Mother Memoir: a Man’s Story

I want to thank Will Meecham for writing his story for my TellTale Souls collection. Will Meecham’s story needs no introduction. It is complete:

Perhaps it was the last time I saw her.

We lived in a remodeled house on Woodcrest, with freshly painted clapboard siding, and a lawn that always looked like it needed mowing. Since our life there lasted less than a year, I surprise myself by remembering the name of the street. Lined by lookalike houses placed as regularly as railroad cars, Woodcrest had nothing to distinguish it from countless other suburban streets around Detroit. My mother’s father had built a handful of those postwar subdivisions, so with a bit of effort he had his construction company redesign our little gray tract house.  As a result, it differed from all the others, with two extra bedrooms and a garage converted into a playroom. But if you looked at the house from the street, it still appeared identical to the rest.  God forbid we look different from the neighbors. My mother had enough trouble as the only divorcee on the block. This was 1964, and broken families still scandalized the neighborhood.

I had just climbed the stairs to find my mom opening my dresser drawers, and placing neatly folded clothing into a slightly tattered brown and tan suitcase. As my mother added in some rolled up socks and my favorite toy fighter jet, I knew she was preparing me for yet another sleepover with my grandparents. I stopped and stared at her, and began the process of boiling into a tantrum. She didn’t look surprised when I started trembling with fury; everyone was used to my quick temper. I shrieked, whined, and stamped my feet. “I don’t want to go! Don’t make me go! I want to stay with you!” Perhaps because she wore an unfamiliar facial expression, as if resigned to eternal grief, I felt more fear of being apart from her than ever before. She grasped my arms and hugged me firmly against her breasts. Her eyes might have been wet with tears.

They say she received over thirty treatments with electroshocks in the course of her many hospitalizations. Sometimes when she left my mother seemed far away, shoulders and head huddled forward, arms wrapped around her torso. Her demeanor this time felt different. Her arms, at once both firm and tender, warmed me through to my boyish frame, and I could feel the rise and fall of her chest as she pulled me close. She was the most beautiful woman I knew, and I gradually melted into her embrace. A six-year-old boy adores his mother with a soul-saturating passion that he tries to rediscover for the rest of his life.

“You don’t want Grandma and Grandpa to think you don’t love them, do you?” I remember her exact words, and I can almost hear her voice, soothing me like a mourning dove’s song. She sounded tender and sorrowful, radiant with affection; but also as if she were leaning out a train’s window, the details of her face fading as a coal-colored and implacable engine tugged her away from me, gathering speed.

 I calmed. Her touch and her words had that effect on me. Beyond the innate responses of motherhood, she believed love should be profuse and resilient, no matter how furious, disappointed or despairing someone felt. I had been taught to return to love quickly, and I knew my grandparents deserved my affection. My attitude became pliant, and I let her finish packing flannel pajamas and wool socks, while I sat on the bed and watched. My cheeks were damp, my eyes puffy from quiet sobs.

It might have been the last time I saw her.

“You’re lying! It’s not true! Shut UP!” This tantrum went on and on. We were gathered in the tiny living room of my father’s mother, which always seemed crowded to me.  The carpeted floor was nearly obliterated by overstuffed furniture upholstered with exuberant floral prints, but faded into a dusty and pinkish pastel. Not long before, while scrambling fast across the carpet on my hands and knees, I had impaled my index finger with one of my grandmother’s sewing needles. My father had required pliers to pull it out because, as he told me, it had penetrated all the way to the bone.  For some reason, I had barely cried.

Now, however, I did not hold back my tears. I felt a rage explode inside me that was unlike any prior outburst. I shook so severely I could barely stand.  Tears burned down my cheeks like drops of hot oil. My entire mind, body, and heart screamed for my mother’s embrace, but it did not come.

The adults let me cry. They were too shattered themselves to provide comfort. I retreated into a corner and sat down, hugging my knees and regressing to sucking my thumb. When my father phoned from Minnesota I could barely whisper to him. “Have Grandma make you some warm milk,” he said. Leave it to my dad to suggest drinking a liquid to drown my grief.

She loved my father too much. After the divorce her faith in the redemptive power of affection and kindness must have been tested. She never gave up on it, despite the feelings of betrayal and jealousy that consumed her. When he married his mistress her wounded psyche crumbled like dry clay.  “God, just let me die!” When I heard her pleading, I would enter her room to visit her as she lay sobbing in her single bed, the air layered with a stale cloud of cigarette smoke. I would sit next to her, fascinated by the dust motes drifting in the thin shafts of sunlight squeezing between the pulled curtains. 

Despite her torment, and even after the nuclear battles that preceded the divorce, she never said an unkind word to me about my father.  She forgave him. She forgave him completely even though she was limping through life with a fractured heart, saddled with two needy children, facing piles of bills on the chrome and Formica kitchen table, and living in a house owned by her mother.

As much as anyone ever has, she was dying of a broken heart. But when I fell off my bicycle she still wiped my tears with an embroidered handkerchief, and left a trace of lipstick on my forehead. 

Part of me refused to believe that my mom would never come for me. I remained stranded in that living room where they told me she had died. I sat sobbing in the corner, waiting for my mother to gather me back into her arms. I wanted to feel safe again.

 I don’t know when I finally believed her death, or when I gave up and accepted she would never come back. It might not have been until I was ten. Or maybe a small part of me still clings to the prayer that she will return, smiling at last. Perhaps my heart keeps watch for her, expecting to see her unchanged, thirty-six and lovely, the face of a goddess leaning down to kiss my forehead as I lay on my pillow.  “Hush,” she would say, “it was only a dream.”

  Author Bio:

Severe neck problems forced Will Meecham to retire from his oculoplastic surgery practice at age forty-two. Career loss uncovered psychiatric vulnerabilities left over from a childhood blighted by major bereavement and severe child abuse. During a decade spent exploring psychotherapeutic and spiritual paths, Dr. Meecham regained stability with a combination of bodywork, mindfulness meditation, and profound acceptance. He now devotes himself to helping others follow similar paths to peace. He currently is training to encourage emotional wellness with the practice of acupuncture, a healing art ideally suited to the promotion of embodiment, meditation and acceptance. He is an occasional public speaker, and a frequent guest on mental health and creativity websites. His philosophy and suggestions can be found on his blog, WillSpirit.com.