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Closure Letters are highly overrated
So I finally cut my mother out of my life - it's not been too long yet (only 3 months) but it's been a very calm, relaxing 3 months without being torn down on anything - very nice indeed. Sorry for the novel, but this was far too funny not to share.
I've not had an easy time lately, and have just finished 12 months of chemotherapy and other pretty difficult medical treatments. Having become ill my mother supported me in her own way which, although not always conventional, worked for us within the strained relationship we have always had. She would come out with great supportive lines such as ‘at least it’s not cancer’ and ‘do you have any idea how badly this is effecting me?’ More than once she had me crying alone in a hospital room at night after having just berated me for an email I had sent to the family, for something I had said, something I hadn’t said…Empathy has never been her strong suit.
Knowing the effects of stress on my illness I recently did the only logical thing and removed myself from negative and stressful people in my life (a cleansing yet terrifying process) starting (and ending) with my mother. It had been a few months without any contact and I was feeling relieved yet still apprehensive – was I missing something? Was I missing out on something? Had I angered her (had I ever not?), had I wounded her (from birth on, apparently)? I deeply felt as though I was missing something… closure?
My friends empathized and suggested that I write her a letter. It was an opportunity for my final thoughts on the matter to be heard, they said. It would give me closure and maybe even one day open a positive dialogue. I assured them that I would think about it, though I felt it would be best just to let the relationship die and turn to alcoholism instead. My step-sister called me the next day incidentally, and I told her about my progress in cutting out my mother (who she had cut out nearly a decade ago) and told her that my friends had suggested that I write my mother a letter.
“Oh my God don’t do that!” she burst out at me. I chuckled in surprise and asked her why not – she then told me that she had done that once, with her abusive stepfather. She had been expecting some sort of magical movie moment of reconciliation and validation and it just went so, so badly – “don’t do it. Just don’t do it.”
Now, I knew that her stepfather growing up had been very violent and abusive, at which point she then came to live with my own family of poorly-hidden crazy. She told me that as a child she was so frightened that she had actually drawn a picture of him on the floor under her bed in crayon with a note saying that if they ever went missing ‘It was Donald’. Having grown up she had separated herself from her family well into adulthood – until Donald was diagnosed with brain cancer. Her friends encouraged her to ‘write him a letter, reconcile and clear the air before he dies, it’s the right thing to do.’
So she thought to herself well, he’s in the hospital right now and dying of brain cancer, if I was ever to give him a letter now would be the time?
She wrote the letter. She drafted and re-drafted it. Sobbed, cried. She agonized over this letter – trying to rationalize the abuse, trying to make herself heard in the most appropriate yet sensitive way she could. She ended the letter with the sincere hope that he would pull through this and be there to walk her down the aisle at her upcoming wedding. Then she travelled from the southern United States to Northern Canada to see him, to support her mother and to deliver this letter. To reconcile and let the family break with peace.
She hadn’t seen or spoken to him in years, but arrived in his hospital room with flowers and the letter. He was so pleased to see her and they chatted, catching up about their lives. This was it, she thought, this was going to be my movie moment – and so she gave him the letter.
He quieted and started to read her letter. His face took on a seething look and he turned red. Then he turned purple. Then he stopped breathing! Alarms all around his bed went wild and nursing staff piled in, pushing her out of the way and laying his bed flat. She was pushed back against the wall in horror watching the fray of resuscitation thinking “Oh my God I killed Donald!” in mute, jaw-dropped shock as she was hustled out of the room and into the hall. A few minutes later they had brought him back though he was now on oxygen and again ‘resting comfortably’. She was encouraged to go back in where upon stepping foot into the room Donald looked at her, picked the letter off of his bedside table with sweeping grandeur and snarled “Well I’ll just finish reading this then, shall I?”
He continued to read as she sat by his bed wide eyed and terrified until he lurched forward mid-page to try to strike her but was caught and held back by his oxygen tubes. He fought the tubes, tearing off the mask in rage and lunged for her again until more nurses came in to sedate him!
She sat there in her hastily backed up chair, again wide eyed and terrified as she watched the needle go in and he immediately calmed, relaxing into the bed and again picking up the letter to finish it. He had reached the end and, putting the letter down onto the bed, smiled up at her.
He would love to walk her down the aisle.
It was absolutely horrific, she told me. “Don’t do it. Your mom is healthy and really mean. You’ll regret it for the rest of your life. It will not be anything like a movie. Don’t do it.” He had, in the end, taken only what he wanted to from the letter and she was still in some form of shock as she flew back out of the country the very next day.
After hearing this I figure that closure is highly overrated and I can live without it. Any letter I write to my mother would surely end in similar horrifying yet comical outcomes, such as it being accidentally mailed, her finding it somehow or it ending up accidentally online and going viral. And then the real drama would begin, I just know it.
Maybe I’ll just write her a post-it note.
Chronically hilarious - you'll split your stitches!
I wrote a book! Bucket list CHECK!
Re: Closure Letters are highly overrated
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Sorry you and she have had your problems. Badly-hidden crazy --- that's a good one.:(
Sometimes I think you are better off saying nothing and then pulling a disappearing act or limiting it to one spoken sentence: "You will not be hearing from me anymore; enough is enough and 'crazy' is not on my purchase list any time soon."
You are better off writing the person a "Dear Jerk" letter: make it as nasty and as acidic and full of Technicolor offcolor sentiment --- make it as long and as vehement as you wish and when you're done, burn it or delete it. Don't mail it.
Chronically hilarious - you'll split your stitches!
I wrote a book! Bucket list CHECK!
http://notesfortheirtherapist.blogspot.co.uk