Tag Archives: #griefandloss

May 11, 2025 · 1:17 am

Mother’s day 2025…

This is the third Mother’s Day I can’t celebrate with my mom.

This is the third Mother’s Day I don’t get to call her, send her a card, cook her a meal, or do anything else that would honor her on this day.

This is the third Mother’s Day she’s been…gone.

I read once, I can’t remember where, that as we get older and have lost people we love, the holidays at first are hard. You don’t want to celebrate, or can’t, either because of physical, emotional, or psychological reasons. But as time passes, it reportedly gets easier, the pain of the loss lessens, and you can start to feel like commemorating the special days again.

I’m here to call bullshit on that theory. It’s been three years and I feel the physical, emotional, and psychological pain of my mother’s loss as hard now as I did that very first year.

Yes, there are days when I don’t think about her and how she suffered those last twelve hours of her life.

Yes, there are days where I don’t reach for the phone to tell her some good news, remembering she already knows because she heard about it in heaven.

Yes, there are days when I forget about all the times we fought and remember one incident that made us both laugh.

Yes, there are even days I don’t have a thought about her at all.

But those happen on typical days, not holidays. Not days of remembrance. Not days devoted to being a mom.

The last four years of my mother’s life, from the time Covid invaded our world, I cooked for my parents, paid their bills, bathed my mother because getting into the tub was a tragedy waiting to happen for her with her hips, and generally took care of them in their own home. They wanted their independence -as much as they could have – and there was no way I was going to take it away from them unless absolutely necessary. Which it became in the end.

On holidays, I would prepare a huge meal for them to celebrate over because my mother loved holidays. On Mother’s day, it was always the same meal: roast beef, mashed potatoes, pearl onions, and chocolate cake for dessert – her favorite meal.

I haven’t made a roast beef since she died. Seems silly, but I just…can’t. I can’t bring myself to cook something I know she loved and then not have her around to taste it.

The following quote has been attributed to the actor Jim Carrey, but the Internet “says” there is no proof he said it. I truthfully don’t care who said it. It explains my grief in a much better way than I can. My hope is that, as the quote says, I will find healing in time. On this third Mother’s Day without my mom, here, with me, in the physical world, I still haven’t been able to heal the wound of her loss…

“Grief is not just an emotion — it’s an unraveling, a space where something once lived but is now gone. It carves through you, leaving a hollow ache where love once resided.

In the beginning, it feels unbearable, like a wound that will never close. But over time, the raw edges begin to mend. The pain softens, but the imprint remains — a quiet reminder of what once was. The truth is, you never truly “move on.” You move with it. The love you had does not disappear; it transforms. It lingers in the echoes of laughter, in the warmth of old memories, in the silent moments where you still reach for what is no longer there. And that’s okay.

Grief is not a burden to be hidden. It is not a weakness to be ashamed of. It is the deepest proof that love existed, that something beautiful once touched your life. So let yourself feel it. Let yourself mourn. Let yourself remember.

There is no timeline, no “right” way to grieve. Some days will be heavy, and some will feel lighter. Some moments will bring unexpected waves of sadness, while others will fill you with gratitude for the love you were lucky enough to experience.

Honor your grief, for it is sacred. It is a testament to the depth of your heart. And in time, through the pain, you will find healing — not because you have forgotten, but because you have learned how to carry both love and loss together.”

If you have your mother still with you on this commemorative day to moms, be thankful. Hug her. Honor her. Kiss her silly like she once kissed you when you were a child. Do something that shows her what she means to you.And don’t let your kids ever forget their grandma is a mom, too.

I wish, with all my heart, I could do everyone of those things today.

~peg

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March 18, 2024 · 12:15 am

One Year…

How is that possible? I asked myself this when I woke up this morning. It was just yesterday she died.

It’s said your life can change in the blink of an eye, a single heartbeat, the flap of a butterfly’s wings, once.

All true.

