A relationship to a parent can be complicated.
On the one hand it can be a place of refuge and comfort. But on the other, it can also be genuinely heavy and infuriating at times. My Mother was all of these things - and many things in between. I wish she could have been a happier, kinder person (there was often a lot to be happy about all told). But I also know that she had a very hard time fitting in with others and I can deeply relate to that. I wish she had been more optimistic, but I also know she dealt with a lot of constant physical pain later in life. I wish she had opened her heart to more people and let more of the world in general into her life but, she also often told me that she “didn’t like people all that much”. Depending on the day, I can relate to this too.
She was human, she was complicated. Just like her youngest son. Just like all of us I suppose.
There are parts of her I see in me that I really hate. And yet, there are parts of me that are so intrinsically “me”, parts that I am so grateful for. Parts that I love. That I don’t know who I’d be without them. I regret that I never got around to explicitly tell you that, though I tried to live my life while you were here in such a way that you might’ve seen it. Hopefully you did at any rate.
The grand irony is that the one time in the last decade that she told me that she “had felt the best I have felt in years”, she was gone 6 hours later. I’m grateful that my last conversation with her was a good one, that it was sunny that day, that it was warm and that you sounded happy, optimistic even.
RIP Mom.
(About the pictures. I’ve always been told that I look a lot like my father but, these pictures were taken at roughly the same time in our lives and I’ve always loved how similar we look here.)