My mom is dead, and time, already mangled and violated by three months spent by her side in a nursing home, has taken on a new, meaningless form.
I don’t relax well. I don’t even know where to start. Read a book? Three pages and I’m wondering if there’s transcription work available online. Watch a movie? I still haven’t finished Barbie and never will. I don’t have any hobbies. My hobby is work.
And so I clean. I clean my mom’s house, I clean my house. I’m actually filing away the teetering stacks of closed files at the office. And of course, there’s the borderline hoarder situation with the five refrigerators and apparently every bill and canceled check my mom ever wrote since 1965.
I clean and I sort and I shred. Anything to keep me from thinking.
My mom didn’t pass “gently” or “peacefully”. It was hideous and traumatic, and I can’t even find the words to express how broken I am. We were left alone to fend for ourselves for weeks because there were only four aides for 70 beds. I guess I did my best. I don’t know. I don’t know.
But because I clearly can’t be punished enough for whatever sins I’ve committed, in this life or the last, I found a letter.
After each day of sitting vigil at my mom’s bedside, after hours of trying to coax her to eat and drink, for no real purpose, I would go to her house to slowly sort through her things and haul out what I could. This process seemed less traumatic than hiring a company to just trash everything all at once.
That’s how I found the letter. The letter I couldn’t ask my mom about because she was too close to death to understand anything I said.
It’s from my Uncle Jack to my mom, written in 2000 shortly after my dad died and she reached out to the brother that no one in the family had spoken to in 40 years.
He opens by mentioning that their sister, my Aunt Fay, had told him that my mom had adopted a baby girl, and he commended her. He said that, although he and his wife were childless, he admired my mom for adopting.
I desperately wish I hadn’t found that letter.
I knew my parents had a hard time conceiving and that my mom miscarried at least once. She didn’t make a big deal about it. It was just something that happened. Eventually, at 38, she became pregnant, went on bed rest, and finally had me.
That’s the story and she stuck to it.
Now, the thing to remember is that Uncle Jack did time in San Quentin (my mom always said Sing Sing, but I think she just liked saying “Sing Sing”), which is why he was disowned by the family. The family was a tough crowd—there were multiple get-rich-quick schemes, beatings, and booze. It’s hard to blame Jack for whatever wrong turns he took.
My mom got away by marrying my dad at the age of 17. And they stayed married, with never a fight that I saw, for 50 years (in case I need to feel like more of a failure than I already do).
My only hope is that my uncle is an unreliable narrator who heard my aunt say something like, “She’s thinking about adopting.” But then, voilà, I was born, just in the nick of time.
Because I was born with a tooth. I have the tooth. I have the dentist’s bill and the note that says I was my dentist’s youngest patient, ever.
What, the birth mother handed me over and said, “Oh, by the way, here’s a tooth.”?
I guess, maybe? But my mom also told me stories about her pregnancy and how I liked to bite her as she breastfed me. Can you breastfeed an adopted baby? I have no idea.
Since her death, I’ve found bags of congratulations cards and a baby album with her handwritten, albeit desultory, entries about my first milestones. I have my original (maybe) birth certificate, which is also handwritten because it was 1967 and Bill Gates was 12.
But no birth announcement.
I’ve never thought I looked like any of my family, but other people say I do. I don’t know what to think. This is just a lot to take in when I’m on the edge of a mental cliff as it is.
I don’t want to be adopted. It’s a child’s fantasy that destroys you as an adult. Now I have to send $20 to the Department of Health to find out if there’s an adoption file (redacted, but at least I’ll know), and I’ll probably do 23andMe for health markers, since my health history might be so much meaningless gibberish.
And no, there’s no one left I can ask. Everybody is dead except for some cousins who would have no idea whether I’m adopted or not.
I missed all of my chances to ask my mom so many things. The silence is profound.
I am so sorry, what a terrible time you are going through. While this too shall pass is a cliche, it is also, thank goodness, true, but in the meanwhile, all this must hurt so much. Big virtual hugs.
When the pain of loss fades a bit, you'll realize that you did the only thing that really mattered at the end, just by being there. All of us at, or near, "final approach" want to pass peacefully in our sleep. That's not always possible, but having a loved one there at the end has to be the next best thing. As for your uncle's letter, let's not forget that, as a guy, he may have simply assumed that you were adopted, given the difficulties your mom had. He doesn't sound like the kind of guy to have made great decisions, so I wouldn't put a lot of store in what he said. Even if it should turn out that you really were adopted, you grew up with two parents that loved you. You repaid that love in those last months of your mother's life, adopted or not. In time you'll come to terms with that. As for cleaning as a form of therapy, it's better than booze or pills. Our own 3 sons learned that if they came home well past curfew, and their mother was vacuuming, it was not going to be a good night! Your mom was probably old enough to have experienced some of the Great Depression. People who grew up then had a tendency to hang on to a lot of stuff that makes no sense to us. When my wife and her brother cleaned out their mother's house after she passed, they found a heavy box in the far corner of the attic. When they got it down into the light, and read the carefully written label, they collapsed in giggles. It said "Receipts, no longer useful".