Dear Mom,
As I wrote in my previous letter, I had a six-hour conversation with you last week, and yeah, too bad you died five years ago.
You “talked” to me via 117 pop-up notes affixed to pages in the book Without A Doubt, by Maria Clark, the prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson murder trial. I read each note several times, even inputting them into my computer:
Most of these pop-up notes revealed a savvy, clever and quirky woman; albeit, one with a palpable mean streak. Two notes, however, instantaneously exhumed my deep-rooted anger — perhaps even rage — toward you for abandoning your role as my mother:
These two notes are your reactions to the courtroom shenanigans regarding Detective Fuhrman’s use of N-word. You aren’t screaming at Fuhrman but at “Flea” [your nickname] Bailey’s cross examination of Fuhrman. However, that is all beside the point. When I saw the verb, “scream,” I instantly remembered the only thing you said the morning of Karen’s (your daughter and my sister) funeral.
Stone-faced and wearing a starched white shirt as stiff as your posture, you said nothing to anyone during the service. I get it. You were understandably grieving the death of a daughter who had suffered for decades with the complications of multiple sclerosis during which you had done little for her. Afterwards in the funeral home parking lot as you were getting into your car, I asked how you were doing. You responded, “I feel like shrieking,” and shut the passenger car door in my face. I pulled out a piece of scrap paper from my purse and wrote down your words.
“Shrieking,” “screaming” — wish either one had been my response when you shut the passenger car door in my face on March 16, 2001. But there had been other times . . . .
Let’s look back to that weekday in early August 1970 when you proclaimed at the dinner table that “deep thoughts will get you nowhere” in response to a car accident involving my close poet friend, Joy, which left her in critical condition. “Better be careful then you drive,” you said across the table, your eyes raking my face.
Or your response when I asked you on February 20, 1986 what piece of wisdom you never wanted me to forget: “Your dreams don’t come true,” you replied.
What about on February 17, 1989 when I met Eunice, the person who had lived next door to you and Dad for six years at Sherwood Forest Trailer Park in Kissimmee, Florida? She saw me walk by and asked who I was. I told her that I was your daughter, and she responded: “Dollie and Andy have kids? Who knew? They’ve never said anything about having kids.”
How about this pronouncement you made to me on January 25, 1993 (Karen’s 38th birthday)? In an alarmingly nonchalant tone, you declared, “With you, I didn’t get the daughter I wanted, but the daughter I deserved.”
I neither shrieked nor screamed back then, but inspired by you, I guess I am now. Do I feel better? Kind of. There’s some sort of strange justice in using your words to express the trauma you engendered in me; trauma that continues to pop up when I least expect it.
Still, these are your words, and not mine. I have at least 550,000 of my own; words in excerpts that I painstakingly inputted from journals and diaries; words about me; words that reveal a savvy, clever and quirky woman who, at times, can be one mean motherfucker.
One last thing, Mom — don’t worry, letters such as these are not the stuff of memoir. Memoir is not, according to Beth Kephart in Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, “an accusation, a retaliation, a big take that! in type.” Neither is memoir, “a false allegiance to the idea that a life, any life [like mine] can be perfectly lived or faultlessly explained.”
Still it’s a bitch to look back, but look back I must.
In The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr writes, “For the more haunted among us, only looking back at the past can permit it finally to become past.” In that spirit, Mom, I’m closing Without A Doubt and putting it back on the shelf. You will never see this shelf. You will never see my art collection. You will never be inside my home. You will never know me. You will never know how my silent scribbling is redeeming my godawful mess of a life.
But, that’s okay. I will continue to diligently sculpt away to write my story. Whatever form or shape it ends up taking, it will be a story of heartbreak, sorrow and resilience.
It will be beautiful.
Love, Sharon
I began therapy to deal with my “maternal pop-ups” nearly 50 years ago when I was a senior at Gordon College, an evangelical institution in Wenham, MA. The Dean of Students suggested I begin therapy when I bravely shared with her my confusing struggle with my sexual identity, which if acted upon, would be cause for expulsion. Unbeknownst to me at the time, she paid for this therapy.
Scores of other angels and Good Samaritans have tirelessly supported me in my lifelong flailing about, most without a syllable of judgment. I am fortunate.
Over the decades, I have invested tens of thousands of dollars in therapy which may be the reason why I’ve never had the funds to move out of the small and now crowded 840-square-foot art storage facility that I’ve lived in for 33 years. I remember saying to a friend that I would most likely be living in a mansion if I hadn’t had to spend so much money on therapy. She replied, sarcastically, “What?! Oh, that would be quite the life. You’d be crazy as a loon, but at least living in a mansion.” Good point.
Today, I remain on anti-depressants and meet with a psychiatrist every other week (another angel though he most likely would prefer a less religious and sentimental term).
