A Letter Home

A LETTER HOME

March 2008
by Michael O'Connor

Dear Mom,

If this isn’t the first letter I’ve written to you since I left home some twenty-five years ago I’ll be a little bit more than stunned. I wish I could chalk that up to dependence upon email and its twin siren calls of ease and speed, but we both know that would be a lie. As a technophobe of the highest order you wouldn’t know an email from the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Let’s face it, you bore a son who became a writer. And that writer really doesn’t like to write. At least not without getting paid. So, as I see it, the lack of archived correspondence from me over the years is almost entirely your fault. You should have either placed me on your payroll as I entered kindergarten or given birth to John Grisham.

So then, to what do you owe this good fortune of a few scribbled lines? Well, to be honest, the last time we spoke I didn’t really get to say all that was on my heart. I had quite a few things I wanted to share with you, but it became apparent early on that you were having none of it.

On that particular evening, just after Thanksgiving, sprawled as you were in your comfy chair wearing nothing more regal than your favorite bathrobe and choice blanket, you weren’t listening so much as you were holding court. Like a politician controlling spin after a debate or debacle you directed the ebb and flow of conversation with rare skill. You rattled on about this friend who called you up at midnight forgetting the three hour time difference and that friend who collects welfare back in California even though she’s “bloody-well loaded.”

I became Muhammad Ali biding his time against Joe Frazier. I danced this way and that, looking for the opening I knew had to appear if you ever came up for air. And as much as our two-step parry left me frustrated, I’m now content that I was able to bounce off the ropes of my agenda long enough to allow you to have that moment the way you wanted.

I know you would agree with me that 2007 was a pretty tough year. First came the diagnosis—cancer, metastasized, inoperable. A death sentence awaiting a period. Of course, you took the high road. No treatment, save pain killers. Chemo was offered and summarily rebuffed. After all, hadn’t you been a nurse in the oncology ward those many years and later a professional care-giver to those souls for whom all hope had been abandoned?

Sure you had! So who could argue with the most sober decision of your life? If you couldn’t control where and when the marathon was going to end, you certainly weren’t about to relinquish how you ran those final miles. You lived a good life, a worthwhile life, a worthy existence…but—and I believe you would say this yourself—you also lived a hard life. Much harder, in fact, than your parents, Peter and Mary, would have wished for their youngest of three children, Dorothy Ann Duff.

I’m guessing you had the usual dreams of youth—a prince, a castle, and happily ever after. When you boarded that Greek ocean liner in 1954 at the tender age of twenty-four, setting sail from your homeland of Scotland, you took an outrageous leap of blind faith into the waiting arms of a country you’d never known and a man who was probably closer to Ralph Kramden than Sir Lancelot. That would be Dad, of course, who you called “Red” and his friends knew as “Mickey” even though his given name was Charles.

As you waved goodbye from port, did it even occur to you then you would never return to the land of lochs and heather? Did you know that day would be the last you’d touch your mother’s puffy face or see a tear roll off the ski-slope nose of the local police chief, your usually stoic father?

Sacramento was your destination and, proving you’d had enough travel to last the century, you stayed put for the next fifty-three years. When you and Dad married on October 10, 1954 the two of you seemed, well, ebullient. I know that’s a ten dollar word for a two dollar snapshot, but I’ve seen some of those pictures with the cake, raised glasses and and on that day—your day—you both possessed a precious air of cheer and joy that seemed contagious to the gathering.

When I was both old enough to take Health For Boys (5th Grade Sex Education) and do some heavy lifting on an abacus, I was most relieved to find I was a legitimate, honest-to-goodness honeymoon baby—the key word being legitimate. Between your wedding day and my birthday, July 15, there was a scant five-day cushion. I don’t think I ever told you this but, in relaying this bit of trivia years later, I’m pretty sure I asked Dad, “What took you so long?”

