Music will be difficult for me to digest when my mother dies.
Music and liquor are the bonding points between my mother and I, and I don't distance myself from our relationship to music. It isn't even that we have the same taste, exactly. There are certainly songs and bands that we both love and a certain flavor of music that we both enjoy more than I understand (80's hair band ballads being one of them). The real connection we have together over all of this isn't about bands and genres though, it is about our relationship to music and how we share it. I started making CDs with themes where every song meant something when I was in my early teens, shortly after moving in to my dad's house permanently. I made CDs where there was one song for every month of a year, each song emphasizing what my life was for that particular month. I made CDs where each song was dedicated to a person in my life. I made CDs where each song was dedicated to my childhood, my parents, my friends, my future...all sorts of things. I sought to take music and turn it in to memories.
It wasn't until recently that I learned that my mother had done this exact same thing, to a T. She made cassette tapes and dedicated each song to one of her sisters. She compiled songs to represent every year she spent with my dad, songs about her children and set lists for when she used to dance. Other dancers had set lists with songs they enjoyed and felt they could dance to, but my mother exclusively did themed sets. I love this about her. I adore that she felt the desire somewhere in her to have "angel" sets, "wistful traveler" sets, and "hot mess" sets. Considering how bizarre and unnecessary this is, it is even more impressive that she managed to make them all evocative. She could dance to "Angel" by Aerosmith and follow it up by a tonally opposite "Black Angel" by The Cult and she kept this up for years before she quit.
I know what songs she associates with her marriage to my father, her pregnancy with me, my birth, my growing up, my moving away...and I can't help but see it as a kind of gift. I get to experience it from her perspective and gain some kind of portal in to her soul- something I will always crave but never totally feel satisfied with, no matter how many stories I hear of her when she was younger. Every Christmas since 2008 we give each other a mix CD and detail why we put each song on there. It's allowed me to share what is going with my life and in turn receive a small piece of her past, as her songs are almost always dedicated to memories or people from well before my brother was born.
My mother amazes me in a lot of ways. I often find myself in awe when I think of her in this light. This confuses people, and I know that- that I could have a fondness for my mother as a woman and just set aside her role as m mother for a while. They have a right to be confused or defensive of me, and at times I too am baffled because some days it is forced, yes...and others it feels natural to love her this way- as a half fantasy woman from the 90's I've heard of and seen in moments but hardly got to know in person.
I strive to get to know this woman, from time to time, but there is so much to dig through to get there at this point. She has lost so much of her edge and it gets a little harder to see every year. Her memory is shot, she loses track of her sentences half way through, she struggles with even the lamest grasp on an every day conversation, her eyes perpetually squinting through her high and her words always slurred. These are feelings I didn't expect to feel for another 40 years. It's hard to realize that her mind slips away like this- that her sharp wit and humor that I've known gets more and more lost in paranoia, outrage, and a drunken stupor. My mother is incredibly smart- she used to study history and read often, but more and more I see her left behind and talked down to in family discussions because she is so, so lost. Her points are circular to a point where an outsider may legitimately bank on her suffering from some sort of early onset dementia or stroke-brain.
There is a lot going on there, and it breaks my heart more than I can admit to myself. I want to see her more, but there is always disappointment. Disappointment and pity, which is almost worse. She cries every time I see her- gets all weepy about how her baby left her and how she is a bad mother. I can't indulge this, and I don't. I haven't in a long time. But it is so hard not to humor her sometimes because I know if I could just reach out and assure her everything is ok, maybe she can die believing this. I want her to die believing that, I just don't know how to help any more.
I don't harbour the same self-hatred as some of my peers do, but I know that self hatred best when I'm drinking alone amongst a group of friends and sometime after the third or fourth drink I start to get sloppy, obnoxious, lame and I start tripping up. I become so embarrassed and self-loathing that I drink another in hopes of blurring this vision, and so it goes. I've gotten a lot better at this in the last few months, and I'm proud of that- but it's always there. I feel the pity in myself that I see in others while they watch my mother stumble through a family dinner.
But, again, I love my mother as the woman she is, if not necessarily as my mother. I love her the way one might feel a strong affection and connection to a great ancestor. I love when I learn about little things that we share- the way we look and laugh the same, our type-A personality traits, our love for party planning and bringing people together, how we read the same books and are endlessly sentimental. Even the things I don't like about myself- my fear of driving, my relationship to liquor, my easy crying...even these things I take some gross pride in sharing with my mother. She is a part of me, and this may always be a difficult concept and realization for me.
