One of the journals contained a lot of entries about Steve and Wendy. Reading through these was guaranteed to remind me of some experience that I was thankful to be a part of, something I could smile about. I recalled the time when Wendy had been looking forward to her sixteenth birthday. She had planned it out with military precision. When the time came for her friends to arrive, John, Darlene, and I slipped into the background, allowing her the space and the freedom she needed to be herself. It was interesting to see her beginning to move away from dependence on her parents toward something like independence. It was nice to be a part of that time in her life. I had never had a sixteenth birthday party—or a fifteenth, or a fourth, or any birthday party for that matter, until I moved in with the Nichols family.
As I sat there by the fire I found myself actually laughing out loud. The warmth of the fire and the comfort I felt at this moment were special to me. I found a blanket from the bedroom and made another cup of chocolate. I couldn’t get over how different I now was from how I used to be. I remembered the time I would sleep at Mesa Park in Sandy City, Utah, stoned out of my mind, cold, lifeless, and ashamed. Now I liked myself.
The memories I revisited that night made me sad and yet happy.
When I turned twenty-three, Heather Nichols was ten. She gave me a pepper shaker for my birthday. Heather always made fun of the fact that I used pepper on my food like it was going out of style. She was so funny about it—she thought it was the best gift she had ever given anyone. She may have been right.
John and Darlene produced a cake and ice cream, and we all sat around the dinner table and I opened my presents. It was a little odd being that old and celebrating my birthday like that. But it was a family event, and that was fine with me. It was the first birthday cake I could ever remember.
I had finally found what I had been looking for, a family that cared and shared in each other’s life and parents that looked out for me and allowed me to grow at my own pace. John, Darlene, and the kids helped me in ways that I would never be able to repay.
As I read more and more of what I had written over the years, I became more convinced than ever that my life really was now on the right track. All I needed to complete the task I had undertaken was to let Mom know how I felt.
I decided to send her a letter, outlining my life over the last several years. I would tell her about my accomplishments as well as the failures. I wanted to show her that I had overcome my past, and was now reconciling myself to it as best I could.
Putting pen to paper could be difficult. Each night I would draft another letter, then tear it up or toss it into the fire. Writing in my journal was different—it was private, and no one would ever see it. This was harder because it was going to be read by the one person I wanted to completely forget about.
But the letters never really said what I wanted them to. I couldn’t find the words that would describe the anger and the disappointment. I was especially angry over the fact that she had managed to forget about everything. Things she had done or things she hadn’t done—it was all the same: unfair. More than that, it was nothing less than a crime that she was able to find peace with herself when several of her children were still dealing with the mental and emotional carnage. It was unfair that she was able to move on in her life when I was still struggling with all the baggage she had left me with. The years and years I’d spent being so self-destructive and abusing drugs were a direct result of what she had done to me, I felt sure.
I wanted to take all the feelings of guilt and shame that I had dragged around with me for over fifteen years and unload them on her—then close the door, walk away, and never look back. I desperately wanted to sling all the blame for my shortcomings and my problems onto her. And I was consumed with the need to find the right words to do just that. In draft after draft I set down my fears, my anger, and my resentment, and yet I still wasn’t able to express it all to my satisfaction. I wanted my words to make it incontrovertibly clear, once and for all, that she was at least partially to blame for my shortcomings, that hers was the responsibility for all of my issues over the years.
Just before Christmas I was walking in Colonial Heights mall in Richmond, watching the kids and their parents. The interaction between them was just like I had always imagined the holiday spirit to be: families together, searching for treasures for dads, moms, brothers, and sisters. I somehow expected all the parents to be about the same age as Mom, and yet she was now in her early sixties. I watched younger parents about the same age as I was, interacting with their young kids. I thought about the joy and fun of shopping as a little boy.
Then I began to ponder. My own childhood was horrific, no doubt about that. And Mom should have been put in prison—no doubt about that, either. But I did have a few memories of better times. And here were people my own age and their families, getting on with their lives. Perhaps I had kept the anger and pain buried so deep and for so long that it was
continuing
to consume me, preventing me from
ever
growing up. If so, that alone was evidence that I was nowhere near ready to be a husband or father, let alone a dad like John. Was I so hung up with chasing after my lost childhood ghosts that I could never really move on?
Maybe it wasn’t
all
her fault. I guess I couldn’t really blame my recklessness, my impulse to feed off the drug craze, entirely on her
.
Now that I was really thinking about it, perhaps I couldn’t really blame her for anything that I did after a certain point in my life. Sure, when I was five and she was an outrageous alcoholic, abusive and all but possessed, that was
all
her.
But what about when I was seventeen and living in Hawaii, thousands of miles away—could I really blame any of that on her?
Or what about my experience in the military—could I blame any of that on her?
As the people surged out of Sears and JCPenney and passed by me in the mall, I began to wonder again exactly when it was that I became responsible for myself. And about what had changed me from the little abused kid to the not so little and self-abusive teenager. There had to be something that I’d missed all these years.
Back home, it was all I could think about.
Have I been guilty all this time?
Did I really do this to myself?
When did I lose my dependency on Mom?
Maybe
that’s
the key to it
, I thought.
Maybe, the moment I became independent of her, I became dependent on myself. Once I’d lost the emotional and spiritual connection between mother and son—such as it was—that was when I was on my own.
When did I lose that connection?
When was it that I just said to myself: “That’s it!”?
There had to be some event when I either changed myself, or someone changed me. I lay in bed wondering—until I fell asleep, I guess.
