Dear Shirley Jean,
In all of my life I’ve never had a more complicated relationship than the one I have with you. I think maybe at some level you feel the same.
Peeling away the layers of what we’ve shared over the years is a lot like cleaning out an old storage room. Some things I remember and cherish, some things I really, really want to get rid of but I’m afraid that if I do, an authority figure (like the IRS or God) will demand accountability, and other things are just junk and need to be tossed in one of those giant trash bins and forgotten. The trick is taking enough time with each item to understand what category it truly falls into. What looks one way on the surface could be different given enough consideration.
Complicated.
For most of my life, I felt as if you’d made a choice. And whatever that choice was, it didn’t include me. I was something you were stuck with. If post-partum depression would have been an available diagnosis at the time of my birth, it might have helped. At least you would have known it was a hormonal thing and not some spawn of Satan thing. Instead, even your hindsight heroics to walk away from me—your baby—for a few moments simply underscored the problem child you had to deal with. You were perfectly fine before my birth, so therefore it had to be me—that whole spawn thing—complete with colic and dirty diapers.
Our relationship grew more complicated when my little sister was born. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time—I just figured every mother liked her second child more than she did the first. I didn’t feel bad, exactly. But my warped sense of what was normal stayed that way for a long time. Decades.
I have a memory as a young woman trying to read a best-selling book called My Mother, Myself. I don’t think I got past the first three pages. It was probably the first book I brought into my life that I couldn’t finish. Hell, I couldn’t even get a good start on it. You and I weren’t even talking at that point.
The next time I heard from you was when we received a Christmas card. The first one after several years. You had a new last name.
Complicated.
What is the truth here?
The truth is, our early relationship was not always good. In fact, in hindsight I can see it was pretty dysfunctional. Broken. Given the right touch, it could have been good sit-com material. The Dick Van **** Show with a Kardashian twist.
Maybe a clean break for several years was exactly what we needed. When I called you that day from my store, and we finally met after all that time, we’d both changed—mostly me. I was finally more woman than little girl, and could, for the first time, understand the pain you must have felt so often in your own life. Having said that in a big-girl panties kind of way, it doesn’t totally negate the little girl pain that still lingers. Just sayin’.
Our last years were mostly good, except a part of me feels like you continued to chose—which you did—but somehow even though it still hurt, I knew you loved me this time. We talked about your choice, and the reasons you were leaving me to move with my sister out of state. You felt that in the end, you really had no other option. I believed you. I still believe you. I need to believe you.
Complicated.
As uncomfortable as it was for you, you finally expressed your love for me and I will never forget those talks we had. You touched a part of me that only a mother can touch. Or God. Mothers and God. What a powerful combo.
Complicated.
And then you died, leaving me for the last time. We had so many years yet to make up, there were so many more things I wanted to talk to you about, and then you were gone. You left too soon. But I know in a way, we caught up on all of those lost years the very first time—the very first second—we both wanted to be with each other. In one blink of an eye so much was erased.
I will forever treasure the small amount of time we had in the days prior to your death. We shared some intimate moments unlike any we had ever shared in all of the years that came before. My feelings when you died were a mixture of loss and anger—stirred in with more feelings of abandonment. God has been chastising me about this, and I’m slowly getting over it.
Before you died, we spoke every afternoon. For the first year afterward, I reached for the phone almost every day before dissolving into a sense of utter loss. That’s pretty much when I felt the worst and got pissed off the most. There wasn’t really a target, but there was some ammunition. I just didn’t know what to do with it. Probably a good thing I had time to mull things over before getting all locked and loaded with more junk from that storage room.
Now, I talk to you every morning and often during the day. I found a song that belongs to you even though you never heard it while you walked this earth. When I need a good cry, I play it over and over. I plug the ear buds in and close my eyes. And when it still isn’t enough, I turn it up louder and hope I can find you in the words and listen for your assurance. Your genetics. Your strength.
And almost every day, I hear your encouragement and your love in ways I never heard before. God does work in mysterious ways. I just wish I understood more of them. Ahead of time would be good.
I love you, Mom.
See you soon,
Peggy Ann
This is one of the letters from the book, Lost Love Letters: An Indie Chicks Anthology available now from Amazon.
About Peg Brantley
A Colorado native, Peg Brantley is a member of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and Sisters In Crime. She and her husband make their home southeast of Denver, and have shared it with the occasional pair of mallard ducks and their babies, snapping turtles, peacocks, assorted other birds, foxes, a deer named Cedric and a bichon named McKenzie. Peg's newest novel, THE MISSINGS, is a police procedural.
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