Friday, Jul 4, 2008
I wanted to love my mom because she did the best that she could do. But her best was terrible.
Jan 31, 2003 | In a superhuman show of spiritual maturity, I moved my mother's ashes today from the back of the closet, where I shoved them a few weeks after she died. I was going to put them on the bookshelf next to the three small pine boxes that the pebbly ashes of our pets were returned in last year, after they were reincarnated as percussion instruments. My mother's ashes, on the other hand, were returned to us in a brown plastic box, sealed, with her name spelled wrong: Dorothy Noraht Wyles Lamott; only her middle name was Norah, not Noraht. She hated the name Norah, which I love, and she didn't go by Dorothy, which she also hated. She went by the name "Nikki," the character on a radio show that she loved as a child in Liverpool. She hated almost everything about herself, and women, and men, and at the same time, thought the Lamotts were better than anyone.
I've been angry at her most of my life, even after she died. I put the ashes in the closet as soon as they came back from the funeral home, two years ago, thinking I could finally give up all hope that a wafting white-robed figure would rise up from the ashes and say, "Oh, Little One, my darling daughter, I am here now, finally." I prayed and prayed for my heart to soften, to forgive her, and love her for what she did give me -- life, great values, a lot of tennis lessons, and the best she could do. Unfortunately, the best she could do was terrible, like the Minister of Silly Walks trying to raise a girl, and my heart remained hardened towards her.
So I left her in the closet for two years to stew in her own ashes, and refused to be nice to her, and didn't forgive her for being a terrified, furious, clinging, sucking maw of need and arrogance. I suppose that sounds harsh. I assumed Jesus wanted me to forgive her, but I also know he loves honesty and transparency. I don't think he was rolling his eyes impatiently at me while she was in the closet. I don't think much surprises him: This is how we make important changes -- barely, poorly, slowly. And still, he raises his fist in triumph.
I've spent my whole life trying to get over having had Nikki for a mother, and I have to say that from day one, I liked having a dead mother much more than I did an impossible one. I called her Noraht as her nomme de morte. I prayed to forgive her but didn't -- not for staying in a fever-dream of a marriage, not for fanatically pushing us to achieve, not for letting herself go from a great beauty to a hugely overweight woman in dowdy clothes and a gloppy mask of makeup. It wasn't black and white: I really loved her, and took great care of her, and was proud of some heroic things she had done with her life. She had put herself through law school, fought the great good fights for justice and civil rights, marched against the war in Vietnam. But she was like someone who had broken my leg, and my leg had healed badly, and I would limp forever.
I couldn't pretend she hadn't done extensive damage -- that's called denial. But I wanted to dance anyway, even with a limp. I know forgiveness is a component of freedom, but I couldn't, even after she died, grant her amnesty. Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back. You're done. It doesn't necessarily mean you want to be with the person again; but if you keep hitting back, you stay trapped in the nightmare -- which is the tiny problem with our Israeli and Palestinian friends. And I guess I wasn't done.
I stored her in the closet, beside her navy blue purse, which the nurses had given me when I checked her into a convalescent home nearby, three months before she died. I'd pick up the ashes from time to time, and say to them, grimly, "Hello, Noraht." Then I put them back. My life has actually been much better since she died, and it was liberating to be so angry, after having been such a good and loyal girl. But 18 months after her death, I still thought of her the same way I do about George Bush -- with bewilderment that this person could ever be in charge, and dismay, and something like hatred. I decided to see if I could find some flecks of light. Friends told me to pray, and to go slowly because otherwise, my rage was so huge, how would I be able to see fireflies in the flames? I could go as safely, and as deeply, as I could into the mystery of our relationship. I couldn't scatter the ashes -- the box was sealed. So I went through her purse.
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