With the new dawn came the answer I was looking for. Sometime in my sleep, somewhere deep down in my subconscious, I had recalled the moment of change. The words repeated themselves over and over again in my head:
Like a dog, like a dog, like a dog
.
I knew exactly what the memory was and where it was from.
Just before I ratted David out to Mom for the last time, she’d treated me like a dog. She even went so far as to make me lick the floor—like a dog. It was at that moment that I concluded I was no longer a person, let alone her son. I had been severed from the family, from society, and now I was severed from myself. I was, from that moment, an animal. She had broken me and I knew it.
In that moment I changed. In that moment Mom changed me. She lost her son, and I lost my mother. We were separated, permanently.
Once I recalled that horrific and overcharged memory, I realized that the information I needed had been there all along.
Why didn’t I see it before?
Why didn’t I understand it then?
Now I understood, and now I could write the Christmas letter. It flowed like water, the emotions and the memories. I felt finally able to express my thoughts and feelings in an honest and factual way to her. It seemed to take no time at all to get everything down. I read it over and over again to make sure that it was just right.
I had done it. I had let go of the pain, the fear, and the tears of more than twenty years, and now I was comfortable with Mom. I knew who she was back then, and I knew just who she had regressed into, and it didn’t matter to me. She had no effect on me anymore.
It was over, and I was the one who had ended it. I had taken the better path. I could stand tall in the knowledge that I was the one who had made the crucial move. I had reconciled with
her
.
I was free. Finally I was free.
T
HE
C
HRISTMAS
L
ETTER
It said everything I wanted to say. It said everything I ever needed to say to her. The Christmas letter was my way of finally letting go and accepting the fact that I was an adult now. “Mom” was no more. All I’d had to do was let her know how I felt. It took a long time to find the right words in my head to express what I wanted to say, but once I’d found them and started putting them down on paper, they flowed like water from a tap. When I was done, it was like I was born again. An entire new life ahead of me.
But I made one mistake: I waited too long.
A
FTER USING UP SEVERAL
dozens of sheets of paper and spending many nights in front of the fire, I did it. I wrote the letter to Mom that would allow me to walk away a man. That Christmas Day I gave myself the most meaningful gift possible. The letter was dated December 25, 1991:
Roerva,
After stumbling through life, and with the scars I carry that few people have ever seen, I finally understand. I understand who you are. But more importantly I understand who I am.
All through my life you reminded me that I was worthless, small, meek, and shameful. At one point I knew you were right. I was exactly what you raised me to be.
For over twenty years I spent most of my time hiding and running away from the only thing you ever gave me: horrific memories.
You taught me the meaning of fear.
Just so you know—as a teenager I was reckless, suicidal, and a drug addict. Most of what you told the neighbors was true. I was “bad news.” But not any longer.
You gave me the ability to hide almost anything from anybody.
Now I don’t have to hide anything. I am who I am.
One of the only conversations I ever had with you that meant anything to me, you told me you “can’t remember.”
It’s incredible that you don’t recall the damage and the scars you caused me for years.
But now I know different. I believe that you have buried those emotions, those horrible and frightening emotions, so deep that even you can’t recall them anymore.
Well—here I am giving you a gift; a gift that only I can give you.
I give to you a part of me. It’s the part that I carried around for so long. It’s the part of my life that was so heavy, at times I couldn’t bear it any longer.
I give you the memories that I carried with me, the memories of the fear and pain that you inflicted on children that happened to be your own.
The scars and the damage you caused are permanent and have taken years’ worth of tears and pain to even begin to understand. Today—Christmas Day—it hit me and I now understand. I used to feel pity and remorse for you. Now I feel shame for you.
It’s a miracle in itself that I feel anything for you. You have taught me the meaning of silent tears. You have taught me the meaning of pity and shame. Overall you have forced me to find myself in that place where those memories are kept. It took more effort than anything I have ever done on this earth.
The only two things of any value that you have ever given me are the desire and ability to express myself in writing, and my life. Other than that, there is nothing I can say I am thankful for from you.
Today I’m free.
Today I am letting you go.
I’m free of the guilt—the fear and the shame.
You, too, have, in your own way, become free of it all as well. You have the luxury of being out of your mind, literally. I wish I could close by saying: I love you. But I can’t—I don’t.
I do have to thank you.
You have made me stronger. You have given me a chance to experience life in a way that few others on this earth have experienced. You allowed me to become tempered in that fire you kept alive. The fire of fear and pain that children too small to defend themselves fear to find.
I am stronger than you can imagine.
You gave me the desire to be better. I know I can be a better parent than you were capable of. I have to be.
For so long I wondered if I even should be a father, fearing that I carry your disease—but I now know that it was you all along. Not some illness—that came later.
Thank you for giving me life.
Thank you for the opportunity to decide for myself if it was worth living or not.
Your son,
Richard
O
VER?
It was done. It was over. And I was the one that had ended it. I put the letter in an envelope and placed it on my dresser. I wanted to hold on to the sheer pride of it for just a few days, before I mailed it out. I never expected a reply and left off the return address—I didn’t want to take the chance that she would once again twist the closure I now felt into some meaningless shame.
I never got what I wanted. She beat me to it.
W
ORK WENT ON AS USUAL,
and I felt like I had the world by the tail. Being alone during the holidays really didn’t matter—everything was in place. Christmas became New Year’s and I hung on to the freedom I now felt, and I hung on to the letter.