Patricia arrived in 1959. O’Connor folklore has Dad sauntering into the delivery room (men weren’t invited to the party in those days) like the proud papa he was. Having given birth on your twenty-ninth birthday, you looked at him with mock indignation and asked, “Well, what did you get me?” Apparently, Dad didn’t miss a beat. He beamed and silently gestured to Patricia.

I also remember when Kathleen was born in 1964. Patricia wanted a sister and I wanted a brother, so we made a one dollar bet on the outcome. When I was informed we had a new sister, I was heartbroken. You made sure I paid my debt to Patricia, although I seem to remember Dad slipping me a buck when no one was looking. Little did I realize that dollar was one of the best investments I ever made. Sure it would have been nice to have a boy to wrestle around and play baseball with, but in an unlikely homage to gender politics and affirmative action I got to have my own bedroom.

However the fairy tale began, to say it did not end happily ever after would be the understatement of either century you and I have shared. Twenty-one years. I don’t need to go into the details. You know them better than me. The saddest part of the divorce—and I don’t even think you are aware of this—is that both you and Dad confided to me not long after the final decree, “I still love him/her. We just can’t get along.”

When Kathleen was diagnosed with scoliosis it would have been easy to throw in the towel and join the welfare rolls for life. You had a teenage daughter in high school and another in a full body cast. Your resume—housewife, mother, professional babysitter, and proprietor of your own dry-cleaning service—was hardly the document to qualify you for that high-paying job you’d be needing in the years ahead. You rolled up your sleeves and signed up at Sacramento City College to become a licensed vocational nurse.

Although my sense of history becomes more foggy with each passing year, I believe it was about this time I announced plans to leave the sanctuary of hometown and family to venture into the wilds of Los Angeles, seeking fame, fortune, and a good-looking Jewish babe who could sing with the angels. Well, one out of three ain’t bad. Even as we hugged goodbye, with excitement in the air and my mind half-way down Interstate 5, I knew that for all the smiles and good wishes your heart must have been breaking a little. I will always be grateful you did everything to encourage my dreams and nothing to hold me back.

One of my biggest regrets about us, Mom, is that somewhere along the line we stopped being able to communicate with each other. And when I say “communicate” I mean we lost the ability to speak our true hearts. We stopped listening to one another without filtering through the trademark O’Connor Personal Defense System™ which, through the years, became hard-wired into our psyches.

If I had to point to a single incident (and, being an O’Connor, that’s what we do best) where our tethered ships began drifting it would have to be Dad’s wedding. After a few years of solo existence, Dad found someone very special. I know that had to be tough for you. It’s not as if you had any free time to go out and meet men. You had two girls and a student loan to support.

Dad asked me to be his best man. Although I was surprised, I was very honored and accepted without hesitation. Several years later he would reciprocate and stand up for me when Sally and I wed. When you found out you accused me of betraying you and I got angry. I would often slam down the phone or storm out the door as this topic became a recurring theme.

I’m sure it was fear of such a scene which caused you to raise your shields and plow through the mundanities at warp speed in our final moments. As I kissed your cheek goodbye, knowing I would not see you again on this earth, I saw your brave smile. I lingered a moment, searching for something profound to say that would cement the moment. Then I realized whatever I might say would be for my memory, not for yours. “It’s ok. It’s ok,” I heard you say as I pulled away.

On the ride back to Kathleen’s house, I resolved to write you a letter as soon as I got back to Los Angeles. I wanted to share a few things that were on my heart.

I wanted to thank you for being there for me in the middle of the night when I was sick all over and you had to clean up the mess. You did this often and without complaint. I wanted to thank you for washing my Little League uniforms after every game and ironing them just before the next one. Looking a bit sharper than some of my teammates helped to boost my game a notch and made me feel important on the field. I wanted to thank you for teaching me the importance of good manners. You said they would serve me well in life, and although I didn’t believe you at the time you were, of course, right as usual. When people comment even today on how well-mannered our daughters are I always tell them, “That’s my mother. She taught me everything they know.”

