Life Stories: Other Moms, Teenagers and Dogged Pursuit of Normalcy Got Me Through May 16, 1979

(written April 15, 2022 to May 16, 2022)

It was my 16th birthday.

I got up that morning undoubtedly listening to all kinds of garbage pouring forth from my mother’s mouth.

May 16th 1979

A neighbor who lived two doors down, the mother of one of my closest childhood friends at that point, took me to Christiana Mall. Not only do I have vague remembrances of her talking with me about my father’s death just five days prior, and the immensely horrific situation with my mother, I clearly remember the dress she helped me pick out (and likely may have even purchased herself, for all that I know).

It was a mint green dress, formed in a set of a skirt and blouse, and both a beautiful lovely spring mint green.

The top of this dress had very fine vertical pleats that were permanently ironed into this garment. 

The skirt, was simple, with an elastic waistband. 

The fabric was rayon, so that night when I wore it (and every other time) it required a lot of spraying from a can of Static Guard.

Pretty sure – but not positive – that I owned a can of

Static Guard at that point in my life.

Twelve days earlier (the night of Friday, May 4th) I had heard my father having a heart attack through the wall that divided my bedroom with the kitchen. He was standing at the sink and my mother was arguing with him.

It wasn’t until Monday, May 7th that my father drove himself to his local physicians office and from there he was medevacked by helicopter to Presbyterian Hospital in Pennsylvania where he died, three days later, during the middle of an exploratory procedure involving insertion of a balloon up through an artery in his groin toward the heart.

This was an emergency procedure my mother had received a call about, three hours before his death, and refused to give consent.

I got on the phone on another line, (since phones and multiple phone lines were plentiful in that house), half-hysterically giving this stranger heart doctor my permission at 15 years and 359 fifty-nine days old to “please please please do whatever you need to do.”

I recall a phone call to the house by the receptionist of my parent’s doctors office that Monday afternoon, May 7th, if my memory serves me correctly. 

I was alone there in the house at that point, (or perhaps it was another day between Monday and the next several), (or perhaps even the following week prior to the two funerals), but she wanted to specifically tell me how proud my father was of me.

She said he kept telling people in the office and other nurses or people he encountered in the these last hours and days of his difficult difficult life, that his daughter was going to be inducted into the National Honor Society.

This induction required my presence, as a teenager,

at this event, and was a non-negotiable. 

My grades and other things prompted my selection along with a number of other teenagers I knew from school, some going back as far as early grade school, making me eligible to participate in this National Honor Society.

As a sophomore in the spring of the school year, I didn’t quite understand what the purpose was of being in the National Honor Society.

However, I knew, as I knew about other requirements of me that I continually fulfilled alongside other teenagers, that I had to be there or I would not be inducted.

So on the day I turned sixteen, (in some cultures quite a mile-mark for a young woman), I got up.

And I did what was required of me that day.

And like some normal human being, I likely held and played with the little kitten that my Aunt Virginia had to press and convince my mother to allow me to take home from the final funeral, just the day before, in Boonsboro, Maryland.

I can recall there were several kittens they had, and my cousin, Laura, suggested that I might take one and I went inside to ask.

The immediate answer was “no” but I recall either being told to leave the room or stand outside and overhearing a conversation between my mother and my aunt. I do remember hearing my aunt tell my mother along the lines of: “this is all very hard on Eileen and having a kitten might be a help and a comfort.”

So. I suppose. I won. Yet another. Phyrric Victory. 

 
I got to take home a little black kitten, name it, only for my mother to confine it in a bathtub for most of its experience at 333 Tamara Circle (Ha! One of my mother’s mantras was repetition of our street address, along with my father’s first and last name, rather than saying “our home” or “my husband”) with the poor kitten making brief excursions into my bedroom and/or being permitted out to be handled when my friend Joyce visited, until the day I came home from driver’s ed that summer and discovered that while I was gone, my mother had found a “good home” for the cat.

__________

One of the first battles I took on with my mother after my father died was taking driver’s ed in summer school at Newark High. I’m wondering if one of the teachers at Christiana told me that I could do this.

I was clearly the age I should have done it, along with my classmates that spring semester, but I can clearly recall the immense argument in the home and my mother’s refusal to allow me to take driver’s ed.

Once my father had actually died of the stress of it all and I no longer had to protect him from angina pains during any confrontation with my mother’s demands, for which he would need to pop a nitroglycerin tablet under his tongue and walk away or zone out… my goal seemed to be dogged pursuit of normalcy.

