Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Tabitha Burns's avatar

My brother and I didn’t forgive our stepdad when he left my mum for the second time. We could finally say it – David was a nobhead, and had always been one. My grandma, who disapproved of swearing, called him ‘a bastard’.

This new perspective allowed me to forgive myself for an incident that still had the power to twist my stomach with dread. It went from being one of the worst things I’d ever done to being a non-event.

When I was thirteen, I lost David’s tennis racket. He’d let me borrow it even though he’d gotten it for his Bar Mitzvah. It was slightly embarrassing, using a chunky racket with weird flannel stuck to the edges, but at least nobody would want to steal it. So where the hell was it? We never found out.

On the last day of term, I couldn’t find it in the school’s huge racket cupboard, so I assumed it was at home – it wasn’t. Mum saw right through my breezy ‘Oh, it’s around here somewhere’ and went ballistic. She told me to go back to school, even though it was closed. I called my grandma in tears and she got two buses to help me look. The school caretaker helped too, but it wasn’t anywhere.

For days, Mum and David barely spoke to me. I woke up every morning with a horrible feeling in my gut that haunted me whenever I thought about the incident, even years later – until the nobhead epiphany. When David left, I not only forgave my thirteen-year-old self for losing his beloved tennis racket, but the memory made me smile an evil smile.

Expand full comment
Amelia's avatar

I had taken responsibility for my mother after my father-s death. Shortly after settling in with me in Baltimore where I was working, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her answer to what she wished to do about it was “cut it off”. She seemed to be healing nicely when after a routine visit the Dr. discovered that the cancer had metastasized, and the prognosis was not good. It was at this point that I let the “headhunters “who had been recruiting me for a position in Philadelphia know that I would consider it. In January of 1994 we arrived during an ice storm.

I arranged for a caretaker to spend the days with my mother while I was at work. We bravely accepted the circumstances, and I was happy to have this time with her and bring some closure to our tumultuous relationship.

One day the care person was alarmed by my mother’s condition and said we should call an ambulance. We went to the emergency room where they treated her for dehydration. I was ready for us to go home and arrange for nursing care. However, the Dr. insisted she would be better off in the hospital as they could monitor her during the night.

The hospital was full and the only bed free was on the AIDS ward. The room had not been cleaned. Shortly after they put things right. I was so uneasy about her being there. She in her “mother knows best” mode insisted I go home and get some rest.

Two hours later I received a call that she had died. I raced to the hospital finding a sheepish group of medical staff awaiting me. “How could this have happened? Three hours ago she was resting.” My mother’s body was covered up to the neck and her pale face looked grotesque as they had hastily put her teeth in crooked. I pulled the sheet down and found her skin had been flayed from when they tried to resuscitate her.

It was at that moment I felt I could never forgive myself for yielding to authority, that of the medical staff and my mother. To this day I have a recurring dream in which I beg for forgiveness. There was a more humane and dignified death that I had envisioned for my mother.

Expand full comment
7 more comments...

No posts