Is your place in heaven worth giving up these kisses?
November 28, 2006
My father won’t talk about my mother.
He leaves the room when I bring her up, when I talk about the pain of reading about another man losing his wife, about their far too young daughters. He agrees about hardship, and leaves the room.
Why can’t he realize she dies a little more each time he does this, each time he minimizes her memory to me? My mother exists for me only in the stories other people tell of her, in the tiny ways he’ll occasionally mention as being something she once did. My mother is slowly being erased from me because my father cannot bear to speak her name.
Dianne. My mother’s name was Dianne. She was strong and graceful and took no shit from anyone and she had a name. She had a laugh. She WAS. Her handwriting leaned to the left, and she wrote formal letters with a ruler underneath so each sentence would be perfect. She made poppy seed cake, and I don’t remember the recipie. She loved me, and I don’t remember her arms.
He’s done this since she died, he’s barely admitted to her place in our lives. He’s barely touched on his own pain, and in doing so, he reinforces mine. He makes it vivid, each time he rejects my desperate attempt to keep her alive in my heart.
My mother would totally kick the shit out of him for this. It’s the one thing that makes me hope for heaven.
~ Thordora
November 28th, 2006 at 7:35 pm
Your dad is his own person with his own way. I know it is hard to handle but he is grieving, too.
November 30th, 2006 at 5:38 pm
It’s been a slow 7 years to even have him talk about her. It still hurts that he can’t do this little bit for me.
but hey-I never lost the love of my life.
November 30th, 2006 at 7:52 pm
It has taken my dad 60 years to talk about his WWII experiences.
But I can see how you need to talk and how it must hurt that he won’t climb out of the shell for you.
December 12th, 2006 at 1:41 am
Is there anyone else you can talk to about her? Her friends, perhaps - or other family members? That way you can learn more about her - feel part of who she was. Just a thought. I’m sorry your father can’t talk about it. It would probably help him if he did.
December 12th, 2006 at 10:14 am
I don’t know any of her friends, and I don’t talk ther family because her father used to….do things to me. I’ve cut myself off from them. The last time I saw my aunt was much too hard anyway-she looks exactly like my mother, and I can’t handle the anger of wondering why she survived, and my mother did not.
I have to accept that I will never know my mother, not really.