My mother was not a good mother, but she tried. She really did, even if she was selfish at times and ill equip. It's a hard truth to swallow because it's so much easier to just resent her for what she did. She did a lot of cruel things, but the hardest thing of all is that I know in my heart of hearts she did these things absolutely believing she was doing what was best. I don't blame my family for intervening and shaming her, she deserves this. All I'm saying is that there is no evil in her heart- only awful, dangerous tunnel vision. I sympathize with her in terms of her divorce, too. She was in the wrong, absolutely, but it must have been difficult to divorce my father. All sympathy went his direction, including all of the sympathy of her family. To this day, there are dinners that my father is invited to and not my mother despite him being divorced from the family two decades ago. My mother is a very problematic person, this is undeniable.
And yet, again I can't help but lap of every story heard and every picture seen of her when she was younger. She was beautiful, smart, determined to make a difference in this world, flush with joy and popular with her friends as the "mother" of the group. She gives the most thoughtful gifts. My mother is incredibly generous, too- she used to regularly house friends down on their luck and feed the homeless home cooked casseroles. It will be hard when she dies. She will leave a lot of complicated relationships in her wake. It is not only I that struggles to love her as she really is- her sisters, mother, and other children are in the same boat. She is a part of me, hard as I try to shake off our past together.
Music will be the hardest, though. Distant as we are, music brings me closer to her and most importantly it brings me close to all of the things I love and often romanticize about her. I've dedicated many songs to my mother throughout my life, but only one still stands up and that is Billy Joel's "She's Always a Woman to Me". Literally every lyric is applicable and I find myself in these embarrassing warm tears when I hear it. Music may be the only connection I have left to my mother- the rest is merely romantic images, strategic distance, and pity. I don't know what it will be like when she dies, all I know is that music will have a different taste for me forever following it.
"She can kill with a smile, she can wound with her eyes
She can ruin your faith with her casual lies
And she only reveals what she wants you to see
She hides like a child
But she's always a woman to me"
Music and liquor are the bonding points between my mother and I, and I don't distance myself from our relationship to music. It isn't even that we have the same taste, exactly. There are certainly songs and bands that we both love and a certain flavor of music that we both enjoy more than I understand (80's hair band ballads being one of them). The real connection we have together over all of this isn't about bands and genres though, it is about our relationship to music and how we share it. I started making CDs with themes where every song meant something when I was in my early teens, shortly after moving in to my dad's house permanently. I made CDs where there was one song for every month of a year, each song emphasizing what my life was for that particular month. I made CDs where each song was dedicated to a person in my life. I made CDs where each song was dedicated to my childhood, my parents, my friends, my future...all sorts of things. I sought to take music and turn it in to memories.
It wasn't until recently that I learned that my mother had done this exact same thing, to a T. She made cassette tapes and dedicated each song to one of her sisters. She compiled songs to represent every year she spent with my dad, songs about her children and set lists for when she used to dance. Other dancers had set lists with songs they enjoyed and felt they could dance to, but my mother exclusively did themed sets. I love this about her. I adore that she felt the desire somewhere in her to have "angel" sets, "wistful traveler" sets, and "hot mess" sets. Considering how bizarre and unnecessary this is, it is even more impressive that she managed to make them all evocative. She could dance to "Angel" by Aerosmith and follow it up by a tonally opposite "Black Angel" by The Cult and she kept this up for years before she quit.
I know what songs she associates with her marriage to my father, her pregnancy with me, my birth, my growing up, my moving away...and I can't help but see it as a kind of gift. I get to experience it from her perspective and gain some kind of portal in to her soul- something I will always crave but never totally feel satisfied with, no matter how many stories I hear of her when she was younger. Every Christmas since 2008 we give each other a mix CD and detail why we put each song on there. It's allowed me to share what is going with my life and in turn receive a small piece of her past, as her songs are almost always dedicated to memories or people from well before my brother was born.
My mother amazes me in a lot of ways. I often find myself in awe when I think of her in this light. This confuses people, and I know that- that I could have a fondness for my mother as a woman and just set aside her role as m mother for a while. They have a right to be confused or defensive of me, and at times I too am baffled because some days it is forced, yes...and others it feels natural to love her this way- as a half fantasy woman from the 90's I've heard of and seen in moments but hardly got to know in person.