What’s never discussed is how that change impacts your life.

A year ago I lost the person I was more closely connected to than any other.

The very first heartbeat I heard was my mother’s.

The very first voice I heard and recognized was my mother’s.

The very first smell I recognized was my mother’s natural scent.

I grew inside her. She was, truthfully, my everything for the nine months I gestated. Her body fed me, and nourished me. Her heart beat for me. Her lungs breathed for me.

Without her, I simply wouldn’t be.

And there’s something I’ve never thought about or considered until today.

She truly was everything to me; my very existence.

She was there for me every day thereafter, guiding me, caring for me, feeding me, and keeping me safe. Until I didn’t need her help any longer. Until I was able to do all that for myself.

Or until I thought I was so grown up I could do it for myself without any help.

How is it possible it’s been a year?

But then, I remember everything that’s happened this past year, all the grief, all the horrible moments of indecision and mental clouding; the pain – physical and emotional; the way I had to grow up in an instant at the age of 62 and do things I never thought I’d need to do as someone’s child.

Or wanted to.

I look back on this year – God, is it only a year? – and think of everything my mother missed. The birth of her great-granddaughter; her 56th wedding anniversary; the way her husband bounced back from his 2 surgeries.

I look back on this year and think, I can’t believe in the span of three weeks I buried my mother, faced a second surgery in as many weeks with my stepfather, sold their house, assumed guardianship financially and emotionally of my stepfather, settled my mother’s estate, as small as it was, got rid of all their possessions – except for the ones that meant something to me – made all the financial decisions for both of them, which I will continue doing until my stepfather joins my mother, and managed to still write 6 books and not lose myself completely in paralytic grief.

I look back on this past year with surprise and real regret when I think about how much I didn’t know about my mother and my stepfather’s lives, both before they were married and after. About how much I missed because she kept things so close to her vest and never thought saying them aloud was the right thing to do. About the secrets that unfolded, slowly, but assuredly, after she died. About how much she suffered, mentally and emotionally, throughout her life.

Real regret. I think sometimes it edges out the grief.

But then…grief returns.

A year, in the big scheme of things, isn’t that long. Considering the average person can now live beyond 90, one-ninetieth of that seems so small an amount of time.

But then, consider all that’s happened in this year and maybe, not so small after all.

I was asked how I feel today, one year since my mother died. How am I doing? How am I handling the anniversary?

I’ll tell you how I feel, how I’m doing…I’m…surviving. That is, after all, all I can do. One foot in front of the other; one day at a time. All the ridiculous cliches that mean nothing and everything.

I’m surviving.

Every day I’m a little stronger; a little more able to get through the day without blackness circling my heart.

Every day I move through the pain a bit better; faster. It doesn’t incapacitate me any longer. It doesn’t paralyze me, or make me numb. Some days, the pain is actually just a memory, not a living, breathing entity.

And every day I get back to being just a little bit more…me.

One year…

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February 18, 2024 · 12:56 am

11 months…

Here’s what they don’t tell you happens when you lose your mother.

  1. the grief is, at times, physically debilitating to the point you can’t move, breathing is difficult, and you lose all mental focus.

2. you will reach for the phone too many times to ask your mom something, only to realize at the last moment she is no longer around to answer your question. Same goes for when you have something fun you want to share.

3. internal anger builds like a volcano, bubbling and churning and getting hotter until it needs to release and erupts into the air, covering you and everyone around you with the ash of incapacitating emotions.

4. things you never worried about before now become looming, potentially life-altering events, so much so, the worry begins to blind you to reality.

5. you will lose sleep ruminating on everything you ever said or did to make your mom angry and wish you could take back every single word.

6. you will have entire conversations in your head about past moments – both good and bad – with your mom.

7. Foods, smells, and certain phrases will trigger you into a downward spiral of emotions.

8. the holidays are awful.

9. Mother’s Day is soul-crushing.

10. you think you’ll never feel like a normal person again, or ever be able to get your joy back.

