I notice my close friends seem to tip toe around me this week. Careful in discussions and references. It is the hardest time of the year for me. Again.
Mother's Day.
It's a day every year that my adult alienated sons get to punish me...for things I did not do...and for loving them too much.
I want to thank both Jason, now 44, and Jared, now 41, for another Mother’s Day I will never know if I can live through. For teaching me of the limitless love my heart can hold. For making me a mother.
My two sons taught me all about love. And I will always love them - though now they bleed their alienating issues into the next generation, as I have four grandchildren that are not allowed to know I exist. The mourning that never ends. There are no words for certain feelings. I live with a vast dark hole within me - they are missing from me.
I'm not with Jason or Jared anymore. I'm not in their thoughts, their memories, their prayers or good wishes. I will not receive Mother's Day cards nor messages of love. I will not proudly display drawings from my grandchildren, Logan, Lucas, Chase or Lara, because I will not be gifted such treasures.
A while ago, Chase and Lara's other grandmother (Randi B. of Millburn, 10 minutes from where I reside) told a mutual acquaintance that she liked not sharing the grandchildren with me. For that, I have no words. Children deserve more love, not less. She actually goes along with inflicting this harm.
So, I will not be there this Mother's Day, again.
But I remember when I was there...and the moment I became a Mom.
I was there....
When my son, Jason was born, almost 5 weeks premature. My first baby. To this day, I am not sure if he "came" early due to my physical makeup, or from his father hitting me and pushing me down on a bed, with tremendous force, only hours prior.
December 18, 1981. I was watching "Dallas." I wasn't feeling well. Then came the cramping. I wasn't due until weeks away. I was terrified. I told Robert, the husband, and he told me to be quiet. He told me not to call the doctor because, according to him, it was just because I had eaten Chinese food that night. I knew differently.
I phoned the doctor only seconds before my water broke. Robert started yelling at me that I was going to stain the apartment carpeting. He shoved towels at me.
Getting me down the elevator and into my little Datsun 280Z, he continued to yell at me that I was going to stain everything - because I was "leaking." He shoved another towel under me, telling me I had better not stain the seats.
I had no family to call. My parents and sister had abandoned me years prior at that point in my life. All I had was Robert, fully dosed up with his cocaine habit, screaming at me on the way to Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville, New York. I did not know what to do, other than cry...and pray.
To make a long story shorter, I made heart wrenching requests to God. Please, to just let my baby live. I was already warned that the baby's condition was dangerous. His original due date was January 28. It was December 18th.
I was registered quickly and taken to a hospital room. After a few hours, now December 19th, Robert said he was tired and wanted to go home to sleep. He left me there, alone.
I remember being there for hours and the pain of labor. After 11 hours of labor, I was eventually anesthetized and given an emergency C section.
I awoke to be told I had a son. He weighed only a little over 4 pounds and was on a respirator. The doctor told me. Then Robert entered my hospital room and gave me more information. My son was to be ambulanced down to NYU Hospital for intensive care. They had a special Preemie unit.
Dazed, making deals with God, praying until I was empty, and helpless more than ever...I saw my son for the first time as he was being wheeled in an incubator to an awaiting ambulance. I was restricted to my bed.
I asked Robert to please go with our baby, Jason. He didn't want to. After Jason was transported, I cried and cried. I was placed in a room with another new mother - but one who had her baby with her. I felt a severe sense of grief every time I'd glance at this new mother and her newborn. I asked Robert to please get me my own room. He refused. He said I didn't need my own room. So I stayed for a week watching a stranger's family.
One afternoon, Robert returned (no, he did not visit me each day). He looked at me as I asked how our baby was doing. I was begging for information and updates constantly.
Robert laughed at me with a smirk. He said, "How will you even know if he's alive? I could tell you anything." He laughed some more and left my room to play pool back at our apartment building with his brother-in-law, another coke head at the time. I asked for photos of Jason, assuming Robert was at least visiting there every day. My husband laughed at me. He loved to torture me.
So that is the day Jason was born. The day I became a mother. Jason taught me so much. I was on my own, no manual, no baby nurse, no mother to guide me....and no husband to partner with me - Robert acted like he couldn't care less.
Years went by, and I will firmly state I did the best I could. Three years later, Jared joined our "family." My sons were my world.
I made sure I gave them everything I never had with my own mother. Sometimes you can learn how to be from the people you don't want to be like.
And I had to make up for the father that showed no interest in them until over a decade later when I wanted a divorce.
I read to them each night. Sang to them as much as possible, too. We went to Mommy and Me music classes. I brought them to the Y to learn to swim when they were babies. I was the one that was there for them. Always. Sleeping on the floor next to their beds when they were sick, not leaving their side. Being an assistant soccer coach for years, because I felt badly that they did not have the kind of father their friends had.
I did everything I could to compensate for their father's behavior. But when I was abused, yes, they saw it. I could not tell their father, "Let's take this beating to the other room." I live with that.
I'll always remember how Jared attended a court ordered psychiatric appointment with me during the custody/divorce and told the Doctor, "Everyone wanted her (me) as their Mom. I thought she was a Goddess. But my father opened my eyes." Jared at 15 years of age - the hurt he bestowed on me left me breathless.
May God continue to watch over my sons. Unfortunately, I don't believe they can be whole or happy until they confront the past and their part in it...until they acknowledge their own father's abusive behavior…until they stop hurting me.
And as for my grandchildren, I'm not giving up on them. Some day they will find me. I pray. And I will continue to write and share my story. For now, that's all I can do.
I am not with my sons now. But I can say with certainty that no mother could have been closer to her sons...from birth until their teen years when their father successfully brainwashed them to hate me.
Would I do it all over again....be their mother? Even though the unbearable pain in my heart feels like it will be the death of me on most days?
Love is worth losing it. To welcome life is guarantee loss when it comes to abusive relationships. Abusers use children as weapons of destruction, especially when you try to end the abuse by leaving them.
On every Mother's Day I grieve the loss of what was....and I grieve the loss of what isn't. I can't be with them, but I wish I weren't without them.
I know I would be the greatest Grandmother.
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