I strive to get to know this woman, from time to time, but there is so much to dig through to get there at this point. She has lost so much of her edge and it gets a little harder to see every year. Her memory is shot, she loses track of her sentences half way through, she struggles with even the lamest grasp on an every day conversation, her eyes perpetually squinting through her high and her words always slurred. These are feelings I didn't expect to feel for another 40 years. It's hard to realize that her mind slips away like this- that her sharp wit and humor that I've known gets more and more lost in paranoia, outrage, and a drunken stupor. My mother is incredibly smart- she used to study history and read often, but more and more I see her left behind and talked down to in family discussions because she is so, so lost. Her points are circular to a point where an outsider may legitimately bank on her suffering from some sort of early onset dementia or stroke-brain.
There is a lot going on there, and it breaks my heart more than I can admit to myself. I want to see her more, but there is always disappointment. Disappointment and pity, which is almost worse. She cries every time I see her- gets all weepy about how her baby left her and how she is a bad mother. I can't indulge this, and I don't. I haven't in a long time. But it is so hard not to humor her sometimes because I know if I could just reach out and assure her everything is ok, maybe she can die believing this. I want her to die believing that, I just don't know how to help any more.
I don't harbour the same self-hatred as some of my peers do, but I know that self hatred best when I'm drinking alone amongst a group of friends and sometime after the third or fourth drink I start to get sloppy, obnoxious, lame and I start tripping up. I become so embarrassed and self-loathing that I drink another in hopes of blurring this vision, and so it goes. I've gotten a lot better at this in the last few months, and I'm proud of that- but it's always there. I feel the pity in myself that I see in others while they watch my mother stumble through a family dinner.
But, again, I love my mother as the woman she is, if not necessarily as my mother. I love her the way one might feel a strong affection and connection to a great ancestor. I love when I learn about little things that we share- the way we look and laugh the same, our type-A personality traits, our love for party planning and bringing people together, how we read the same books and are endlessly sentimental. Even the things I don't like about myself- my fear of driving, my relationship to liquor, my easy crying...even these things I take some gross pride in sharing with my mother. She is a part of me, and this may always be a difficult concept and realization for me.
My mother was not a good mother, but she tried. She really did, even if she was selfish at times and ill equip. It's a hard truth to swallow because it's so much easier to just resent her for what she did. She did a lot of cruel things, but the hardest thing of all is that I know in my heart of hearts she did these things absolutely believing she was doing what was best. I don't blame my family for intervening and shaming her, she deserves this. All I'm saying is that there is no evil in her heart- only awful, dangerous tunnel vision. I sympathize with her in terms of her divorce, too. She was in the wrong, absolutely, but it must have been difficult to divorce my father. All sympathy went his direction, including all of the sympathy of her family. To this day, there are dinners that my father is invited to and not my mother despite him being divorced from the family two decades ago. My mother is a very problematic person, this is undeniable.
And yet, again I can't help but lap of every story heard and every picture seen of her when she was younger. She was beautiful, smart, determined to make a difference in this world, flush with joy and popular with her friends as the "mother" of the group. She gives the most thoughtful gifts. My mother is incredibly generous, too- she used to regularly house friends down on their luck and feed the homeless home cooked casseroles. It will be hard when she dies. She will leave a lot of complicated relationships in her wake. It is not only I that struggles to love her as she really is- her sisters, mother, and other children are in the same boat. She is a part of me, hard as I try to shake off our past together.
Music will be the hardest, though. Distant as we are, music brings me closer to her and most importantly it brings me close to all of the things I love and often romanticize about her. I've dedicated many songs to my mother throughout my life, but only one still stands up and that is Billy Joel's "She's Always a Woman to Me". Literally every lyric is applicable and I find myself in these embarrassing warm tears when I hear it. Music may be the only connection I have left to my mother- the rest is merely romantic images, strategic distance, and pity. I don't know what it will be like when she dies, all I know is that music will have a different taste for me forever following it.
"She can kill with a smile, she can wound with her eyes
She can ruin your faith with her casual lies
And she only reveals what she wants you to see
She hides like a child
But she's always a woman to me"
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