11. the worry and dread that you will lose another loved one, suddenly and without warning, is overwhelming.

I’ve gone through every single one of these phases so far, these past 11 months…some, multiple times during a single day.

Would I have been able to deal with them better had I known they would occur? Most likely, not. Sometimes, forewarned isn’t forearmed because you simply don’t know how you are going to react to a situation until it is upon you.

Grief is a living, breathing, all-consuming entity that takes over every aspect of your life. Tack on guilt to that and you’ve got the equivalent of an emotional tsunami.

There have been so many times in the past 11 months when I’ve gone through a gamut of emotions in a single day. Hell, a single hour. Rage. Horror. Guilt. Crying jags – really ugly ones. The kind no other human should witness you go through.

I’ve been mean to people when they ask how I’m doing and I just want to scream at them, “HOW THE F**K DO YOU THINK I’M DOING??!!”

I’ve pulled out of author and book-signing events at the last minute because I knew it was going to be too much for me and I didn’t want to make a fool of myself with my unscheduled crying.

I’ve pulled away from friends because I didn’t want anyone to ask me how I was doing because…see above.

I’ve had difficulty writing my happy, love-forever stories because I just can’t find the happy in me, or on the page, some days.

I’m astute enough of a health professional to know that the best friend of grief is depression and the two hold hands more often than not when one is dealing with loss. I’m also enough of a stubborn bull Taurus to not seek help but to attempt to resolve that depression on my own.

And right now the logical part of my brain is asking, “How’s that going for ya?”

11 months… unbelievable.

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January 18, 2024 · 12:23 am

10 months…

I’ve finally started going through all the stuff I saved from my mother’s house before I sold it. I packed a box of things I intended to go through at one point to see if they were keepers or tossers. Up until now, I haven’t had the emotional fortitude to sort through it all.

Today, 10 months on, I figured it was time.

I already went through all the photographs last month. The box now is mostly filled with a few books she and my stepfather had accumulated throughout the years and some odds and ends.

What I typically call junk.

There was an ancient health and diseases book they must have picked up at a garage or tag sale. The copyright page is missing but the book looks old enough to have been printed in maybe the 60s or 70s. Several afflictions were outlined in yellow marker. Prostate disease; low magnesium; shaking legs syndrome; digestive issues; lower flank pain. I could tell, just from these, it was my stepfather who used this book as a health bible.

I’ve mentioned this previously, but my mother hadn’t seen a doctor in almost 50 years before she broke her first hip. She wasn’t hypochondriacal like my stepfather was. Is.

Another book was one I’d given them several years ago about cats. It was mainly a picture book. This one I know was my mother’s. The woman adored cats. If they’d been able to care for a pet, I’m sure they would have had a few. As it was, they could barely care for themselves.

I moved on to the pictures after making a book toss and donate pile. The health book went in the toss one. No surprise, there.

My mother’s living room wall had been awash in photographs of me, my daughter, and my grandson. I told you last month about the scotch tape issues. I’m still shuddering at all the tape I had to remove. So many pictures had to be trashed because they were damaged from the tape.

My mother was – if not a full one-blown one, then a mild– hoarder. Mostly, it was tchotchkes that had no intrinsic value, items she found at the Senior Center for twenty-five cents or at a garage sale for a dime.

She always said to me when she got something new, “This is worth so much more than I paid for it. Look it up. You’ll see.”

I had no idea where I was supposed to look up the value of a coffee mug of Garfield the cat with a visible chip in the handle.

Or where I could find the resale value of a postcard of the Statue of Liberty someone had put into a plastic frame from the Dollar Store.

And just why did she think a ceramic dinner plate with the slogan Don’t Worry, Be Happy and a smiley face was worth anything of monetary substance?

It finally dawned on me the value of everything she’d bought had worth to her and that was how she – in her mind – justified it.

