Forgetting and Forgiving are Two Different Things

The other day, I was looking through old photographs.

I found a picture of me when I was six. I was in the first grade. Blonde curls, blue eyes, and a dimpled smile look back at me. I even had one of those strings around my neck that allowed you to play cat’s cradle. Appearances would tell you that this girl was happy. But underneath the smile, I saw something else. Fear. Trepidation. Uncertainty. Distrust. Even at such a young age, I knew the world wasn’t kind.I never invited friends over to my house. That’s because I never wanted them to see my family life. Even though I dated the same guy all through high school, I didn’t tell him about the abuse. I’m sure he suspected it, but he never asked. And at school, my dad was feared by every boy who was interested in dating any of my sisters. Everyone knew about my dad. He was scary. Didn’t my mother recognize this?  Couldn’t she see that my sisters and I were dying inside?  Was she so blind that she couldn’t feel our pain any longer?  The physical abuse didn’t happen every day, but the emotional and verbal abuse was always a threat. As a mother now, I cannot fathom watching a man, no matter who he was, lift a hand to or scream at my child. I would place myself over my child in an instant to protect her. Why didn’t my own mother love me enough to do the same?She was and is a victim. I hate saying that about her, but it’s true. She couldn’t stand up for herself, and she couldn’t stand up for us. I have alternately hated and loved her all of my life. When my sister killed herself two years ago, my mother became violently ill. She could not attend the wake, and only attended the funeral long enough to collapse on a pew dramatically. I do believe she was ill, but I believe her illness was caused by guilt. She knew what our father had done to my sister. She knew all of it. But if she admitted it, she was culpable. And she could never accept that because that would make her no different than my father. It’s hard to accept that we all have our dark side. I can forgive her for that.At my sister’s funeral, I quietly walked up to my mother and whispered in her ear, “Stand up. Go up to that casket and tell your daughter you are sorry. That’s the LEAST you can do for her. And the LAST thing you can do for her.” I was awash with grief, anger, guilt, shame, and regret. But I knew that I didn’t have to own it. She has her demons she battles, and I have learned to let go of my anger centered on her. We have never spoken about that day since. It’s almost as if it didn’t happen. Either she doesn’t remember or she chooses to not remember. Either way, that day was a defining moment in my life. My sister battled her past until she was exhausted. I don’t blame her for leaving us. But I will always be left with the emptiness of knowing that our mother fed us to the wolves so long ago. She knew what he was doing. She even encouraged the abuse at times.  And that is something I’ll never be able to forget.