My Mom’s Death Transformed Our Relationship
Every time I describe my relationship with my mom, the word that comes to mind is “complicated.”
Her name is Colleen. Her friends and family called her Peggy. Me and my wife and my kids call her Grandma Peg.
She raised me by herself. My mom and dad were never married, and something about their relationship just didn’t work. My dad left when I was two or three and my mom took the reins. Since I grew up around my aunts and cousins, I’m assuming they helped whenever they could, but the memories I have (which, quite honestly, are sparse at best) are of me and her. Her and I. The two of us. Together.
One of those memories that sticks is “feeding the fish.”
There was a local business park about half a mile from where I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. At that business park, there was a small man-made pond between the buildings that was like our oasis. As you can likely guess, there were fish in that pond. Were we supposed to feed the fish? Questionable, but we did. My mom liked to bend rules.
Just before turning 10, I moved up to the Seattle area with my family, which now included my step-dad. I’m not a man of many memories, but as far as they go, this is when I remember things beginning to get rocky in our relationship.
True, I was approaching my teenage years, adding a hormonal and developmental complication to the mix, but she simultaneously entered a new phase in her relationship with alcohol. Addiction runs deep on both sides of my family, but the wedge it drove between my mom and I is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
There were two decades of our lives together lost to the rollercoaster of alcoholism.
But, in the end, I know she had a lot of love for me. She raised me by herself, after all, trying her best, as far as I could tell.
Like I said, it was complicated.
Looking back at the pictures of my childhood, there are so many happy photos of me and her.
Now that she’s gone, it’s not the complications that I remember most vividly. Instead, it’s those happy photos and the positive memories that I return to when my mind starts wandering down the rabbit hole of her being gone. Forever.
Whatever pain those later years brought, I’m thankful that those are not the memories I hold onto the tightest. I can’t. I really believe life is too short to keep holding grudges or anger toward someone who had her own deep-seated pain that she wasn’t quite ready to grapple with.
She was my mom. My only mom. And I know she tried her best with what she knew and what she was given.
On my Instagram (@misterpjm), I’ve found something special in reframing Mondays as “Momdays.” It’s a day for the positive memories, the lessons, the favorite foods or music or landmarks, and the remembering the good times, the happy times, the times that make me smile while being sad that she’s gone. Forever.
She was my mom. My only mom. I miss her so very much.
To celebrate Mother’s Day this year, here’s to a special edition of Momday.
If it weren’t for my mom embarrassing me by talking to strangers in the checkout line or servers at restaurants or any number of people she encountered, I’m certain I wouldn’t be the open, kind, empathetic and caring person I am today with those same people I encounter every day.
If it weren’t for my mom sticking it out through my tear-filled anxiety learning how to drive the manual transmission of our 1987 Toyota 4Runner, I wouldn’t be planning a road trip from Phoenix to Seattle with my six-year-old to bring that 4Runner home.
If it weren’t for my mom being my first baseball coach when I played t-ball on the Yankees, I wouldn’t have the same love for baseball that I’m now passing onto both my three-year-old and six-year old. But to be clear, we’re a Mariners house.
If it weren’t for my mom forcing me to go door-to-door with her in our neighborhood to deliver her homemade holiday cookies and chocolate fudge every year, showing me the joy and community that baking and cooking can bring, I wouldn’t be doing the same with my wife and kids every year.
For all the “complicated” times my mom and I had together, she did something right.
She did a lot of things right. I never imagined myself openly sharing about the grief of my dead mom with tens of thousands of people on the internet, but I know she’s proud watching me help so many people through their own grief journeys.
Each and every person has their own path through their grief. There are so many emotions that we experience throughout the lives of the people we grieve, and bringing those emotions into the grieving process can really up the level of “complicated.”
She was my mom. My only mom. And now she’s gone forever. And I miss her.
There were plenty of hard moments, but I think there is something really special in grief that brings out so many of the positive memories. I never pictured what it would look like after she died, but if there had been something I pictured, these would be the memories I would hope to hold on it.
She was my mom. My only mom. And a really great mom. I love her.
By: Patrick McCarthy (Instagram: @misterpjm)
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