I pounded my feet against the
stairs, hurling myself away from my mother, twelve-year-old angst burning under my
skin.
“I hate you. I hate you I hate
you I hate you!”
The words burst out of my mouth, singeing my lips as they
escaped. I knew instantly that it was a lie, but I didn’t care.
Late that night I lay in my
bed, my head planted in that old feather pillow of my childhood, my eyes
focused on the sliver of light under my mother’s bedroom door just across the
landing from our room. Squeezing my eyes shut, I begged the Lord to forgive me,
hoping that if He forgave hard enough it would take away the reality that I had
said such a hurtful thing to the woman who had already suffered enough. Her
spirit and her flesh had already been repeatedly beaten by my father - sometimes
under the influence of alcohol, sometimes not. He dipped in and out of our
lives until finally, sadly and blessedly, he left for good.
Though my dutiful conscience
kept nudging me to tiptoe into her room and apologize, my feet never left their
safe place under my covers.
The memory of that episode burned
itself into my brain, and decades later, when my own kids were grown, I asked
my mother for forgiveness. She chuckled.
“I don’t remember that.” She
looked at me as if to say; “Really, Cori, do you think I took you seriously?”
Thinking back on it, I
suppose, strangely, that I am a better person for having told my mother I hate her, though I do
understand that it only worked for good because I did not repeat it very often.
The moment allowed me to examine the truth of this woman: She never left me or
any of my siblings, she remained true and holy, though she was a fallen angel,
like the rest of us. She did what she did, and even she could not tell you why.
She just followed her feelings. And because she had no idea how to do what she
had to do, she turned to the only thing she knew for aid. That’s when her dance
with her Lord began. He called to her, and she called to Him, and their steps
aligned so that eventually in the end they swirled right off the stage and
into the wings.
Today I stood at her grave in the chill of this Mothers Day in May. I shifted the flowers laid across the back of the bronze lion that watches over her resting place, stood back, bidding her image to return to my mind, and whispered over and over again:
"I love you! I love you, I love you, I love
you!"