She loved cats and when I was growing up we had several, including a red ginger cat named Buff. Hence, the Garfield mug.

Her parents came over at a time when they had to pass through Ellis Island and stop at the Statue of Liberty to legally enter the country. Hence, the framed postcard.

Despite her horrible life, she always had upbeat expectations and loved to smile. Hence…well, you get it.

I wish that at the time I was so concerned about all these THINGS junking up her small trailer and which I told her were doing so, I could have had the insight I do now to her motivations.

She’d lost so much in life – her father at a young age, one sister to suicide, her first marriage, a baby in utero; multiple jobs and financial setbacks; and the legitimate practice of the faith she adored. It was no wonder she attached value to worthless (in my eyes) items.

In hers, they were priceless.

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December 18, 2023 · 12:02 am

9 months…

9 months

Why do elderly people do strange things?

Well, to us, they’re strange. Apparently, not to the person doing them.

Case in point: my mother was a scotch tape addict.

I know, right? So weird.

She put scotch tape on everything. EVERYTHING. Every picture in her house, every piece of so-called art on the walls. The plastic placemats on her kitchen table were scotch-taped down to the table. Unmovable. Unwashable because you couldn’t pick them up to get the food crap off them. Whenever I visited weekly, I would routinely wash the place mats with a Lysol wet-one. An entire week’s worth of food crap covered that wipe. My mother would always – always – say, “I just cleaned that this morning.”

Sure you did, Mom.

Sigh.

I had a bitch of a time getting that tape off the table after she died just so I could sell the table with the house. No one was going to buy a kitchen table with TAPED placemats. No one with any kind of home design background, anyway.

 Every free-standing item, or item on the walls, possessed scotch tape. Some of it was covered in it.

I’d given her numerous photos in beautiful picture frames over the years of my daughter. The frames weren’t cheap ones, either. The photos in them were secured appropriately as you’d imagine they’d be in an expensive frame, behind glass and with at least two pieces of paper or cardboard behind the picture before the frame was secured.

Some were wall frames, complete with wire hangers to make it easy to place them. Most were desk frames, freestanding with the triangular backpiece that allowed the frame to stand on its own.

When I emptied her house , I pulled everything down off the walls and tossed whatever was on the furniture, in drawers, closets, etc, in several big Rubbermaid containers, intent on going through everything at one point.

One point came last week.

I started with the photographs.

Every frame that had hung on the wall had scotch tape securing the back of it. The frames, as I said, weren’t cheap and they had the little obnoxious closures you can only open with the blunt edge of a knife or something sharp in order to put the picture in place. The perimeter of every frame was secured shut with tape. When I removed it all and then opened the frames, she’d also taped the pictures to the blank paper or cardboard inside of it. And I mean TAPED. Underneath the picture, over it, on it. Some of the photos were ruined because I couldn’t get the tape off easily and wound up tearing them.

I moved to the frames that were freestanding.

Do I need to tell you I found the same thing? In the cases where there was that triangular piece on the back to allow the frame to stand, she’d taped it open so that when I went to fold it closed to store it, I couldn’t.

So much tape.

The weirdest place I found tape – this time it was tan masking tape – was on the counters in her small kitchen area. Apparently, there was a gap between the countertops and edge of the sink and counterboard and they didn’t fit snuggly in place, causing about a half-inch opening. Food and water would routinely drop or drip down into the gap, so my mother had the bright idea to put masking tape along the entire counter, the back wall, and along the drawers underneath. When I noticed this once when she was alive she told me she did it to prevent ants from coming in.

At the exact moment she said this I spotted two ants crawling along the backsplash wall.

I told her I would buy ant spray, spray the area, and that I’d remove the tape.

She forbade me. This exploded into a huge argument with her becoming extremely agitated and verbally abusive, telling me I didn’t live in her home and couldn’t dictate how she ran it.

