Remembering My Mother On Her Birthday

 

Remembering My Mom

My mother was born in Detroit, Michigan on June 5th, 1926. She would have been 97 today. And as her birthday comes around once again, I am filled with many memories, with missing her, with grief and gratitude, and with the deepest compassion and love.

Growing Up

Nancy Marilyn Moesta grew up an only child to Amalia "Molly" Yentsch Moesta and Marvin Moesta. Her grandparents on both sides had immigrated to the United States from Germany. The transition from those early German ancestors to making a home in Grosse Pointe was a huge one for my grandparents. Grosse Pointe was a beautiful but wealthy suburb outside of Detroit. Image management was something most experienced as required. And this certainly included my mother.

There was also a lot of carried trauma and pain in my German ancestors, many of whom coped with that trauma through addiction. Although I didn't realize this until I got into recovery myself 39 years ago, alcoholism was woven through generations of my family. My grandmother also suffered from anxiety and depression, and my grandfather, who meant well, drilled into my mother an expectation of perfection. He would joke with my brother and me about his motto with my mother when she was growing up: "Tell her once or give her a lickin'." When I asked my mom a few years before her death if she ever got that "lickin' from Papa she responded, "No. I was always good."

While everyone was doing the best that the could, this environment of mixing wealth and a high degree of image management with depression and anxiety, alcoholism and unaddressed trauma, fear and shame, harsh authoritarian parenting practices, and the don't talk, don't trust, don't feel rules was a toxic brew. And, ultimately, it was a breeding ground for my mother's alcoholism and narcissism and other painful and severe struggles which plagued my mom throughout most of her life.

Four Marriages

My mom was married four times. She was widowed in 1975 after 26 years with my father, who died suddenly at age 60 from complications due to Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, pneumonia, and a compromised immune system brought on through the stresses and trauma within our family.

Just six months after my twin brother's suicide, my mother married Tom Alison in July of 1978. That marriage lasted eight years, ending in divorce. He had been deeply impacted by my mother's mental illness and alcoholism and knew that he had to choose to leave. Tom and I went on to secretly maintain our relationship for many years after the divorce. I felt very close with my first step-father.

My mother's marriage to her third husband, who had been golfing friends with Tom, lasted the longest and ended after 18 years when she was again widowed. It is the son of husband #3 who fought so hard to benefit from my mother's wealth, which meant sabotaging our relationship and encouraging her to leave the bulk of her trust to him and his wife.

Then along came Don Hammond, my mom's 4th husband. I love Don. Don loved my mom and he loved me. He'd also known our family since my childhood when his first wife was bridge partners with my mom. Once they were both widowed, Don found and pursued and then married my mother. And for many years he fought for me and for my mom to cut ties with the former stepson from marriage #3, who Don knew was toxic. After five years, however, Don knew that he, too, could no longer go on living with my mom's severe mental illness and, when my mother refused to get help with him, he asked for a divorce. That said, Don never stopped loving my mom. He just knew that what she struggled with was more than he alone could handle. Don's loving relationship with Ron and me endured over the years since the divorce and nearly up until his death at 99. I couldn't have been blessed with a more loving stepdad than Don Hammond.

Miracles Happen

Once my mother moved in 2013 to the Pacific Northwest to live by our family, the transformation of my mom over the last seven years of her life — from the narcissism, the alcoholism, and the other symptoms of her untreated pain and trauma — could never have been predicted by anyone. The next thought that comes to me spontaneously is that my own transformation could not have been predicted either.

My mother and I both could have remained imprisoned in our addictions, in bitterness and resentment, in shame and blame, in image management and pretense, in disconnection and unhealthy relationships, and in an estrangement from the wisdom of our hearts. We could have remained lost to the truth of who we each truly are.

My mom was never supposed to wake up. She had been incapable of love, compassion, and empathy. She was violent and cruel and dangerous. She was gone.

And then the impossible became possible. And over those last seven years of my mother's life we set about making up for what had been decades, our lifetimes, of being strangers to ourselves and/or each other. I had to go first — getting sober in 1984, healing and transforming what I had believed to be unforgiveable, opening and and strengthening and deepening my heart, and understanding trauma and the roots of what can cause human beings to be lost to who we are.

Miracles happen. Today I remember both mothers. I remember the first one who could not love. And I remember my second mom who woke up to love. And even through those last years of Alzheimer's, I remember the utter preciousness of countless moments when we would just gaze into each other's eyes. And my mama would call me her "precious darling." And I would call her my "precious mama."

And my heart is filled with love and gratitude and the profound lessons that I have learned from my mom. More than anything, I have learned that under it all is love, the power of love, the power of grace, the miracle of waking up to the beauty of our true nature — something that has always been there, even when that seemed impossible.

As all else slipped away, it is the love that my mother and I shared that remained. If we are extraordinarily blessed, it is love that prevails.

Bless us all... 🙏💗 Molly