The Me in Mother

I was very strict with my children.    Denis was always on the road and I took my mother position seriously.  I refused to threaten my children with words like "just wait until your father gets home"  They saw their father so seldom I didn't think it fair at all  to make them scared to see him return home.  I was raising them, if there were ever punishments handed out it was I who called it.  While Denis was home they enjoyed their father and always got away with murder.  I thought that was good though,  I loved to see them climb all over Denis  when he came home.   

Somewhere along the way I lost the love and respect of my middle son Raymond.  When he was 15 and 16 years old we sat up long into the night, many, many times. He trying to make me understand something with out telling me what it was.  We talked, there was a lot of talking but I knew we didn't get anywhere at all.  There was a feeling of  "incomplete" each time he decided to go off to bed.  The "thing that was bothering my son" kept getting bigger and bigger but he never did reveal what it was.

He worked and paid his own way through college and university and would accept nothing from us at all.  He did it himself with scholarships and working at different jobs. We were very proud of  him, but he never believed that. He fed his own anger with his own interpretation of our feelings and positions.  

There was nothing I could do but hopelessly watch my beloved son separate himself further and further from me, then his father, brother and sister.   He married and soon he was not coming around at all.   He lives only about 7 city blocks from us but we may have crossed paths three times in the last 10 years.  To him I walk in the land of the living dead.  

For years I clung to a hopeless hope we would find each other again, but it wasn't  meant to be. Just this month he called to tell me  their dream was finally realized. He and his wife are going to be parents at the end of April or the beginning of May 2001.   I am truly happy for him he has found a life without me.  I miss him but wish him and his family peace and love always.

Denis and I are free now to do our own thing.   It is time,  they are all in their thirties now and certainly do not need parenting. 

On a quiet New Year's Eve 2000 seeing the new year in with my husband and watching the celebrations on television as we had grown accustomed to over the years. I realized suddenly that I had four very good friends who lost their husbands in the last ten years. 

Every one of them were ready to start living and enjoying life and all it has to offer in one short year's time. Others lost their children to death and still there is a life to live.   When I realized that,  a great peace settled over me. If these women found the strength to go on,  what must they think of me?  Their whole life has changed!   Surely I must be wallowing in my own self pity and torturing myself with dreams and hopes of the impossible. 

We will never become a family again in the true sense of the word.   It can never be, too much time has passed  too much respect has been lost.  There will never be trust and without trust there is no relationship. Given this realization I have finally laid it to rest   I will not look back, for that would be a waste of the precious time we have left on this earth.   

My family ........as it is today,  smaller around the dinner table but finally at peace with ourselves.