch were now exceeded by his raw humanity and the bond that was formed between all of us. That man has my never ending respect.
Thus began my personal journey into the reality of death. Three years and one month later, mom died in her bed at home. One of her biggest fears was becoming invalid and being virtually helpless. This did not happen until the last four days.
We were all with her for the last four days around the clock. She tried to talk with each of us, as difficult as that was for her. Her speech was so affected that understanding was at times almost impossible. It was a time that seemed to be beyond the border of life. Time was transparent. Outside considerations did not exist. It was hard, painful.
Mom looked up at me the day before she passed away. She had a faraway look in her eyes. “is that him?” she asked.
“It’s me mom, Mike.”
“I know who you are,” she said much more understandably than she had been able to in quite a while, “but I see a light, and I want to know if that’s him.”
“Who, mom?”
“God. I see God…”
She then settled down with a quite smile. It struck me as odd, because I thought at this point mom and dad were atheists. I myself was quite unsure about the whole question.
That night Mary and another family member stayed in the room right next to mom awake all night checking on her. It was a long, somber night. We siblings took turns as did dad. Mary hung in there all night long into the next day without sleep.
The next day, Mary had to go to the hospital to get an Leave of Absence form filled out. The rest of us were at mom and dad’s house as he had been for the past four days. Mom was having trouble breathing, but still hanging in there. She was never alone. I really do not think she was experiencing any physical pain.
Mary returned from the hospital and was eating a fresh tomato sandwich (mom and dad had the best tomato vines growing old style flavorful beauties.) Most of us were playing Trivial Pursuit or watching TV in the living room next to mom’s room which actually used to be the dining room. Mom’s step-sister Anita was with my sister Kim at mom’s bedside sitting with her.
Kim said that mom gasped and rolled her eyes up at which point she screamed, “Mary, something’s wrong!” Mary and the rest of us rushed the fifteen to twenty feet into her. Mary checked her pulse, and she still had a weak one. Her breathing was very shallow and irregular. She was totally comatose. Mary asked for her stethoscope, and we all began to take turns sitting on the bed with mom, kissing her, talking to her, expressing our love.
We all had our moment when there was that last breath, shallow, raspy. I held her and cried. “I love you, mom.”
Mary checked her vital signs again. She listened for a heartbeat with her stethoscope. She looked up at us and said mom had just died.
Afterwards, we are all numb. The funeral home comes to collect her body for cremation as mom wanted. In the end, something very unreal happened as we stepped out onto the front porch as they wheeled the body to the Hearse. The sun was shining, cars were passing, and some children were playing in a yard down the street. The crisp autumn air was full of life. It just did not seem right at the time. I was out of synchronization with the world.
I’ve had grandparents die, acquaintances both as a child and as an adult die, and Elsie, who was my landlady when I rented a room from her and her husband. We were pretty close. But I experienced nothing like the death of my Mother.
My mother and I had some real conflicts, though on the surface we appeared close. There was an intimacy there, but there was also resentment and guilt which cut both ways.
I don’t think that we ever totally resolved those hurts. I have tried to forgive her in my mind and heart as I asked her forgiveness, but at times I have to admit to feeling bitter. For when we were going through this with her, she became very controlling. She became demanding and controlling. I wondered how she felt at the end, felt about me?
Death leaves so much undone, unsaid, untidy. Now my albatross is the ghost of my mother haunting me. Not that I mean in a supernatural way, but my memory of her. My memory of childhood hurts that have not healed. Can the living heal themselves?
So I embark on this intellectual journey knowing full well that I bring with me baggage bursting at the seams with unresolved emotion. I do not expect a cathartic experience. I just feel uncomfortably aware of the proximity of death and the fear that it holds in my heart. My own mortality and that of my father and wife seem so tangible. I am full of dread. I seek understanding within myself of this mystery, or at least acceptance.
Postscript:
I can now say that I know mom and I love each other and we have both accepted our mutual short sightedness, mistakes, and silence. We have been forgiven by each other, and more importantly we have forgiven ourselves.
by Michael Galvin
Copyright 2011- All Rights Reserved
