Family Letters

In families, there is much that remains unspoken, even unspeakable.

Sometimes, in an effort to span the silence, we try writing what we have never felt free to say.

Dear Mom,

I know that you are well, and for that, I am so very thankful but, I must confess, also relieved.

There is much I want to say about feeling relieved, but first, let me clarify that I in no way expect you to acknowledge this letter. In fact, I’d be rather shocked if you did.

I’d like to give you some updates because I’m not sure how much information you actually receive. Let me begin by telling you of an adventure Erika and I recently had. Did you know that she is almost twenty-one? It seems like just yesterday you came to the house and helped out when she was a squawking newborn.

She and I were at St. Lawrence Market, waiting for the next GO train home. It was noon, and we were absolutely ravenous. I found myself buying several crusty buns and a package of cheese curds. (I seemed to automatically choose the yellow ones.) Together we devoured our simple lunch and downed a bottle of water. That’s when I had a flashback to you and me walking hand-in-hand around the market in London, sharing a bag of yellow curds as we inspected the fresh produce.

Odd that a bag of cheese could trigger memories, but it did. Then, I remembered when I was a teenager and we were hunting for winter boots at Siegel’s. I suspect I gave you a fair amount of grief as we combed through discount bins. I want you to know that even as a cheeky adolescent, I understood your thriftiness was out of necessity. I wish I had told you that.

I wish I had told you how much I enjoyed your teaching me how to knit. I wish I’d shared how much I enjoyed driving to see you after I was first married and sorting through framed mirrors at the antique store. I wish I had told you other things as well. Surely, you must have known.

In as much as there were good times, Mom, I want to recognize that there were some fairly difficult ones as well. I wish we had talked about some of those rougher moments, but we never seemed to feel free enough with each other to do so. We never really talked about what it was like for you or for me after Dad died. After I was married with kids, you were so non-committal about coming to spend time with us at Christmas. Even on the ordinary weekends when we could get together, you’d sit by yourself at the back of the church during Sunday service rather than with our family.

I need to believe you had good reasons.

I know that it is fairly normal for parents and children, at any age, to have conflict and to struggle with communication. Maybe we thought we’d get to it someday, but that day never came. When you became unwell, neither of us had the energy nor the will to talk through these small griefs. “Later” just got more complicated. I was working full-tilt; the kids were busy and demanding. The fault didn’t belong to either of us. I can’t say there was one pivotal moment when I realized there was no longer any point in dragging up past issues. It was more of a gradual giving way to the bigger matters at hand. What good would it have done, given all that you were already dealing with? It must have been frightening to see yourself changing and losing more and more control.

It was hard to see you bruised from your falls. It was hard to arrive at your doorstep and see you dressed in layers of clothes with your underwear on top of your sweater and pants. Do you remember putting tape across your condo air vents because you were scared the man in the unit above would crawl into your bedroom? Do you recall crying when you heard the elevator ring on your floor, believing that the police were there to arrest you (though you couldn’t remember why)?

One day you called me 29 times. I was impatient with you, then fearful that you sensed my impatience. I couldn’t help but feel as if I was being squeezed between two cement walls and my head was going to pop off. I had work and family on one side, and your decline on the other. If it was hard for me, I can’t begin to understand what it must have been like for you.

That’s where my earlier comment about relief comes in. I felt selfishly relieved as I anticipated that it wouldn’t be long before you finally found freedom. I knew there would be no more demands on my precious time or disruptions to my precious life. I never meant to prioritize my world over yours and, to be fair to myself, I’m not sure I actually did. I just didn’t know how to integrate the needs of both.

I am sorry if I came across as selfish. Often, I wish I could go back and do things differently. Probably everybody says that. If anything has come out of this whole process, it has been learning the freedom of forgiveness. I am learning that God has forgiven me and that I, in turn, must learn to forgive myself.

In the last days before your final move, it was a privilege to read to you portions of the Psalms that you had highlighted in your Bible. I knew you were aware that I was in the room even when you had stopped talking and refused to drink anymore. Your tongue was swollen and cracked. You lay still in the bed with closed eyes, only occasionally moaning between morphine injections.

Mom, you can’t imagine my shock at what happened that last Tuesday afternoon. You bolted upright in bed and extended your arms straight into the air. You opened your eyes and clearly said, “Hallelujah!” then fell back down in the bed and were gone. I felt such relief for you. You were finally free.

I believe I will someday understand what you must have seen or heard in that moment. Until that time comes, and if it’s alright with you, I think I’ll keep sending you updates.

I will love you always.

Gwen

To my girls,

At my desk this morning, I listen to your banter. The smell of strong coffee and the warm scones you've just made fills our house with welcome.

I want to be at the table with you, and even though you always receive me, I fear that who I am will bring an intensity that might dampen your moment.

I know you see me: my need for control, my impossible expectations, my sharp tongue and consuming love. You see me, and you know how afraid I can be, yet from you I have received an understanding that heals me, that has taught me that love is tangible and that it stays.

And I needed to be taught. Because when your grandma was 31 and I was six, she strapped a duffle bag onto the back of her bike and cycled off. Forty-four years later, she still rides in and out of our lives. Forty-four years later, and I’m still unpacking the baggage.

