Happy Belated Mother’s Day

One day when I was growing up, my mother put a litter of kittens in a pillowcase. She submerged the pillow case in our swimming pool until all of the kittens had drowned.

I felt physically ill when I typed that sentence just now. The same kind of mild nausea that lingers when I remember this actually happened. We lived in the middle of a bustling suburb and had plenty of resources. The kittens weren’t sick. We usually adopted all of our pets from the local ASPCA, so it wasn’t like my mother didn’t know that taking the kittens there was an option. Although I was too upset then (as I would be now) to discuss with her why she did this, I am assuming it added up to expediency in her mind. I don’t know. If I was ever posed with the scenario: “Here is a litter of kittens,” there is no set of circumstances that would cause me to arrive at: “I am going to drown them in a pillow case.”

While I have often been candid and forthcoming about many things my mother has done and said over the course of my life, even before this blog, this was one of the few things I would have never imagined I would discuss with anyone.

Then I was back in Buffalo five years ago, visiting with my Aunt Terry, my mother’s older sister. My mother had recently been in contact with Aunt Terry and my Uncle Ben, their brother. My mother wanted to go somewhere or do something with my Uncle Ben–I can’t remember the particulars–and my Uncle Ben had to tell her no, she was not welcome to come. Someone said to my Uncle Ben something to the effect of, “Isn’t it harsh to exclude your sister from this event? All siblings have their disagreements.”

In response to this line of questioning, my uncle (who was regularly seen wearing ASPCA t-shirts and ASPCA wrist bands like the one pictured at the top of this post) told his friend about the story of my mom and the kittens to better illustrate what kind of person my mother was and why my Uncle Ben was not welcoming her to the event in question.

When my aunt told me about Uncle Ben telling a friend about my mother and the kittens, I was shocked. I was shocked that Uncle Ben and Aunt Terry knew about the murdered kittens. I now realized I was also shocked that he was willing to admit to someone that his sister had done such a thing.

I never breathed a word about it to anyone, as I was ashamed and mortified my mother had something so indescribably sick and horrible. Which means either my dad told Terry and Ben about it (a possibility) or my mother had openly admitted to it, a thought which turned my stomach again. This thing that I thought I would never have to face because I assumed no one else would know was suddenly a topic of conversation with my sweet aunt.

Aunt Terry recognized the pained look on my face. “I know–it is just simply awful. Unspeakable. But people just don’t understand what kind of person she is. They think it is some kind of petty sibling rivalry when we don’t want to invite her to things or include her. When you tell people that story, they begin to understand.”

I understood completely what my Aunt Terry meant and the motives of my Uncle Ben. But I spent the rest of the day on edge and feeling shame I simultaneously knew I had no business feeling.

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Three years later, when I started therapy again at the beginning of my divorce, I told the story of my mother and the kittens to my therapist. I also told the story of how shocked and awful I felt when I found out my aunt and uncle knew about the kittens. After discussing the issue for a while, my therapist suggested it wasn’t really fair for Aunt Terry to be telling that story because she wasn’t there when it happened. It was really my story to tell, he suggested, and perhaps I should tell her I wasn’t comfortable with her bringing it up if it should happen to come up in conversation again.

I respected my therapist immensely–he helped me more than any other mental health care provider I have ever seen in my life–and so I nodded at this suggestion. This particular trauma was not on my priority list and I did not want to spend more time addressing it.

But every year when Mother’s Day rolls around, I think of Aunt Terry and Uncle Ben feeling the need to tell this terrible story in an effort to explain my mother.

When Mother’s Day approaches, people (usually work acquaintances who don’t know me well or retail folks who I have struck up casual chit chat with) will ask me about my mother. I politely explain we are estranged from each other and we do not speak. Usually, people seem to understand the gravity in my voice enough to know it is time to move on to another topic of conversation.

But occasionally, someone will persist with some version of the following:

“That’s terrible. I am sure your mother loves you. All mothers and their kids fight sometimes.” Often the person will go on to some small vignette about a period in their life–their teenage years, perhaps–when they did not get along with their mother and how now they are grown up and have mended fences and it is so great.

When that happens, there is always a moment when I have to pause: I think about how impossible it is to summarize years of emotional abuse and trauma, growing up in a household where violence was present. How impossible it is to explain that, despite this history, the decision to not speak to my mother was devastating and an essential act of self-preservation, not some flippant, immature act of defiance because we couldn’t agree on my career aspirations or some other vapid shit. I can’t explain how stupid it feels to miss an abuser and how the absence of my mother still weighs on my heart.

And because it is impossible to explain all of this in a simple, quick conversation, I understand better each year why my Uncle Ben decided to tell people on select occasions about my mother and the kittens. Because it is impossible to briefly convey a lifetime’s worth of experiences with someone like my mother. Because it is frustrating to have people belittle or make assumptions about your decision to limit contact with a family member, to act like it has to be at least 5 or 10 percent your fault.

Because sometimes it is zero percent your fault. Sociopaths, psychopaths are sometimes someone’s sibling. They are sometimes someone’s parent. They are sometimes someone’s partner or spouse.

“James,” you might say, “you said you were horrified about this whole incident and have been loathe to talk about it your whole life. But you just wrote a whole damn blog post about it!”

It took me weeks of mental preparation to sit down and write this small post. I have spent years being ashamed and horrified by something I did not do. Maybe someone will read this post who has gone through something similar and they will experience some kind of relief from knowing they are not alone. I decided I should write about it because of all times people have tried to ask me about my mother and I have been at a loss as to what to say. I decided to write about it in part because I did not want to write about it at all.

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My Aunt Terry looks and sounds like my mother, but she is a warm and loving person. She loves me and adores Basil. As fate would have it, her birthday falls right around Mother’s Day every year. And so for the time we have been together, Basil and I have spent Mother’s Day weekend with Aunt Terry, because she is the closest thing either of us have to a mom.

And, as a result of writing this post, I have also decided a new Mother’s Day tradition of mine is going to be donating to the ASPCA. My mother spent most of the time I knew her making destructive choices and adding pain and suffering to the universe. My aim is to  try adding some kindness and love back instead.