I tried pointing out how dumb and unattractive it looked having masking tape along the counters. I really should have just kept my mouth shut. I realized this later when she erupted and I mean ERUPTED in a screaming hissy fit. She accused me of always looking down on her and how she lived. She stated I thought I was better than she and my stepfather were because I’d married a man with money. That was an old complaint I’d heard throughout my marriage. It never failed to hurt me.

She accused me of a various list of offenses, starting with accusing me of always hating that we were poor when I was a kid and ending with the phrase, “I should have sent you to your father to live when you were a child.”

At one point she wheeled over to where I was standing by the kitchen sink, inspecting the stained and sticky masking tape and rammed her wheelchair into my leg in an attempt to get me to move away from the offending counter.

It worked.

I left  – in pain and furious -without saying goodbye, slammed out of the house and shot off in a snit.

Real mature, I know.

I was 60 at the time.

As I drove the 35 miles back to my own home I realized why she’d reacted the way she had.

All her life her family had looked down on her. On her life choices, her marriage, the fact she never learned how to drive, or traveled, or had any friends. They called her stupid, dumb, moronic. Her mother’s comments when she was alive were always cruel.

My mother interpreted my concern, incorrectly, as just another person in her life denigrating how she lived and who she was.

When this realization came to me, I felt horrible. I hadn’t meant to make her upset – I never did, but so often her inability to control her emotions just boiled over and she reacted without ever looking at a situation with logic and thought instead of hurt and the need to get back, or lash out, at the person.

Years of study as a psychiatric nurse had taught me to recognize and understand why this behavior occurred.

Decades of being her daughter and I still hadn’t learned how to help her control it.

When I got home, I called her immediately. She answered the phone in a subdued voice, fresh with tears. I apologized and tried to explain I’d meant no disrespect. She was right, I said. It was her home and she could live in it any way she wanted. As long, I added, she was safe.

After several sniffs, she thanked me, then, like a light switch being turned from off to on, like the entire emotional situation had never happened, her voice brightened and, in that singsong way she had when she was pretending to be happy,  she told me that they had just eaten one of the lunches I prepared for them and that it was delicious.

I told her I was glad. She said, “My love to you all,” and then we rang off.

I took a three-hour nap after that because I was so wrung out.

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November 23, 2023 · 12:00 am

A non-thankful Thanksgiving…

Another holiday first. While I didn’t spend Thanksgiving with my parents for many years, this year’s day is particularly unsettling.

Since my mother broke her hip the first time, I would deliver a complete Thanksgiving dinner for the two of them every year. My mother loved turkey, so I’d roast a 10-pounder, slice it, then put it into containers so they could portion out what they wanted. My homemade gravy, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, sweet stuffing, warm biscuits, and a fresh apple pie made up the meal. I delivered it all on the Wednesday prior to the holiday with the caveat they not break into it until the day.

They never listened.

I’d get a phone call every Wednesday, early evening, with my mother claiming it was the best meal she’d had all year.

I had to bite my tongue every year because I’d specifically asked them not to eat it until the following day, the actual holiday.

But, my mother was my mother and had a mind of her own.

I know this was a control thing on my part. I didn’t want them to do anything I hadn’t asked them to do. What I tended to forget every year was that the holiday was just a date on the calendar to both my mother and stepfather. It meant nothing, in reality, since they’d spend it alone, watching the Macy’s parade and just sitting around the house. They didn’t attend Thanksgiving church services ( perish the thought!); they had no friends to spend the day with, and I was always off to my in-laws for the few days of the holiday week.

The guilt I feel now that I never spent any real holiday time with them those last few years is monumental. What would it have cost me to go to their home, even if it was on the morning of the holiday to have breakfast? I could have delivered their meal then instead of the day before and then not gotten mad when they ate it before they were supposed to.

And how stupid is it to even say when they were supposed to? Seriously. They were grown-ass adults and could do what they wanted, eat when they wanted, no matter who thought otherwise.

This year, as always, hubby and I are going to spend the day with his family. My daughter and her growing family will join us.

