My mother died.
Those are the three hardest words I’ve ever written. She suffered from Alzheimer’s the past several years and we all knew this was coming. But somehow, despite all those months of preparation, I still wasn’t ready when my sister Carol phoned yesterday with the news.
In her life, my mother was a homemaker, a business owner, a telephone operator, a computer programmer, a student, a dancer, and a hair stylist. But if you asked her what she “did,” she would say she was a mom.
For her, that was the job that mattered.
When she was young, my mother had potential; she was intelligent, beautiful, witty, talented. She had it all. And then she had me.
From that point on all her hopes, dreams and aspirations took a back seat to my needs and my wants. Two more boys and two girls followed in quick succession, and her love and protection encompassed each of them in turn, like a goose down comforter.
My mom always saw the best in her children, though that must sometimes have been hard, at least in my case. No accomplishment, however insignificant, escaped my mother’s notice. No failure was beyond redemption.
She was proud if I brought home an A. Or a B, or a C. She would have been proud had I brought home a note from the principal saying I’d been suspended for carrying a knife to class. (Which actually happened once, in seventh grade. It was a linoleum cutter; I’d been helping my dad with a project that morning before school and had stuck it in my pocket without thinking when the bus arrived.)
At any rate, my mom loved us no matter how badly we screwed up. For the life of me, I can’t remember her ever saying anything bad about me or my siblings, even when there were plenty of bad things just begging to be said.
In the year or two before her Alzheimer’s stole away the last of her, I called her almost daily, just to check in. By then, she was easily confused, had a hard time finding the words she wanted to say. It frustrated her greatly, but she faced her pitiless decline the way she faced every adversity life threw her way: with a sense of humor.
Even as her mind slipped away a piece at a time, she never stopped loving life, never stopped being proud of the children she had brought into this world.
One day before things got too bad we were conversing on the phone and—as she so often did—she shifted the subject to her kids.
“Your brother is doing so well,” she said. “He’s writing for the papers now and working on a book. Michael’s really making something of himself. He’s such a hard worker.”
“Mom, I’m Michael,” I said. “You’re talking to Michael.”
There was a beat while she sorted this out.
“Oh,” she said. Then: “Your brother William has a new nursing position. He’s supervisor of his whole floor and Julie’s managing a blood bank. How’s the book coming?”
“It’s coming,” I said. That’s what I always said. Five years later, it’s still coming, because writing a book is hard work and I’m not a hard worker, despite what my mom thought.
But if I ever do finish it and see it published, I know whose name will appear on the dedication page. Even if the book sells a million copies and my mother’s name is read by a million readers, it won’t be enough.
The hard truth is, no matter what I do, it will never be enough to thank the woman who gave me life.
I miss you mom.
More “Reality Check” online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.milive.com. E-mail Mike Taylor at
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