I could say I didn't know my mother until after she died. At her wake and for years afterwards relatives and friends would come up to me and tell a story or talk about her as if I was one of her old friends. I knew her as a child knows his mother, which is to say I only knew of her as my mother and nothing else.
Here's what I knew about her; she came from a very Catholic background in NYC after being born in Texas. Her parents were working class people that managed to do better than most people and found a comfortable life for them and their family. My grandfather grew up on a farm with eight siblings. As he was the oldest he was the only one to own a pair of shoes. A wrinkled and grey photo of he and his brothers on the edge of a freshly cut field proved this.
My mother grew up in the city and went to an all girls Catholic school. From there she went to college and then received her Masters. Her degree helped her become a teacher where she worked until she became pregnant with my oldest brother.
I was the son of a teacher, I learned a lot from her. She taught me to read and gave me a love of books that will always be with me. She understood people well and had a loyalty to me and my brothers I have never before seen in a person. Growing up, I didn't wonder about her or think to talk to her about her life. She was my mother and a good one, that's all I needed to know.
My parents divorced the summer I graduated from college. I too self involved at the time and though I was shocked and disappointed in learning the news, I was too concerned about moving out to start my own life to dwell on it too much. For a month it was only my mother and I in the huge house that my family lived in for nine years, now emptied after everyone else had moved away and started their own lives. It was during this time that I looked at my mother differently. For once I was able to help her and try to cheer her up. Several times she came to me for support and reassurance while she was beginning to go out on her own for the first time in her life. We were both learning that together. I did what I could but I had no idea how she really felt. If I did I don't know if I would have been able to handle it.
I moved to Boston and started building my own life. I got a job, found my own place, made friends and started doing pretty well. I'd talk to my mother a couple of times a week and it was only then she told me what had happened. My parents had decided not to tell me the details of the divorce until afterwards and would do all they could not to bring us into it. During one long phone calls she explained to me why and how she and my father were getting divorced. It was more complex than most divorces and I learned more about both parents that day. I thought of them much differently after that.
What I heard upset the family for many years. My father was ostracized and my brothers were understandably upset. Though it made us closer we felt separated from some members of our family for some time.
Months later, after the divorce hearings had ended, my mother decided to take a vacation with her best friend to get her mind off of everything that happened. Her first visit was to Boston to see my brother and I where she seemed happier than I'd seen her in years and began crying with relief when she saw my brother. We spent the day together, went on a whale watch and had dinner at Legal Seafood. I remember her talking to the table next to us, a Japanese couple there for the convention next door. We talked about Seinfeld and laughed at the more off color moments, something my mother had never done before.
My mother died soon after returning home. She passed out while on the phone to her mother and fell into a coma. Doctors diagnosed her with a cerebral hematoma and less than two days later, as my brother and I were flying to see her, she died. The next time I saw her she was embalmed and in a coffin.
At the wake few people I never met came to speak. She had had trouble finding work as a teacher despite her excellent resume and experience. Few people would hire a middle aged woman that has been out of a classroom for twenty plus years and couldn't handle modern high schoolers. In the past months she had been working as an assistant to disabled children for teachers half her age. She spent long hours looking after these kids while her own children were hundreds of miles away.
The week of her funeral my brother met his future wife. Their first child, a girl named after my mom, looks like the black and white images of my mother my grandfather keeps in his photo albums.
For years afterwards people would come up to me and tell me things about my mother I never knew. She was the perfect daughter, living up to her parents' expectations and never once arguing with her brother despite their different lifestyles. She came from the Yankee side of my family, stretching back to the Mayflower and Bunker Hill. My mother's family is full of firefighters, police officers and politicians.
After her death I thought of her constantly. I would have, and sometimes still do, have dreams about her. I wonder how different my life would be if she were still in it and what would have happened had I gone back to help her as I wish I did. It's hard dealing with the loss of someone so close, even years later. I still think about her often though it has turned into something more accepted. I always thought of my mother as just that, a mother, and only began to see her for who she was when it was too late.
If I was religious I would find comfort in what happened as many in my family did. The future looked difficult for my mother and if all she believed in was real she had earned what she hoped for.