My 51st birthday was a few days ago. It is, more importantly, also my mother’s birthday.
Mother died on September 15th, 1994, exactly one month after her 51st birthday.
In less than a month, if I am still alive (knock on wood!), I will have outlived her whole lifespan.
For many women, the age at when their mother first gave birth is a major milestone to beat (either to get there beforehand or to outlast it). Since my mother gave birth to me when she was 26, I cleared that one a long, long time ago. But this milestone is, I feel, more important.
It represents more than outliving her. To me, it will be a moment where I have overcome her legacy.
I tell people that Mother was A Difficult Woman, which is what I will title her biography if I ever write it. Brilliant, creative, witty, brutally insightful, occasionally outrageous, queer, mentally ill, and a touch narcissistic — if there is anyone in history I would compare her to, it would be Oscar Wilde.
Imagine being raised by that person.
Which means there is a lot of her I wish I could claim (her brilliance, of which I possess but a shade; her beauty, of which I possess none; her wit, of which I possess on odd days) but there is so much more I have shied away from, such as her cruelty and selfishness and, most of all, her mental illnesses. The tragic reality is that the worst of her was a result of variables outside of her control, such as her poor physical health and her bipolarism and chronic fatigue syndrome.
I often explain that she was not crazy because she had mental illnesses, but that she was driven crazy trying to be “normal” while living with mental illness. Bipolarism is terrible, of course, and made her suicidal on the regular, but what really destroyed her day by day by day was the shame and the fear and the humiliation she felt because she had a mental illness. Those mundane, destructive emotions were the things that ate away at her life until she became a shell of the potential she once had.
It wasn’t fair, but it was her reality.
For me, that is a lot to outlive, and a lot to live past.
September 15th, 2020, will be the 26th anniversary of her death day and will be the day I can put down the fear and anxiety I have about that legacy.
I hope it will be the day I can, instead, embrace the potential she gave me with her genes and her stubborn persistence in the face of lethal odds.
Never as smart and never as pretty, but possibly, finally, able to take up the badge of honor marking me both as a survivor of her worst legacy and a bearer of her best.
