Coping with the Death of a Parent as an Adult Child of Divorce
“Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: as it hath pleased the Lord so is it done: blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21
It’s 2016. I get a text from my mom, very passive-aggressive, with an extra sprinkling of manipulation. I can’t stand the tone, so I pick up the phone and call her to hash it out. After I finally get past the “everything’s fine,” and coax out of her what she really wants to say, she lets me have it: “Jeff* tells me I’m being a coward.” “What in the world? About what?” I answered, with some irritation in my voice, already tired of the drama. “He says I’m being a coward because I wouldn’t tell you how I feel about our relationship. But you know what? He’s right. I am a coward and I’m not going to be any more.” “Mom, what are you talking about?” Her voice starts to crack. “You don’t call me. You barely text me. If I don’t text you I don’t hear from you for weeks. I’ve sat here on the driveway wondering where I went wrong and I think about hurting myself.” This last phrase is really what gets my attention. I was in the military at the time, and we are trained frequently on spotting and reporting suicidal ideations. Even though I was irritated, that sentence hit me hard. Some on the spot thinking, no doubt the Holy Spirit, helps me out. “Mom, I am going to call you every Sunday from now on. That will be our time to call and catch up. And I’ll start this week.”
It’s 2021. Six years later, and I have kept my word. I can count on one hand the number of times I cancelled on talking to her every Sunday in those six years--and if I did cancel, I at least sent a text. I tell you this because even though this promise to call her came from a place of fear that my mom would hurt herself, it actually ended up stabilizing our relationship. My mom struggled with mental illness for a good portion of her life, and all she wanted was to know what was going on in my life, and that I loved her. Eventually, these phone calls gave her a sense of security--something that people with mental illness are desperate for above all else. She knew I was going to call her, and that kept a certain harmony between us. She didn’t push for intimate details of my life or get frustrated at my sometimes boring stories--she just wanted to know what her daughter was doing, and if she was happy. I’d tell her about my school papers, my new favorite snacks, and about my new friends-- and this was enough for her. It made her happy to know at least the basic rhythm of my life. And given her struggles with bi-polar, depression, and borderline personality disorder, this basic rhythm was all she could handle. It gave her a simple connection to me that enabled her to love me on a simple level. It wasn’t the love I needed, but it was the love she could give. And given her limited capacity to express a mature love, this simplicity, looking back, is beautiful. She would print out my school papers and hand them to her friends to read. She’d mail me those snacks I told her about. And she’d always ask about my friends.
As the often-melancholic daughter of an Army Colonel, what my intense personality needed from a mother was an intense maternal love. The kind you see from those hyper-practical mothers of 5 or more kids. The kind of mom who knows exactly what their kids need, who nurture--but don’t coddle-- and who know when to get involved, and when to back off. My mom was not equipped with this kind of nuanced, measured, mature love. Growing up with abusive, alcoholic parents, she took love where she could get it, behaved how she needed to in order to avoid pain, and learned to operate through chaos, grasping on to any sort of security she could find, even if it took crafted manipulation tactics to get it. You see, when love isn’t freely given to you as a child, you live in fear that it will never come to you at all, and you do whatever you can -- reasonable or not -- to get it. My mom lived this way for the rest of her life. She understood only chaos. When she did achieve stability, she created chaos so she would understand the situation better. She lived in a peaceful home with my father -- a very stable, generous man. But their struggles were frequent from the moment they got married. My mom was able to figure out what someone needed in order to receive love from them, and once the love was received, the paranoia of losing it set in. She simply couldn’t understand unconditional love, because growing up, it was always conditional. Almost 20 years of this paranoia caused (among other things) my parents to split, and afterwards, I saw this same pattern with the men that followed. My mother married one more time after divorcing my father, and another divorce came quickly after. Unlike my father, this man Jeff did not create a stable home, but rather fed into her paranoia. She started to drink, and would slip into mania. She called me once, completely manic, sobbing: “I want my momma.” My grandmother had been dead for many years at this point.
After she left Jeff, she moved out of state and moved in with a man named John*. Once the honeymoon period faded and my mom slipped into paranoia, John actually attempted to get her help. He encouraged her to stop drinking and to seek counseling. He taught her how to manage her finances and consequently she paid off a lot of her debt. He encouraged her hobbies. Overall, he treated her with dignity and respect. But she wouldn’t get help. The alcoholism was pretty settled at that point, and I don’t think my mom understood just how unhealthy she was. Her behavior was too much for John to take, and he eventually broke up with her--but not before furnishing an entire apartment for her to live in and continuing to check up on how she was doing.
