Moments to Remember

I didn't think I'd miss her this much.

"I didn't want you," she often said. I didn't blame her. Before I was born, she married the love of her life. Their dreams came true. They wanted their three children. Then he got sick with multiple sclerosis, leaving her with the children and no money when he died.

"I wanted to kill myself," she said years later, about learning she was pregnant with me. My father--an intelligent, charming, alcoholic--wooed, married, and impregnated her before he left. That marriage wasn't like her first. It was dysfunctional before anyone knew what the word meant. Mom spent the rest of her life chasing that first Great Love, not knowing it would come only once.

I felt badly she was stuck with me. From age twelve, I counted the days until I could leave. That's when my alcoholism began. I didn't know blackouts were part of a disease. All I knew was drinking temporarily made painful feelings go away. That was good enough for me.

In the seventies, recovery and family of origin work emerged. "We need to feel all our emotions, then let them go. People need to know they're forgiven and learn to forgive. Everyone needs to know their life matters," my therapist said, "We need to honor our ancestors. That's what real family-of-origin work is."

Honor my ancestors? I didn't know who they were.

"Finding out is part of honoring them," my therapist said.

At age twenty-four, I had a spiritual awakening: I had no right to destroy myself with alcohol or drugs. I married a counselor who was recovering too. Soon Nichole and Shane, our children, were born. But I'd been tricked. My husband wasn't sober. His daily drinking had turned into binge drinking that he hid -- for a while. My career shifted from counseling to writing. I wrote Codependent No More. The book hit a nerve. Finally I had enough money to buy the children new clothes. I paid the bills left by my husband after our divorce. I didn't have a husband, but I had sobriety, a family, a life. Then at age twelve, my son Shane was killed in a skiing accident. The fine print in recovery confused me. I thought it read, If you do good things, good things will happen. So why did Shane die in my arms?

Years later, in June 2006, after recovering from having two artificial discs implanted in my back, I knew I had to go see Mom. My sister agreed. We didn't know why, until we saw the gaunt, filthy woman who answered the door. We'd tried to intervene before. It didn't work. Mom had given power of attorney to someone else. Now the legal system couldn't ignore us. I became Mom's conservator and co-guardian, traveling monthly from California to Minnesota. At first it annoyed me when dementia caused Mom to ask the same question thirty times an hour. Then I read a book that reminded me of how good parents don't lose patience with the thousands of questions kids asked. Although that didn't describe my upbringing, the moral hit home. My impatience disappeared. Other changes occurred. Mom hugged me and meant it. If I cried, she nurtured me. She wanted me now and that felt good. Taking care of Mom wasn't work. I learned a secret: when we care for people--willingly give to them--we bond with them. She worked her way into my heart. I truly loved this woman now.

Then she fell and broke her leg. She had to go to a nursing home to learn to walk again. Mom hated it there. Being in a home was her greatest fear. I promised to come back and live with her so she could be in her own house. When I was a child, I counted the days until I could leave. Now we both counted the days until I returned.

My sister-in-law Pam called the day before Mom's release. A sudden brain hemorrhage put Mom into an irreversible coma. I heard the same words as when my young son Shane passed away: "No hope," the doctors said.

I pulled my chair up to Mom's bed at the hospice, moistened her lips with a sponge. They say hearing is the last to go. I said the Lord's Prayer, and read the Twenty-third Psalm. I told her what a good mother she'd been. "It's okay for you to go," I finally said. "I'll hold your hand and walk with you as far as I can--to heaven's gate." Then I heard the sound of her last breath.

It's important to want people when they're young, and when they're old. It's important to treat them with love, kindness, respect. A friend told me that people are in our lives as long as we need them. But not as long as we want them, I thought. I'd finally found love with my mother and now she was gone. But she died knowing she was loved.  

Now I understand the fine print in recovery. For every birth, there's death. For each beginning, an end. If we do good things, things happen, but we get the whole package--the painful, the good, and the in-between. It's called life. I've come full circle from the dysfunctional family where Codependent No More was born to a family healed by love.

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