Mother

“I’m sorry for everything,” my mother said to me right before she died. Her organs were failing, and she was laying in her own toxins; her body no longer able to process itself.

I remember looking at her. Her frail frame laying under white hospital sheets. Tubes connected all over her. Several people were trying to keep her alive, but she just kept deteriorating. The white in her eyes turning a yellowish color. She kept her dentures on, so at least her smile looked alive. As alive as a mouth full of fake teeth can be.

When she said, “I’m sorry for everything,” I had an idea of what she meant. Sorry for being a smoker. Sorry for being an alcoholic. Sorry for neglecting you. Sorry for abusing you.

She never did specify though, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask her what she was sorry about.

Maybe she was sorry for the time she dragged me across a carpet; the skin on my face turning red as I brushed up against the floor. Maybe she was sorry for the time she threw up on my sixth birthday from all the drinking she did. Maybe she was sorry for the time she slapped me at the age of nineteen for not doing what she asked.

As for my father, I never did see what he saw in her; why he stayed married to her all these years. All the arguments they would get into. Fighting over her gambling addiction. Over the fact that he transferred money from his bank account to my younger brother’s so that he could buy himself a laptop, which made her envious. Over the fact that my father would sometimes arrive home late from work. He’d explain that he was just out buying food. My mother never believed him and would accuse him of cheating. Yet, she never did want to leave him. I think she simply wanted to manipulate him. The way she tried to manipulate everyone so that she could get her way.

When I lost my job and moved back in with my parents, she would call me a parasite. She didn’t like the fact that my father would support me. Which was hypocritical since my mother didn’t have a job either and relied on my father as well. She quit her job once she gave birth to my older sister three decades ago. She said she wanted to become a stay-at-home mother. Mother. What a strange role she claimed to play as she never acted like a good mother. She never understood that mothers are supposed to behave a certain way. She was simply a person who had given birth to us. We might as well have been motherless.

“I think you have PTSD from your mother,” my current therapist said to me some months ago. I was upset when hearing this, but I didn’t know why. Maybe it’s because I didn’t want to admit that she had ruined me. That I was a spoiled, rotten person because of the things she did to me. That I was inherently broken and dysfunctional. Then again, I was already taking medications for PTSD, but it never occurred to me that my condition was real. It took someone else to point out that I was neglected to realize that something was wrong with me. Even at a young age, I told myself that my upbringing was normal because I didn’t have anything else to compare it to.

The medication I take is for PTSD-related nightmares. In my nightmares, I would sometimes see my mother. We’d always be in the middle of an argument. Eventually, I’d wake up covered in sweat.

I wonder if my mother knew what she meant by “sorry.” She was so sick, senile, and sedated; she couldn’t have remembered all the things she’d done to me. Or maybe she did. And maybe she was confessing her regret because the guilt was finally eating her, and she didn’t want to leave this world without repenting. Maybe God would forgive her. Maybe…

I don’t know if I’d forgive her though.

To this day, when we visit her grave, I can’t help but feel like I did something wrong. She spent her whole life accusing me of just about anything. That I had committed a crime for simply existing. I still haven’t unlearned this feeling. Maybe someday, I will. Still, we place flowers on her grave and pretend she was a good person. If we pretend hard enough, maybe the pain will go away.