For the First Time in 10 years, I spoke with my Mother today…

The TL;DR

Apologies for not writing since the beginning of the year. It’s been crazy with all that’s going on between work and life.

For the first time in almost 10 years, I saw my mother. I haven’t really talked about it to many people, but she has not been doing well. That’s not really the point of this blog, but it’s an essential piece of context in my estimation. You see, my mother and I had a falling out of sorts a long time ago and we just kind of fell out of touch. We lived in the same town, not far from each other, but we never really spoke. It wasn’t really a bitter thing, but just two people that were probably a bit hard headed, a bit too proud, and a lot of too busy. That all kind of changed a couple of months ago.

I got a call from a cousin of mine around the New Year that my mother was sick and that it wasn’t a good prognosis. She had been diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer, and she was not going to be seeking further treatment.

I didn’t really know what to think or feel when I heard the news, being that we hadn’t spoken in many years, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that it was upsetting in some sort of internal way that I can’t really explain.

I had several people close to me tell me to go see her immediately, but I didn’t. Not sure why, but I didn’t. I did do what I could in the background behind the scenes to try to make sure she was taken care of now that she couldn’t take care of herself, but I had no real interest in going to speak with her. At least not yet.

Without going into a lot of details, my mother and I have had a complicated relationship for many years. She was young when she had me and had been dealing with things that a lot of people would have had issues with as a young person. I think it took a toll on her looking back, in some ways that she probably never recovered from.

She was a single mother living in a horrible neighborhood in East Austin trying to raise a young man and didn’t have anyone to really help her or teach her how to do such a thing. She worked and did what she could, but things were hard for her. My grandmother tried to help, but there was resentment there on my mother’s side that stressed that relationship as well.

I ended up moving in with my Grandmother in New Braunfels when I was around 13, and the rest is history I guess. My mother and I never really recovered our relationship after that. There was a lot of reasons why, but they really aren’t important now. Not today anyway.

I’ve had people close to me ask me repeatedly why I’m not close to my mother. I think a lot of people think it’s weird that someone could not be. I never really felt wrong about it, but at the same time, It was never about resentment or anger on my part, or hers, I don’t think.

One big thing for me was that for a long time Mom blamed my Grandmother for a lot of what she was unhappy with about her own life. That often led to some reasonably combative exchanges between the two of us, especially the last time we saw each other when my Grandmother passed away almost 10 years ago.

Anyone that knows anything about me knows that I don’t deal well with people that blame others for their misgivings. I probably could have handled some of that better when it came to my Mother and my Grandmother’s past.

Either way, when I saw her today, all of that stuff seemed to fade away. I wasn’t worried about a conflict that I didn’t care to be a part of or not knowing what to say to someone that you lived the first 13 years of your life with, but I sat there and had a conversation with someone that knows me better than anyone, but I haven’t spoken to in a decade. Someone that saw my son Adrian today for the first time in 13 years, a spitting image of me at that age. The same age I was the last time my Mother and I were close.

We had a great talk. Adrian talked about him playing basketball and golf for his middle school. We talked about how we love to go camping and hiking, and where we had just go back from. I told her a bit about what I’m doing at work and what my career is like.

She shared how she was enjoying more family being around now. A lot of our cousins and people she had known as a child were coming by. She shared how kind a lot of the people at her care facility and Hospice had been to her.

We even shared how we both were disappointed that Luke Perry wasn’t going be a part of the 90210 reunion show, as .the original was a weekly tradition for both of us when I was young.

But most importantly, out of all that, we both admitted that there was no ill will towards each other. No blame, no resentment, not regret. Yes, there were mistakes, but those things happen.

She sounded outstanding, and she looked excellent for someone that has a terminal disease. It was nice to see. I told her that Adrian and I will come back by in a few days to visit. She seemed really pleased at the thought. I said to her that I’d bring my wife by as well.

I’m not quite sure what the next step is here. I guess it’s up to a higher power than myself but, I do know one thing and that Mom is mostly at peace with her life. She seems happy and content, and that is something that I really can’t remember a time thinking.

The lesson for me in this is that it seems like the right time for me to begin worrying less about what it might be like interacting with my Mother again, and instead start focusing more on making the most of the time she and I have left.