The Hidden Person

I loved my mom, I still love my mom. She passed in September 2008 and not too long before she passed she shared the story of her life, a story I never knew. I knew my mom for 44 years and there was a part of her she kept hidden. A part that was so far down inside her that anyone who knew her would never have been able to guess.

Obviously, my mom faced a battle every day of her life since she was a child. The only thing I really knew of my mother was the face she allowed me to see every day. But there was so much more underneath. There was a place deep inside her where she pushed all of the bad things in her life, a place I didn't know existed until just before her death.

When I was young I was not very close to my mother, I though she wasn't interested in having a daughter. I believed that I only got in her way. I lived with my mother and my grandmother. My father was gone when I was one year old and never looked back. My grandmother was more like my mom and my mom more like my sister. I never knew there was so much more to that then I knew. I loved my mom but she wasn't around all that much. My mom spent all of her time away from the house and me.

As I got older she and I became much closer. My grandmother passed away and mom and I only had each other. My mother was eventually diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) due to a chemical accident. She eventually required a lung transplant. After this transplant, my mother was never really recovered. I guess she knew she was dying and she needed to clear her conscience.

She apologized to me. Yes, she really apologized to me, her daughter, for everything she had said and done during her life. She started with when she was young, I mean three years young. She said by the time she was five she had more sexual experience then an old woman. This was courtesy of her father. By the time she was 18 she married my father to get away from her abusive father. Of course, like I said, by the time I was one year old he was so busy with other women he forgot about me and mom.

My mother struggled with the demons of her childhood. I had no idea until she told me that her mother, my loving wonderful grandmother, was so domineering that she refused to allow my mother to care for me. My mother also told me that my grandmother had known what her father did to her when she was young and never did anything to stop it. What a struggle she must have gone through. My heart just went out to her.

This story that she told me, explained so much. It also changed my world. I understood what caused my mother to do the things she did, say the things she did, and behave the way she did. I loved my mother but now I really understood her.

If you take nothing away from this story, I want you to remember that what you see is not always what is really there. Everyone has a story, as story that makes them who they are. I guess ultimately what I am trying to say is...never judge a book by it's cover.

I miss you mom and I love you.