Let Me Tell You About My Mother

My biological grandfather died shortly before I was born and by then he had already left my family and married another woman who had just given birth to their newborn son. He died alone in a single car accident on a Missouri road after he lost control of the car and he slammed into a tree. Before he died he drank a lot and one of the main stories I remember hearing about him was when he decided to load the kids into the car and take them to the carnival. These excited little kids [my mother included] never knew what hit them when they realized that they were lied to and they were being dropped off at an orphanage. [I'm not making this up. I have photographs to prove it.]

My Grandmother Constance remarried as well and the man that she married was the man that I consider to be my true Grandfather. I also consider him to be the greatest man that ever lived and still to this day I am humbled by him to the point of near worship. [Maybe not actually worship but something pretty close to that at least.] He taught me about Art and Stupid Bunny and pancakes and how to be nothing but loving and compassionate and that in being those things I could almost never go wrong.

When I was a small child my mother and father got divorced. The deal was that my mom would work [in factories mostly] to support the family while my father went to medical school and worked part time as a paramedic for the fire department. This plan seemed to work okay for a while but soon after my father graduated from medical school he apparently decided upon a better plan and chose to leave for some nurse. He left my mother with me and my kid sister and with no money aside from a $5 bill that he left on the table with a note. And that was it. [And he apparently swiped my library card too but that's another story.] Leaving like that can only just suck for the people you leave behind but he left at a time that was and still is simply inconceivable to me. Just before he left my Uncle Cornelius drowned. He was on some float trip with his friends and one of the girls that was there was pregnant. She got a little too far out in the current and was unable to stop herself from being pushed away and under. My Uncle Cornelius went out to get her because that was just what he did. That was just how he was. And he did manage to save her from drowning but he was unable to save himself. They didn’t find his body for over a month. The time my father chose to leave was just then as my whole family had given up hope that he was even alive. They lessened their prayers by then and this time they were simply praying that they might just find his body.

Not too long after that [maybe just a few months if I recall correctly] my Uncle Alphonsus was murdered. His full name was Alphonsus Andrew McHenry III [most people called him Andy and his closest friends sometimes called him Al] and he had just given birth to his new son Alphonsus Andrew McHenry IV. While he was in the Navy he served on the USS Jason and I am named after my Uncle Andy and that ship.

Not too long after that my Grandfather died from cancer of the everything. And shortly after that my Grandmother died of heart failure.

My mom did the very best that she could under those awful and inconceivable circumstances of having your whole entire life just wiped entirely out in one fell swoop. She became an alcoholic and just couldn’t cope as well as she wanted to and I ended up being babysat quite a bit by my surrogate uncles. These were mostly bikers who owned tattoo shops and smut shops and dive bars and who were involved to the point of immersion in the pornography industry. I spent a lot of years in porn shops and tattoo parlors and bars. I saw some things that most people shouldn’t see and I knew a lot about things you shouldn’t know a lot about. On the converse I learned a great deal about the things that are truly important in life. Both of these facts contributed in, for good and for bad, creating a sense of fearlessness and detachment in me that has both helped and hindered me at times in my life. [And I don't regret a moment of it really.]

Years later my mom went through AA and became sober and she rebuilt her life from scratch. My sister and I never wanted for anything and although we were probably poor by most standards it never really seemed that way to us. At least a lot of the time for sure.

As I get older and I consider what my mother went through during that time I’m not sure how she ever even coped with it all. I hypothesize in my head about how I would feel if, for example, the top five people you love the most in life were taken in some horrific and unexpected manner. Gone. How would I handle that? How would you?

[Can you even imagine yourself ever being that strong?]

I went through the same things as she did, I guess, but I was only nine or so and none of it all really sunk in for me then. [And sometimes I doubt if it ever really has even fully sunk in. You know?]

I look back on my own life and all of the wonderful and awful turns it sometimes has taken, and surely will take in the future, and I always can’t help but feel even closer to my mother.

I love her more than I can even say and beyond the fact that I truly do love her I feel like I like her even more than that. And that’s pretty cool to me. I think most of us love our mothers because we almost have to but it makes me feel really great that I just like my mom so well. I think that she’s cool and funny and that she has one of the kindest hearts of anyone I know. I’m proud of her for what she managed to live through and for how she managed to ensure that my sister and I lived through the same. I feel like she did a pretty good job of being a parent and more often than not when I find myself feeling pretty good about myself, for some reason or another, I find that such a characteristic that I seem to somehow possess [and maybe even admire within myself] can somehow be directly attributed to something that I learned from her.

[I just wanted to remind myself of that is all. Again.]

Filed under Notes and Writing | Tags: Childhood, Family, HLC, Mom, Mother's Day | Comment (0)