Mom, I don’t want you to think I’m romanticizing the past. There is no escaping the fact we lived in a home filled with dysfunction and chaos. More than once when I was small you came to me after a particularly loud “row” as you Scots would say and asked me to choose which parent I wanted to keep living with. Fearfully, I responded the way most kids would in that unthinkable situation. “I want to live with both of you.”

The greater truth was that in those moments of insecurity I didn’t want to live with either you or Dad. I wanted to live with the Cleavers or the Andersons or the Waltons. TV families talked to each other and worked out their differences by the end of the show. “Why can’t we be a normal family?” became the battle cry of my tiny republic.

And the answer which I wasn’t privy to in the Sixties, crystallizes now through years of careful reflection: “Because we are broken. Because we are imperfect vessels carrying generation upon generation of baggage heaped upon us by the previous group of O’Connors, Duffs, Shelley’s and any other clan that would have one of us going back to the days of William Wallace and Saint Patrick. That’s why we can’t be “normal.” And as we continue to ignore the satchels and suitcases tagged with names as various as shame, abuse, abandonment which weigh down our travels and sway our backs from the burden, we heap another bag or two upon our own children and continue the journey.”

God knows Sally and I have made plenty of mistakes with our kids And it is through those poor judgments I have come to appreciate how difficult and complex shepherding a child and providing for a family can be. How can I stand in judgment when I can’t possibly know all the back-story of your life or Dad’s. What I do know is that without God at the center of our lives, Sally and I wouldn’t have lasted more than a year or two. How I now wish He had been the central focus of our family as well.

Most of all, Mom, I wanted to tell you how utterly brave you’ve been in the shadow of this disease. Once you made the decision to forgo invasive treatment, you got your will in order, sold the house on Shenandoah Drive you’d lived in over fifty years, and moved to Ohio to be near your daughters. It was like moving to a foreign land all over again. But you did it. You insisted on your own apartment because, even in sickness, you wanted to maintain your independence and lessen the burden on your family.

These are but a few of the things I wanted to tell you when I came to see you in Ohio. But on December 1, two days after I returned home, you fell asleep on the couch in your favorite bathrobe and you never woke up. Kathleen was with you when you passed. While the question up to that point had been, “Will she make it to Christmas?” none of us expected you to leave so soon. It was a mercy you were spared the ugly end-game cancer executes when it’s in the red zone.. You had your wits about you ’til the end. You knew your children and they were there for you in this world, loving you into the next.

There is one more thing, Mom. I had wanted to read to you the poem I wrote you on the occasion of my twenty-fourth birthday. For many years you wanted to be the first person to wish me “Happy Birthday.” This usually involved a call at 1:16 AM, the hour of my birth. It was a little tradition we shared until it fell by the wayside somehow. Do you remember?

Your birthday call

this morning

served to alleviate

one

exaggerated case

of middle-youth depression.

In a single

Telephonic session

You cleansed the years

And brought back

Pablum promised

memories

of that cool

July morning

Twenty-four summers past.

Martin & Lewis

were hot then.

So were Brooklyn’s Bums.

But, ahhh,

What a team we made!

Like Casey and his Yanks,

“I couldna dunnit

without ya.”

Then they cut us free

And the compact pact

Expired.

But you never asked my signature.

You promised me all

Just nine months before

And this was but the principle

With interest

Still to come.

Somehow we drifted

Into separate streams

With you,

The perfect partner,

Silent,

Never asking why your son had slipped the sloop,

Slacking just enough rope to

Offer resemblance

Of independence

While you,

Unobtrusive, guide the rubber raft

Through treacherous times

And fifteen dollar

Fishing fines.

So why did your call send me reeling

Revealing the distance

Of one score, four?

Because you were there

When I needed you most

At the other end

Of the cord.

Go be at peace, Mom. Go be with God.

Love Always,

Michael Francis

TOP OF PAGE

CLOSE WINDOW