My surviving sisters have struggled with their own mental health, coping with depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety and panic attacks. One of these sisters has also been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, though you’d never know it from her unflagging spirit.
It continues to be a long haul.
These pop-up posts haven’t been easy to write, and, as I shared yesterday, they initially took the form of a dialogue which was not working. Here’s the beginning:
SJA: Hey, Mom, you there? It’s Sharie, your second oldest or “number two,” as you and Dad always referred to me.
MOM: Sharie?! How did you find me? I thought I was where no one would find me. Wait . . . how is it that I even heard your voice?
SJA: Whoa . . . I honestly wasn’t expecting you to respond. Guess you still prefer to sit in silence which could be why you heard me. Anyhoo, just wanted you to know that you talked to me for about six hours yesterday even though you died five years ago.
MOM: What are you talking about?! I’ve been dead for five years, and I don’t ever remember talking that long with anybody while I was alive – not even Daddy – and certainly not you and certainly not now. That’s not to say that people don’t try to talk to me. They do, but I prefer just to be quiet and listen.
SJA: Who are you listening to now? Your brother? Father? Mother? Karen? Jackie Kennedy? Princess Di? You have nothing to say back to them?
The dialogue then veered between sentimental pablum and razor-edged accusations. Wasn’t pretty. I stopped after 1,000 words.
My father, of course, is complicit. He is still in hospice, and he is still dying. When I was a kid, he would, on weekends, often escape for hours into the woods behind my mother’s home. We had no idea what he was doing or thinking.
He’s still escaping.
My sister, Dawna, just sent this text to me and gave me permission to post it here:
“It will be beautiful “— no it IS beautiful!! Your writings are a painstakingly healing process that you created for yourself. Each word is a vibrational release of emotions. Ever so slow or ever so fast the turning of the combination will open up that door to free you at last. Thank you for posting. Love you 🥰
I am intimidated by your persistence, courage, honesty and vulnerability. I need to ponder your revelations. It is almost too painful to read let alone to live. I just want you to know I don’t particularly have wisdom–and I do have love–which I give you.
Yes, Charlotte, and you give it unconditionally over and over again. You were brave to take on this post. There’s no space to breathe in it, is there?
While writing it, I felt like I needed some comic relief like a clown suddenly appearing and spraying my face with seltzer water every time I wrote the word, “Mom,” or “scream” or “shriek.” Or perhaps inserting a cartoon in the middle of this for a breather. I’m still figuring out how to make this light-hearted or more lyrical or more metaphorical. Or more empathic toward my mother. She was silenced before I was born . . . what’s the most honest and compassionate way to honor that without diminishing how much she silenced me?
This is hard.
To me, the saddest thing in this post is your mother’s wisdom to you being, “Your dreams don’t come true.” What a crushing thing to tell your child! I guess that ties in with your saying, “She was silenced before I was born.” I have to believe she had dreams for herself that ended — at marriage? at having children? I wish she’d been the kind of person who would sit and talk to you about the dreams she’d had for herself.
Wendy, I believe my mother’s dreams ended a few years after the marriage AND once her children began to think for themselves. In my case, I also spoke up for myself — I individuated — an alarming development for a mother who so desperately wanted her children to be a reflection of her. That was her dream, her only dream, I believe.
To be unseen and unloved…so loudly! So difficult to read or even imagine! And how difficult now to make work of “stilling” those loud voices that have echoed through your life. I think you know we are all here to help, in any way we can, to “soften” those shrieks and barks and also those ugly silences and rejections of who you were/are, in hopes that, as Mary Karr says, your “looking back at the past can permit it finally to become past.” Yes, as you look at that past, you are screaming now, and yes, we are all listening—witnesses to what you lived through.
Thank you for enduring this post, and thank you for the reminder that I need to “still” these loud voices mostly for my own well being. You’ve been there in so many ways to “soften” these strikes and barks (btw, do you ever yell? I can’t imagine it), and you help to fill the ugly silences with the voice of Jesus and God. Actually, where would I be without them? Or you?
What Carol said. I am here and I am listening.
I found this post difficult to read, not only because of the content, for I had heard the stories before, but because it was written in the old Sharon voice. Your first post had a different voice, a different tone and was more conversational. The second post is angry (and you certainly deserve your anger) which makes it harder to follow the story.
Your writer’s voice has evolved beyond pure anger. It is more curious and compassionate. I wonder if spending too much time with your Mother’s words pulls you back into it. The struggle is real and I am sorry that this is the life you have to write. But, this I hope is true:
Mary Karr says, your “looking back at the past can permit it finally to become past.”
Beth, I wanted to acknowledge that I read your comment and am sitting on it for a bit. Thank you for posting it.
I may not have said it well. Your old voice embodied more of the wounded child and your new voice is more kick-ass Wonder Woman. You survived that horror! Hope that is clearer.
Got it, dear Beth. Still sitting with it.🙏💕