And I have no one to cook for this year. No turkey and all the trimmings to make and then deliver. No salvos to wait until the actual day to eat it all. A plea that will not be paid heed.

 I will go and visit my stepfather in the nursing home on Wednesday and most likely bring him a chocolate turkey. He will spend his first Thanksgiving as a widower with a bunch of strangers, eating institutional turkey and trimmings.

The guilt continues to grow, kids. Each and every day…

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November 18, 2023 · 12:54 am

8 months…

All this time I’ve been waiting for my stepfather to release his anger at me – the anger I know he holds for me putting him in the nursing home; the anger I know he holds for believing my mother died of negligence; the anger he holds because of the loss of his independence.

I’ve been waiting for him to unleash it all on me, and today I realized…I’m the one who’s angry.

Furious, truth be told.

I never got to say goodbye to my mother.

If not for my husband rushing to her bedside when I couldn’t get there, she would have died alone. I am so furious at that.

So furious.

I’m furious she spent her life in what most would believe was a poverty state. Never having any money for anything other than the bare essentials; never doing what she wanted with her life instead of always having to find a job she could physically and mentally perform when she was so damn exhausted it was a wonder she could stand upright most of the time.

She bought clothes and shoes in the local Goodwill – shoes that were always the wrong size for her. Her foot measured at an 8 but she bought whatever she could afford, many times, squeezing into a 7. And she wondered why her feet always hurt.

I hate the fact she only saw her great-grandson once and that she’ll never meet her great-granddaughter.

I could scream at the top of my lungs about how unfair life was to her, how people took advantage of her – even those who claimed to love her, myself included. I could smash something against a wall and shatter it with the amount of fury inside me for how her own mother mistreated her for her entire life.

Who am I kidding? What I want to smash is my grandmother.

I’m so damn angry she never got to see Ireland – her dream.

I’m so damn angry she never knew how much I truly loved her – loved her – despite our tortured our relationship was at times.

And I’m so, so mad I never told her the extent of my love.

All this time I’ve been the one sitting on a mountain of anger, waiting for it to unleash.

And it finally has…

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October 18, 2023 · 12:18 am

7 months…

On TikTok the other day I saw a video and had to stop and watch it. After I did, I saved it because it spoke to me on so many levels.

The video was the 7 questions you should ask your mother before she…dies. I still have trouble saying, writing, and thinking that word in relation to my mother.

These are the questions:

  1. What is your happiest memory of us ( either you and your mother, or the family as a whole)?
  2. What is the nicest thing I have ever done for you?
  3. What is the one thing you always want me to remember after you are gone?
  4. What was the first year of motherhood like for you?
  5. What do you wish most for me?
  6. Is there anything in our family that is a secret?
  7. What are the best and worst things about getting older?

Here is the saddest part of this entire exercise: I only know the answer to one of these questions. And truthfully? I wish I didn’t.

I can certainly speculate on the rest of them, but I’ll never have a definitive answer, which, for the control freak in me, is just devastating.

7 months…feels like yesterday.

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September 18, 2023 · 12:09 am

6 months today…

August 18, 2023

6 months today.

I’d like to say it’s gone by quickly.

I’d like to say I’ve started moving on from my grief and guilt.

I’d like to say I’ve accepted everything that happened and am now at peace with it.

I’d like to say I still don’t have periods where I suddenly burst into tears, or feel my heart pounding like a drum line marching o n a football field.

I’d like to say I am moving on. That I’m not paralyzed at times with indecision, or making choices I will either come to regret or instantly do.

I’d really like to say my life has finally gotten manageable again.

But I can’t.

I can’t say any of those things and be telling the truth.

What I can say is that I am taking it one day – sometimes one hour – at a time.

What I can say, truthfully, is that talking about it helps. Saying my feelings aloud not only validates them but fills me with a strange sense of purpose.

What I can say, is that each day is slightly better than the day before.

