Losing My Mom, 10 Years Later

Unpacking a complicated relationship

Andrew Knapp

Oct 07, 2024

110

Article voiceover

1×

0:00

-6:10

It feels like a kind of magic. I didn’t plan this. My style of travel is far too chaotic to have arranged to be in my hometown on the 10-year anniversary of my mom’s death. To the day. “How does that feel?” my friend asked. “Honestly, it kind of feels like nothing, like someone else’s birthday.” If anything, it’s an invitation to think about her. Maybe an invitation to reevaluate our relationship. Ten years since she and I stopped sharing the relationship–and it became mine alone to carry.

Without anniversaries,
without the weight of milestones,
would I forget?

I had a good upbringing. There was love in my house, plenty of it. But my mom’s love often felt conditional. Like I only deserved it if I was wearing my good pants to church. Going to church was not a matter of choice either, and putting up a fuss about it would result in a sharp and often explosive scolding. It felt like a childhood of religious performance in exchange for her love, with grave consequences if the rules were bent or broken.

Mom showed us love in a lot of ways, of course. And when I managed to forget about the moral high ground she stood on, we were her whole universe. But the religiosity she taught us shaped me. It shaped my future relationships, and my relationship with the world. And separating my mom from the religious beliefs she championed is like separating church from state.

I remember hiding in my room, curious about Buddhism, holding a little blue book about meditation, waiting until I was alone to see what it felt like to meditate. Though it seemed a lot like prayer without the age-old verbiage, I knew that my mom had a strong reaction to eastern beliefs. And it was her reactivity that I was afraid of. Another quiet summer day in my childhood home, she caught my oldest brother sleeping with his girlfriend in his basement bedroom. The foundations of the house shook that day. My own foundations shook that day. It was affirmed that certain topics were taboo–essentially, anything my mom had a strong reaction to, wherever the church assigned the “sin” label. And there was a list: sex, abortion, homosexuality, other religions or beliefs, to name a few. Of course, she opposed drugs and violence with the same fervor. But it didn’t make sense to box all of these things together.

When I think about my mom, the hard stuff comes to the surface first. Maybe that’ll always obscure all the other love I know was there. But there’s more than one version of my mom that lives inside me. Sure, the loudest of them is a religious zealot, explosive with anger, endlessly scrutinizing the world around her, and inadvertently sending me to therapy.

But another version of my mom still lives in a sunlit kitchen in my soul. Offering a fresh butter tart. A warm embrace. Comfort for my latest heartbreak. She’s a gentle melody humming through the hallways of the house. Whenever I can find my way through the smoke and judgment of the first version, I feel like I could reach out and hug her. Forgiveness isn’t always three words; sometimes it’s a practice.

I did my best to allow the first version of my mom to serve as a platform for growth. Resentment led to forgiveness which led to love. And the gentler version of her? It made sure that I could meet the world with softness and grace. That I could offer a warm embrace when someone needs it. You can decide what to hold onto and what to burn.

Relationships often offer us contradiction. Safety and threats. Security and hardships. Room for growth and the threat of mirroring reactivity. But we still love a dog that bites us. Life’s events will put us to the test. My own reactivity to adversity might largely be grounded in my mom’s explosiveness. But so might be my ability to hold someone in a warm embrace, and my search for the perfect butter tart.

I began writing this a few days ago. I cried at a coffee shop in Toronto because I hadn’t considered that I could reach into my memories and hold onto different parts. And when I did, I uncovered this version of my mom I forgot I had. I may not have understood this without this ten year death anniversary. I may not have arrived here without my friend asking me how I felt about this day. And if she asked again, I’d say I do feel warmth. Somewhere deep inside. Where the sunlit kitchen of my childhood still smells like her baking, and still echoes her hums.