My mom chose to leave us when I was 14. I was the third of four siblings living in a small mid-western town in rural Missouri. We all stood in dismay as she laid all of her clothes and belongings out on the kitchen table one morning and explained to us that she was leaving for New York City and we were not going with her. To make the situation ever more strange, she was smoking a cigarette. I had never seen her smoke in my life. I still remember the smell. She did not have much more to say that day, except bye. I use “bye” rather than “goodbye” because it was that cold and unemotional. The “why’s” have never been totally answered. We know she struggled with mental illness much like what I deal with on a daily basis, but it left a gapping hole in my heart, soul, my total existence. We had been abandoned by the only parent we that truly gave us love and comfort.
My father, who was hiding in the bedroom, was unable to deal with what was happening. Surely he was awake and saw her packing her clothes and gathering her belongings, yet we did not hear them exchange a word that morning. Silence was his way. He didn’t have the capacity to express true feelings and to this day remains quiet through my cancer treatment, mental health hospitalization and all of my trials and tribulations that needed a parent to step in and just say, “its gonna be alright”. I’m not sure I even remember dinner that night. The brain has this way of helping to delete or ignore the details of trauma. Maybe delete it not the right term. It wasn’t deleted, but rather stored away to rear its ugly head later in life, which I will cover, not now though.
So life went on just as it was before, but mom was gone. The house was quiet and my brother and sisters compartmentalized much of this event. We never gathered together and discussed it, not until I was well into my 40’s. My brother and I shared a room at the time and he would wake up in the middle of the night begging my mom not to leave. Why didn’t I just climb into bed with him and hold him and give him comfort that I so badly needed. The thing about abandonment is that you kind stand still it seems for years and just try to understand what happened. You move through life going through the motions, but never really addressing what occurred, at least in my family. Abandonment would really set the stage for how I would deal with all of my trauma. It created a stage for a multiple act play that would continue until it didn’t.