What I’ll never be able to say is that I don’t miss my mother.

Because I do. Every hour of every day.

Despite our tortured relationship…maybe even because of it…I miss her.

Terribly.

I miss the crazy malapropisms she unconsciously made almost daily.

I miss the way she’d ask me a thousand questions about the same thing.

I miss the way she referred to herself in third person when she was speaking hypothetically.

Does it make me sound crazy to say I miss fighting with her? Verbally sparring with her? Getting her to understand a different point of view than just hers?

I’m sad she only got to meet her great-grandson once.

I’m sad she’ll never meet her great-granddaughter when she arrives this winter.

I’m sad she’s not around to cook for anymore.

I’m just…sad.

6 months today.

The time flew by in a blink and yet dragged mercilessly.

6 months today…

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August 18, 2023 · 12:30 am

5 months…

I’ve been remembering the weirdest stuff lately.

Most of it has to do with how my mother’s mental status was tenuous during my teen years and my early twenties.

I don’t remember her as being angry or lashing out so much before I hit my teens, which coincided with her starting perimenopause. I understand the correlation now between off-the-charts emotional swings and her acting out behaviors. At thirteen I didn’t have a clue what was going on with her, I just knew she was craycray-to-the-max.

There was the time she got so mad at me over something I have no memory of doing or saying that she threw a hot slice of pizza she was holding at me. Hot, like just out of the oven hot. And, yes, the same infamous oven of the Easter ham-on-fire incident. Luckily, her aim was awful and the slice barely grazed me in the chest, which was covered with clothing. If she’d aimed higher, it would have landed across my face and the resulting burn would have been awful.

Decades later, while I was giving her a shower, I happened to mention how menopause-induced-insomnia was kicking my butt. I asked if she had any problems during her menopause (I already knew the answer!) and she said no. For whatever reason, call me a masochist, I brought up the pizza-tossing incident. I truly couldn’t remember what I’d said or done to make her throw it at me.

My mother’s entire face changed. Now, remember: she was naked as the day she was born, sitting on the shower chair, with shampoo in her hair. She looked up at me, lips pulled into a thin, hard line, eyes narrowing, elongating the wrinkles at her temples even more. In a pissed-off tone I remembered well from my teen years, she said, “You were such a little shit.”

“Such a shit that you needed to throw a slice of pizza at me?”

Without any remorse – not even the hint of it – she replied, “It was either that or throw you outta the house. Pack you off to your bastard of a father.”

That shut me up pretty quick. I was still underage at the time of the pizza toss, so this was a potential threat she could have made good on because I wasn’t old enough to be on my own, out in the world yet. Having to go live with my father was something I never, ever wanted to do.

Not that he would have taken me in, mind you, because he wouldn’t have. There was no way on God’s green earth he was going to do something that would cramp the lifestyle he’d carved out for himself and his second wife, and having a moody, overweight teenager thrown at him wasn’t in his playbook for living the high life.

It hadn’t been when I was a baby, either, evidenced by the fact he’d so easily walked away from his parental, fatherly responsibilities.

But still, the threat was a valid one at that time in my life and she threw it out at me often. I recognize now it was her inadequate-parenting-skills attempt to get me to behave.

Has any child ever really behaved when threats are aimed their way?

Here’s the thing, though. Decades after that incident, my mother still had such a visceral memory of me making her do something as egregious as throw hot food at me. I can’t even imagine doing something like that to my daughter, no matter what the cause or reason for my anger.

The woman’s memory was long. And she rarely forgot when someone slighted her – whether they had or hadn’t.

I stopped talking about the incident right then because I could see her memories were getting her agitated. I knew if I pushed she’d be yelling and overly emotional before long, so I switched topics to my grandson.

She brightened up immediately, the bad memory relegated to the back corners and recesses of her aging mind.

Wish I’d had that insight into manipulating negative behaviors when I was a teen. Those years might have gone a little better.

Alas…

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