Silence Moves

The why? I have been thinking about why I started writing these recollections and stories regarding my relationship with my father and mother for a few weeks now. Why? I know I started this writing project when my mother became ill and how I wanted to document her progress and challenges after she passed away. Her challenges from a month-to-month perspective and how I prepared myself and worked through those challenges with her. Also, acknowledging two hopes: 1) That she would recover enough to come home and have a quality of life that was not medically expected, and 2) That we would build a new relationship, a real mother and son bond filled with love and good memories. Both hopes were not fulfilled, death had other plans and truly, my personal hope as a son, wasn’t going to develop because of her cognitive limitations and my unrealistic needs as a fifty-year-old. High expectations, and long way down a cliff when they don’t happen. I see this more clearly now after years of procrastinating. The writing, after the pandemic, and other personal challenges along the way made it difficult for me to finish my project which I wanted to really to dedicate to my family. Clarity has a way of eluding you when you haven’t seen how your mind and emotions are not clear with trauma, with life, and personal messes that you have created. Somehow, they all come back to these stories about my mother and father. It is all connected as I have learned in therapy, in reading, and listening to other family members share their perspective, their lived experiences with me during interviews with them and simple conversations. The depths of our collective and historical trauma run through us like the genes we share without even knowing it or recognizing the harm and the opportunity. This writing project started in 2018. As I mentioned earlier, I started writing a month-to -month account of my mother’s recovery from a stroke that left her seriously limited, a different person all together. After writing diligently for several months I hit a wall. I simply stopped writing. As much as I chronicled her recovery and my place next to her, I lost interest emotionally. I would restart in midst of the pandemic. And so, I did. I re-read what I wrote and started writing about months that I had missed. I did it all from memory and photos I had taken of her as she progressed and then, as her health began to decline until her death. I did write them chronologically; I wrote them down as I remembered them. I also, had decided that if couldn’t something about a particular month, I would leave it out. I believe I left out about four to six months. I couldn’t remember anymore. I thought I was done until an acquaintance of mine reached out during the pandemic to invite me to write daily with her and a friend of hers. I thought that it would be a great idea, only I thought I had nothing to write about since I felt strongly that I had completed the project regarding my mother. They both challenged me to think of something. I really wanted to this as she built in check-in days to discuss our writing progress and challenges. It didn’t take me long to identify a topic to write on. I chose my father. Writing about my mother’s recovery and my interactions with her during that time was not as challenging in the beginning. It did become more difficult as I procrastinated to complete the project. However, when it came to writing about my father, the stories remained fresh in my mind, fresh in my soul. Maybe because I started from a place of pain and anger that was deep inside me still. As I wrote, I realized how angry I really was with my father still even when I felt that I had forgiven him, and even when I thought I had made my peace with him, I was still very angry. This came up as a challenge for me the more I wrote. I focused on the harm he caused me and those around me, specifically my mother. I focused on the physical pain he inflicted on me ruthlessly without restrain. I focused on the confusing messages he sent me-love and caring, then brutality. I focused on what was lost in those years for me. The potential future, the sacrifice I did not know I needed to make at an early age. But then, I stopped for a few moments, I cried not from anger, but from sadness. There were some good things my father instilled in me as well outside of the pain and chaotic home, there were some things I experienced only because of him and his quest to find his inner child. I understood that he gave better parenting than he received. He made himself into a father without really having a father figure in his life. Fatherless and motherless, too early. Adulthood at an early age, and tremendous loss, was my father’s life early on. That family trauma carried over to me, to my siblings, without even knowing what it was. That not including my mother’s, my grandparents, and so on.