MARK'S CAFE MOI: Happy two mothers day

This one’s not a cartoon. I really do have two mothers, one dead since 1999, one alive and ailing in Mississippi. Mother’s Day is always challenging for me. I was given up for adoption at the age of two, having been born into a large (9 children) family to a woman who couldn’t raise that many children and a man who left her after I was born. I had no idea this birth family existed until I was 17 and I didn’t meet them until I was 35. The challenge for me has been the complete lack of emotional connection or reaction to my birth mother, Helen. The woman who raised me, Margaret, had a profound effect on my life, for better and worse (she reacted violently to me being gay, but before then had been a sort of mother-idol for me, and the relationship healed before her death). When Margaret died from lung cancer in her own bedroom, with my father and my two sisters there, it was an ending for me. But then . . . there was Helen. And not only Helen, but five surviving sisters and two brothers to remind me I could not close this door. I could not throw a flower onto my mother’s grave and walk away, having buried one of my two parents. She was one of four! A father I never met, a birth mother still alive and well at the time, and a dad I would continue to visit in Indiana until his death in 2009. I sent Helen flowers this year. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Try finding a Mother’s Day card for a woman you have no feeling for. It’s very difficult, because almost all the cards are mushy, you’re-the-best-mom-that-ever-happened-to-me schmaltz. I just want a damn card that says Happy Mother’s Day! I’m told by my sister (I did get some good sibling relationships out of it) that Helen is not doing well mentally, that she’s about ready for assisted living. And I think, god, will it ever be over? And when she passes away, will I go? It’s an emotional reality I could do without, but it’s mine.]]>