After grandma’s stroke, when she was 73, the hospital refused to let her pack her bags for home, although she kept pulling the fire alarm, determined to get there.

They tasked your aunts and me with making her place safe before they released her. I was to do her laundry and clean her bathroom. It would be the first time in three decades that I’d stepped foot in her house—a house you’ve never been welcome in.

Inside her front door, pairs of men’s shoes, dusty teddy bears, stacked yoghurt containers, magazines and secondhand novels lined her narrow hallways. Years of cat hair and dust, papers and trinkets, pill bottles and granola bars covered every table, every counter, every surface—everything she’d collected since leaving so many years ago. I inched through that house, careful not to tumble her piles, trying not to witness her pain, although the proof of it was everywhere.

Do you think I was weak for pulling on yellow rubber gloves before I could pack five garbage bags full with her clothes and linens? Do you understand why I had to shower off the dust and scrub off your grandma when I returned home? Do you wonder how I could be so damn ashamed? Do you know how much I wish she’d stuck around and made that unholy mess with me?

But here at home with you now, I top up my coffee in the kitchen and try not to mind the flour on the counter, the unwashed mixing bowls and spoons in the sink, even the empty oven left on—your holy mess. I walk to the table, spread raspberry jam over a warm scone, and although I do not sit, I hear you interrupt one another with nonsense, see your heads thrown back, eyes crying with laughter, and you help me unpack that baggage a little more.

Love,

Mum

Dear Mom,

Since our tense conversation in Times Square over a decade ago, we haven’t spoken about our relationship, but I think I’d like to try again.

There was a day in recent memory that started out quite ordinarily. After a long morning of snacks, games and never-ending demands from the kids, I was desperate for a break and Chloe was refusing to take her nap, fighting me at every step. Begrudgingly, she started to wash up, but as the minutes dragged on, I suspected that she was stalling. With the water running full blast, my fuse grew shorter with every gush. In a moment, I lost my temper and used that tone with her—that exasperated, harsh tone you used with me years ago—and it struck my heart with dread. It reminded me of the feeling I often had as a child: that I’d never do anything right, that I’d continue to disappoint you, and that my flaws ran deep. I had always feared that I’d never be good enough in your eyes.

I can remember being six years old, and we’d just come home from the toy store where Dad let me and my cousins each pick out a new toy. Though I had wanted the pink toy house, Amanda did, too. I settled instead for the blue one, hoping you’d be proud of my choice. Instead, I was punished for being a “pushover.” I spent the rest of the afternoon crouched under the monstrous Singer sewing table in the family room, crying. As the shadows shifted and the light waned, no one came to find me.

I struggled with feelings of inadequacy for most of my school-aged years. I was compared to my peers and deemed the least intelligent. As I got older, I thought the only way to combat this was by matching or exceeding their grades in school. It was the only way to measure wits. But even my consistently good grades failed to make an impression on you. I gave this endeavour one last painstaking try to convince you and the rest of the family that I was worthy of a higher opinion. But even when I was admitted to a prestigious university, your response was lacklustre. Achievement was just a side note in the larger narrative of my failure.

For so long, I carried all this shame as sadness. Eventually, it boiled into anger. During my sophomore year of university, at the corner of 49th Street and 7th Avenue, you allowed me to blast many of these painful memories at you in rapid succession like the jarring billboards around us. Only the roar of the New York City crowds could mask my angry voice; only the hustle-bustle of a Friday’s rush hour was quick enough to blur the sight of my tears. When I finally ran out of words, you asked exhaustedly, “I didn’t know I made you feel all these things. Can you forgive me?”

Forgiveness is a long work, I’m realizing. As an adult, I’ve often blamed you for all the ways I fell short of any “standard.” It was much easier to use my less-than-ideal upbringing and the negativity in my childhood to explain away what I didn’t like about myself.

This has never been more apparent than in my relationship with Chloe. Over the years, a stubborn pattern of anger and impatience has become apparent in my own mothering. My apologies have started to sound the same as yours. On that particularly hard day I described at the opening of this letter, I sank to my knees and cried, seeing so clearly my own capacity to sin and hurt someone I so wanted to protect. Chloe, seeing my distress, placed her hands on mine. “Mommy, there, there,” she said. “You’re OK.” In my daughter’s forgiving embrace, I relished the reconciliation, feeling utterly loved and accepted while at my worst. In that moment, I saw a glimpse of what Christ did for me—and for you— on the cross: while we were yet sinners, he gave his life for us.

I've discovered freedom in confessing my sin to Chloe and receiving her forgiveness. It has become clear to me that this is a freedom I've never granted you. I struggled to accept how I could be hurt by you, my mother. I had wanted you to save me from all my hurt. But now I see that in our humanness, we can only love in a human way. We are not God.

Though I grieve the time we’ve lost in reconciling our relationship, I am thankful for the opportunity to grow alongside Chloe into the deeper truths of God’s mercies made new every morning. I am empowered to shed the burden of past hurts by daily forgiving you as Christ forgave me.

R.

Text (in order of appearance): Gwen Sampson, Wendy Stringer, R.L.

Visuals: Alexandra Siu