My mother, my self

Today would have been my mother’s sixty-first birthday. It seems odd to me that I remembered this year when I it has slipped my mind for the majority of the past years.

As I have written before, my mother died when I was in college, and, while people still give me that pained sympathetic expression when I tell them for the first time, it no longer bothers me to talk about it and it has become part of who I am like my height or eye color.

Remembering her birthday this year, brought to light the fact that I really think of my mother less and less often now, which may be a symptom of my busy life, but is a state of being that would have been unbelievable to me sixteen years ago, as I was a zombie wandering around my college campus, bursting into tears at the drop of a hat. Now that I am a mother myself, shouldn’t my own mother be more present in my thoughts instead of less? After thinking it over for a while, and really being honest with myself, I came up with the answer that I knew I didn’t want to face. I don’t think about my mother that much because I am pissed at her and would rather not think about that.

Crazy, right? To be angry with someone who has been gone for so long, someone who, when she was alive, was the center of my universe. We never, ever went through that Oh-my-God-you-are-so-embarrassing-and-I-hate-you teenage phase, so why, now that I am a grown woman in my thirties with three children, am I acting like a child? Because I think she brought some of this on herself.

My mother was the quintessential, hard-working, Irish mother. Up before everyone in the house at the crack of dawn, she never stopped. When she was working full-time, she still made sure we got to all of our activities and sports and, in the evening, did all the laundry and housework. Cleaning was a religion to my mother and she worshiped the Holy Trinity of bleach, Murphy’s oil soap and Lysol. She worked from sun up to sundown and we found her, every night, asleep at nine o’clock with a book on her chest after reading two pages.

Like all of us mothers, she was tired, all the time, I’m sure. But then other issues began to crop up, and what gets me angry is how she ignored symptoms of a disease that would eventually kill her. By the time her lupus was diagnosed, it was advanced enough to be life-threatening, an unusual circumstance with this particular disease. What if she had gone to the doctor sooner, as I’m sure my father urged her to do? What if she had taken better care of herself?

I suppose I look at the end of my mother’s life through the prism of my own, which is not fair, since how she lived, and eventually died, drastically affected the way I live. I am no hypochondriac, but when I have an unusual symptom, or find a weird spot, I get it checked out - as soon as possible. My mother, of the genetically amazing cholesterol levels, was a strict adherent to the United Kingdom diet – the exact opposite of the Mediterranean – heavy on meat, refined carbs and saturated fat, while strictly limiting fresh produce. While I do enjoy my sweets and love the occasional burger, the way I cook has been described half-jokingly by my father as “having too many colors”. As for exercise, my sister and I would call my mom “The Phantom Jogger”. She would emerge, every few minutes out of the blackness of our patio in the summer time, into the light from the French doors, doing this little half-in-place-half-moving jog, in her mom jeans, polo shirt and loafers. This lasted about ten minutes and was followed by leg lifts on the family room floor. You all know my morning appointments with the treadmill and while I will not claim fitting into my jeans is not the main motivation, I will say staying healthy is a close second. And at least I sweat enough to not be able to wear said jeans while working out.

As a mother, I can fully understand how working through the pain becomes part of the job, with its lack of sick days and all. Feeling like crap becomes the rule, rather than the exception. It took me two weeks of having a hacking cough to finally cry uncle, demand H take a day off, and drag my ass to the doctor. But it was only two weeks. My mother must have been sick for years.

This post I am seeing, is really just a big pile of emotional vomit, but since I’ve given up on journaling, you people get to see all my uglies. I’m sure this is not going to be my dad's favorite post, since I’m kind of harshing on my mother a bit, and for that I’m sorry . At the end of this stream of consciousness I have just unleashed upon you, I suppose there is a point. Take care of yourselves. Eat right, exercise, take your vitamins, go to the damn doctor. You owe it to your kids to eat a salad and break a sweat every once in a while.

Nobody loves a martyr. Not because they’re no fun at cocktail parties (they do make good designated drivers if you can ignore all the beleaguered sighing), but because you know what makes a martyr a martyr? They die.