Sunday will mark eighteen years since my mother left this place. It was a hard life. The world wasn’t very nice to my mother, myself included, in the end. I don’t know if this is a tribute or not, but here it is.

My mother was born in 1945 in Montevideo, Minnesota. I don’t know much about her childhood. Much of my mother’s life and family remains a mystery to me, thanks to my father, time, and me being foolish. I talk occaisionally to her two siblings, my Uncle Perry and Aunt Rosie. I’ll have to talk more about them another time.

My mother didn’t have a happy childhood. She was the oldest of three, her mother was a raging alcoholic. Her father was a country dentist. Ironically, I have a phobia of them. Wonder if it was his revenge.

My grandfather’s passing was a tragedy that my mother never fully recovered from. He was out seeing a patient, and his car got hit by a train. The circumstances are unknown to me. All I know is they couldn’t find his ID in the wreckage. So they brought him to the local hospital, asked if the staff to look at him and see if they recognized him. The second person they asked was my mother, who was working as a candy striper.

I don’t think she ever got right after that. It was the sixties, and farm country Minnesota didn’t believe in mental health help. So she tried to keep the family running, while her mother poured herself into the bottle. And then she met my father, Tom Curtis.

If I could warp time and somehow stop my mother from marrying my father, and still exist, I would. My father was a narcissitic workaholic who wanted two things from my mother: a clean house and babies. They married in 1963. I was born in 1969. The records I’ve seen indicated by the time she had her tubes tied in 1978, she’d had over a dozen miscarriages. My dad wanted sons, and had no concern for her well being .

And I was not the son my father wanted. I was sickly, premature, with permanent nerve damage in my arms that has given me issues since grade school. I was never going to be the jock all American. I was too interested in books and fantasy. I was epileptic. I have a suspected diagnosis of something called Hirschsprungs disease. It means I have about three feet of bowel with no nerves. I have had continual bathroom issues.

My dad retreated from home, always busy with work. Mom went to work as a teacher’s aide and a union rep for the teachers union. The whole time she was fighting with dad, suffering under him, and trying desperately to protect me, She also waitressed all the time, in an effort to keep the money coming in, and I suspect, to get away from home. I had babysitters, then when we got too poor and I got older, it was the TV.

She left him a few times. After each time, I’d hear him say hes sorry, but then he’d be back on his bullshit again, throwing shit and yelling every Friday night. We’d go on vacation, but only to see his family, not moms. I can count on one hand the number of times I saw mom’s family.

I watched her wither. She had friends, then she didn’t. Mainly because they all begged her to leave him. And she got worse and worse. A psychiatrist put her on a combination of valium and thorazine, even though she wasn’t schizophrenic. I think that’s what finally broke her.

My parents split up my sophomore year of college. Mom wanted to go back to Minnesota. I was tired of finding her vodka bottles and emptying out the vodka and filling them with water. She told me to decide, her or him. I was sixteen, just starting to make friends. I was young and scared. I chose to stay. I think I broke her heart that day.

I didn’t see my mother for four years after that. She picked prom night to tell my dad she was never coming back. I met her at a Burger King in Minneapolis, where she brought Murray, husband number 2. My other had a type. Misogynistic abusive narcissist? She’d crawl over broken glass for these guys.

We really connected when I moved to Minneapolis for a few years. She loved cozy mysteries, I loved science fiction. We’d go to lunch every Sunday, after she went to church. How that woman kept believing in Christ after everything still mystifies me. We’d go to Uncle Hugos and Uncle Edgar’s bookstore. Those Sundays are my favorite memory of her.

But she still had issues, mostly due to the men she chose. Her last husband, Larry, I hung out the window by his ankles when he slapped her in front of me. We didn’t talk much after that.

The last time I saw my mother in person was the day after my wedding. She’d made it down, much to the annoyance of my father. He caused a scene at the rehearsal that almost killed the wedding. But we hugged, she kissed me and got in a car to the airport.

We ended up naming my daughter after her, sheer fate. Aubry is the French version of Ruby, which we didn’t know until after we’d chosen it. Sadly, she never got to meet Aubry, which haunts me to this day. But she moved to Montana with Larry. Started using pain pills and booze again. My last words to her were angry, telling her to get clean so I could save the money to fly her to see Aubry. A week later, Larry called me in the middle of the night to tell me she’d passed.

I never got to bury my mother, or hold a funeral. That’s a whole other story of failure and communication on my part. But I have her ashes, and I see them every day. I talk to them sometimes. A lot more this year, I tell you. But it’s not really where I see her.

I see her in every good teacher or librarian. I see her in every abused wife I see in my line of work. I see her in every addict I encounter. And I see her the most when I look at Aubry, because she has her nose.

I normally have a lesson with these things. Not tonight. Only lesson here, is that no one is promised tomorrow. If you love someone, tell them. If someone is hurting you, run away. And love yourself most of all. Good night.