Unfortunately, from my estimation, this break-up was too much for her. She started drinking a lot more. When I visited in December 2020, she drank vodka every night and cried herself to sleep. What my mom desperately wanted was to be loved--but she didn’t know how to give it or receive it. She didn’t have the tools. I like to say, “a man without legs can’t walk.” Well, a person with mental illness cannot function in the way that they--or we--need.
This brings me to May 29, 2021. I received a late-night call from the state police. My mother had been killed in a highway collision. They couldn’t even identify her body. The one thing they were able to identify was a tattoo she had on her left arm--the same one as mine. She got it a couple of years after I did. The tattoo says: “Memento Mori.” Remember your death.
The weeks that followed were a blur. Because she was single, and I was the legal next of kin, I was responsible for her estate. Every morning after a melatonin-aided sleep, I’d walk upstairs to my dad’s kitchen to endless requests for my signature, lists of people I needed to call, including insurance agents, mortuary workers, highway patrol officers, etc. I am blessed that my dad handled a good majority of the paperwork, but insurance companies and banks don’t care that you are grieving—you have to act quickly and get them what they need. To this day I don’t quite remember everything I signed. I gave my signature to get people off of my back. The sad part is, this bureaucracy will last several more months, even up to a year according to our attorney.
While the paperwork has been a blur, what I remember most clearly is cleaning out her apartment. An incredible dichotomy: strewn mini-liquor bottles and religious icons everywhere. My printed school papers. A Mother’s Day card I had sent to her, which she framed. I knew my mother was a tormented woman, but to see it on display was agonizing. She suffered immensely and could not figure out how to cope. But what I realized as I walked through her apartment and passed picture after picture of me and my brother framed on the walls, a quilt she was making for my birthday that wasn’t quite finished, a box of every card I sent her over the years, and a table with every icon I sent her from my travels on display, was that she loved me immensely. No matter how difficult things were for her, no matter how much the mental illness tormented her, she loved me. She loved me as she knew how.
During our last Sunday phone call before her death, she told me: “I want to start going back to Mass. I missed it today because I slept through my alarm. Next week I’m going to be sure to get there early so I don’t miss it.” She died at 7:30 pm on a Saturday. She never had the chance to make it to Mass. I hope and pray that God wanted her closer to Him than she could get in a pew.
Throughout the process of settling her affairs, certain people from her life, most prominently her ex-husband Jeff, started coming out of the woodwork. He asked me, “Do you think when you clean out her apartment, you could get the engagement ring I gave her and mail it back to me?” I must tell you, as an adult child of divorce, I sometimes struggle with boundaries. However, in this situation, I had zero qualms about blocking his number. These sorts of enraging situations occurred frequently in the aftermath of my mom’s passing. It is a stark reminder how the consequences of divorce follow even after death.
As many of you can surely relate, my relationship with my mom was never easy. I struggled with how to relate to her, agonized over her health, and beat myself up for never “feeling” love towards her. But one thing I have learned throughout this whole ordeal, that I will likely need to be reminded of many times, is that love is an act of the will. Feelings are a side-benefit. I rarely felt excited or looked forward to calling my mom on Sundays. But I did it, and this act showed my love towards her, even though I did not feel it.
Now that my mother is gone, I definitely feel it. My counselor says these tears are proof of my love. She says they show that my love for her was actually immense. I say this to encourage my fellow adult children of divorce: even if you don’t feel love towards your parents, those small acts of the will that you make toward them—whether that be calling them, or sending them a friendly text, or mailing a birthday card, or most importantly praying for them—are more powerful than feelings. We don’t love our parents less just because it can be harder for us—in some cases we love them more, because it is harder for us.
I plan on continuing to love my mother for the rest of my life through prayer. While the effects of the divorce are still present, it remains that the best way to love my parents is through Christ.
*Names have been changed.
Rebecca attended a Life-Giving Wounds Retreat in 2019 and was amazed at the amount of healing and bonding that occurred in just three days. She decided to be as involved as she could with this burgeoning ministry. In her spare time, she loves reading, baking, and listening to podcasts!