By the first semester of my junior year I had managed to sign up for all kinds of classes that I desired to take rather than my mother’s vicarious living through me by forcing me into secretarial and business type classes.

So. Again. I won.

Another Phyrric Victory.

Forgetting all the terrible emotional upsets along the way where I could not assert myself fully, though, I must say, I would have been fully capable and insightful even at that tender age, at standing up against my mother’s control, if not for fear of pushing my father to his grave more quickly.

So that is an immense win, I suppose. 

Since he was now dead and buried, I got to start my path forward of being who I am and whom I want to be.

__________

Yesterday (April 14, 2022), was quite a day for me here.  There was an emotional combination of a number of immense weights and problems I have been dealing with and carrying for pretty much as long as I can recall in some form, and in my view, are all interrelated, that prompted me to take a full day off social media and dialogue with one or two very close friends in private…and also eventually led to a confounding, painful but needed disconnection with another individual who clearly had become unhelpful (understatement) in terms of empathetic and insightful support.

I was already in the book of Job, focused on several things, but in particular, how messenger after messenger came to him with waves of news that made his situation go from bad to worse, seemingly, or at least added more that he needed to process…. when… two days ago I was informed of other news, I am going to be a grandmother!

Yes. My younger son, has fathered twins. 

While for some this news might be consider of no real consequence – for me – it remains a lot to process… that my ‘daughter’ has ‘fathered’ twins and ‘she’ is going to be a mother and a good parent. 

But there are far more difficult parts of this story, than that part.

That simply seems to be an initial layer of icing on the proverbial cake…

I am still trying to understand what that means, in practical terms and otherwise. And I really don’t need judgement from others that make a number of presumptions about me – and what I think, feel, have done or not done – or otherwise.

What I do know is that my son does not believe I was a good mother nor worthy of connection and working through our relationship, with all the conflicting narratives and perceptions.

What this means is I will likely never see him, her or them or any of them or all of them again, nor hold and be part of the lives of these precious twin children, (and especially, my precious son), now in the womb of his/her partner. I would love to be part of their lives, and to meet this young woman.

But, I must accept the things I cannot control, and I must maintain my own healing and sense of dignity.

This is yet another death of dreams and personal wounding/rejection I am forced to accept and move forward from. And that is what prompted me to start this reflective writing on April 15, with the goal of finishing it today, on my 59th birthday.

But, I think it might be more interesting or hopefully helpful to focus on something else at least at the moment.

(April 15th) All of our experiences in some sense build like a snowball upon the course of our life’s journey.  So today, I find myself once again, this morning, trying to focus in on the next small things I can do which will continue to hopefully achieve a small sense of normal living.

I had quite the plethora of friends and a couple of family messaging, calling and helping me yesterday in private. 

Among every one of these genuine attempts to discover how to help in this crazy situation I am now in, there was something valuable I took away from each person that no dollar amount might be assigned to. Even the relationship that needfully ended, I took something extremely valuable and insightful away from.

I think of two talks I once heard – that “Everyone is Your Teacher” and that some people are like “South Stars…” meaning….the opposite of the guiding, comforting North Star in this beautiful yet difficult universe…

I think what we do is take away words that people speak to us. 

Words conjoined with pragmatic help such as prayer or other things are quite powerful.

Words spoken in the spirit of Job’s comforters provide us with different kinds of opportunities for growth and personal empowerment…and I will continue as I have time, to analyze those dialogues chapter by chapter…

Maybe I will survive this day (April 15th), too.

So this morning (April 15th), as I prepare for yet another day I will try to create normalcy amidst an immense jaw dropping amount of chaos and abnormalcy.

Surely there are a handful of people out there who would judge me and think ‘can you shut up already about your dad passing away and being buried the day before your 16th birthday?‘ Come on it’s been a lot of years.

What they don’t understand is the immense empowerment I get in articulating my story.

Yep all the gory details. 

Despite the rubber-neckers and naysayers, I’m a remarkable person.

I have always found the idea of the Phyrric Victory – as applicable to my type of situation or others wading through trauma, difficult situations and difficult people – quite an interesting concept. I first heard it applied to me and my situation by a counselor in my mid-twenties.

But the term used then was, Hollow Victory.

You fight so long for something with so many ill byproducts in the process, that once you ‘win,’ you wonder what does ‘winning’ (overcoming, healing, growing, etc) even mean or look like in all this…and...can I , will I or should I…even enjoy it?

After all THAT???