By Steven Riepe
Spring 2019 Kaplan Award Winner
I anxiously wait for her to finish putting on her makeup and coat. Once she does, I run out the door heading straight for the passenger side of the white Toyota pickup she drove.
She tells me to slow down and reassures me that she’s coming. But I wanted to make sure we get there so I could see The Princess Bride at the annual Port Townsend Film Festival’s outdoors movie screening.
We were being poked in the butt by the prickly hay bale we were sitting on. My stomach was filled by the scrumptious cheeseburger and delectable chocolate milkshake I had prior to the movie at Nifty Fifty’s, a local diner. I was adding to my already bloated state by eating a large popcorn with my large root beer. As the two of us were huddled together on our hay bale with a blanket hugging us with our popcorn and soda, I was truly happy.
I was 12 years old at the time, so I guess I was a little more innocent. But that memory I shared with my mom is one of the most treasured memories I have with her. Unfortunately, it’s one of the only ones.
* * *
On April 14th, 2017, my mom hung herself off our back porch.
I’ve written about this issue a lot; I can’t stop writing about it. Ever since she killed herself my life has been consumed by it. I think about her and her life every day, I think about how she died. I think about the phone call when I found out, I think about arriving at her house the next day and asking her friend Jeana where it happened, I think about how sudden a decision it was when I noticed her clothes hung up to dry in the bathroom as they were every day, how she made a rash decision in a fatal moment. I wonder what she was thinking, what those final moments were as she wrapped the tow strap around both her neck and the ledge of the porch, what her final moments were like as she was being choked through a makeshift system she had arranged. I think about all her stuff I sort through as the named executor to her will. I think about seeing her dead body and touching it only to feel the cold and lifeless shell that lay before me. I think about all the tears I shed, all the tears I still shed. I think about our relationship to each other. I think about all these and more on a daily basis.
I wish I could say she was the best mom, but the fact is she wasn’t. Most memories I have of her involve her drinking and yelling. She had cheated on many partners; I even caught her a few times. I’m so terrified of getting into a committed relationship because I’m afraid I’ll get cheated on. It feels like it’s a guarantee.
She had anger issues, she was abusive in multiple forms and was hard to get along with. But, regardless of all of that, she was still my mom. No matter how hard I tried, I still loved her and I couldn’t cheat my own heart. I just wish I had realized that and had been a better son.
I’m as responsible for my mom’s death as she is. I was mean, rude and made her believe I didn’t care about her. I refused to give my mom the satisfaction of letting her know I cared for her. I kept her blocked-on Facebook, which I was active on, because I didn’t want her to have an inside look at my life. During my middle and high school years Facebook was a primary activity from me. I was entranced by the amount of information I would see and it was a good way for me to see what was on everyone’s mind and what they were doing with their lives. I felt alone in the world and wanted some form of connection, and although Facebook wasn’t the best method, it made me feel engaged with others. But I wouldn’t let my mom have that with me. It may seem like a small thing but it was symbolic of how our relationship was. I wanted her to believe that I hated her so I deprived her of one the most basic desires she had in her life… a connection with her son.
Back then I was just a brat who didn’t allow myself to see my mom for who she really was or what she was going through. I couldn’t see she was a person, one that had been damaged throughout her whole life.
Her father died when she was three. He had fought in the Vietnam war. Unfortunately, when he died, the family refused to accept my mom as his child and made outrageous claims in denying her blood relation to them. My mom had no contact with her father’s family past that. Her mom, my grandma, remarried eventually to the father of my aunt. He was the closest thing my mom ever had to a father figure. However, he wasn’t her real father and he was well aware of that. So was his family. They denied my mom the love and acceptance she so desired. My grandma was still there but she wasn’t a great mother figure herself. She grew up in poverty and lived that way her entire life. My mom had to learn how to take care of herself early on, when she dropped out at the end of middle school and got her GED to work and support herself and her family.
My mom had always wanted love where it had been denied to her through her family and partners. There’s no doubt she made mistakes along the way. That’s undeniable. Some of those very mistakes cost her the love she so desperately wanted, but that’s part of the human experience. Making mistakes no matter how hard we try not to, just like my mistake of not being kinder to my mother.
I can’t completely understand what she was going through, but I am her son. I saw her at her worst moments and I saw her at her best. She always desired acceptance and love where she never had them, like most of us do. Like I do. I look back and there are so many aspects of my life where she had such a large impact, both good and bad.
So many loves in my life come from my mom. I love popcorn because of her. Walking into a movie theater with no intention of buying a ticket just grabbing a steamy hot bag of buttery popcorn. Whenever it snows, I get giddy like I’m a little kid again because of how much my mom celebrated the arrival of snow. My love to run and compete came from her love of running, she was able to run indefinitely (even though she smoked an entire pack of cigarettes a day). Above all, she gave me one of my biggest loves of all, if not my biggest, my love of cats and animals alike. We disagreed on a lot but no one in our family loved cats as much as my mom and I did. That was something we shared more than the rest of them did. My mom gave me all these loves and so many more. I just wish I had been able to return the favor and show her that her little boy had loved her, too.
I blame myself for playing a large part in my mom’s death. While that guilt’s never going to go away, and it’s going to be with me for the rest of my life, I can move forward.
Her death has changed me in ways that I can see and cannot see. I can’t tell whether I’ve become a better person or not. I know I’ve begun to foster new and better relationships with the members of my family. Some people are harder to do that with, but still there’s progress and that keeps me hopeful. I wish my mom didn’t have to die for me to realize that, but there is a semblance of a silver lining.
I’ve also been putting her loves to good use in my life. I’m kind to all cats and dogs I come across. I like to play in the snow during the time of year it visits western Washington. I still run and I plan to run the Emerald city marathon in November. I’ve been practicing my singing and dancing. They’re slow going but she always loved to see me on stage acting, especially when there was singing and dancing involved. I wanted to reach new heights where she would have never imagined her little boy being there. She is the inspiration for me to pursue goals, because I know how much she loved them.
I continue to grow and I will continue to make my way in the world. I’m saddened that she’ll never be able to see it, but I will do amazing things and I will change the world. All in ways she would have been proud of her little boy.