Dear Mama

I Promise Not to Tell
by Brenda M Weber

(Page 5 of 5)

Mama was always sick. She had epilepsy and suffered from grand mal seizures. Doctors didn't know then what they do today, about treating this condition. It wasn't an easy thing to control, and even with scads of prescription bottles of pills on top of the refrigerator, there wasn't much hope for Mama. The drugs were more experimental than healing, especially back in the fifties and sixties.

Mama's spells had begun at an early age, and continued to get worse as she grew older. In my teenage years, someone explained to me that epilepsy was usually provoked by a head injury, and was not hereditary. Even then I thought Daddy knew what caused it, but wasn't saying. That reason, I would learn as an adult. Mama was not supposed to have any more children after her first one, and with each one of us, the seizures became worse. She would go into convulsions during her labor and deliveries, and her last one was born at home.

Roger was born in the middle of the night while Rob, John, and I lay on a mattress on the floor in the next bedroom. Mary helped my aunt with the delivery because there wasn't enough time to get her to the hospital. It happened so fast, and Daddy wasn't home. I was six at the time, and remember it like yesterday. Three years later, three days after my ninth birthday, at the age of thirty-five, Mama would die in the same bedroom where I lay listening to my baby brother take his first screaming breath.

Fleeting memories surrounding her illness remain vivid in my mind. Nowhere can I find precious remembrances of any bond with Mama. No hugs or contact of any kind, just a vacancy that explains my urgent need to feel loved. Nine years is certainly long enough to have had a mother's love, pampering, and attention. For me the void goes deep into having no sense of knowing that Mama even held me, rocked me, tied ribbons in my hair, comforted me, helped me dress, baked cookies with me, or did any of the motherly things that mean so much to people. It's as if she didn't exist for me. People speak of her as a loving person, but for me, those memories are buried in the deep darkness of Mama's grave.

I do remember being terrified one day when Mama had a seizure. John and I were the only ones home at the time, when she went crashing to the floor, stiffening and writhing in a spell. I knew from watching Daddy that he always put a towel in her mouth so she wouldn't bite or swallow her tongue. I was gripped with a paralyzing fear that would not allow me to do what I knew had to be done.

Instead, I grabbed John by the hand and dragged him into the bathroom. We hid behind the ironing board in the corner. It was so dark and cold in there, and it smelled of musty, dirty laundry. I didn't want John to know I was afraid but we were both crying, and I was trying to stay calm by telling John, "Daddy will be home soon." I was thinking that Mama was going to swallow her tongue and die, and it would be my entire fault. I don't know how long we were there before Daddy finally got home and found Mama on the floor unconscious, and John and I in the bathroom, asleep behind the ironing board. I was five at the time, and John was only three.

Another spell Mama had sent her falling into an old cast iron garbage burner we had in the house. Her back stuck to the side of the searing hot stove, leaving a large area with a third degree burn on her back. I didn't remember that happening until Mary told me about her having to put salve on Mama's back for her. John was younger, and he remembered it.

The old stairs in my childhood home symbolized both fear and grief for me. I remember the day Mama saw a mouse crawling on the ledge. She stood there screaming at the top of her lungs until Daddy came running to see what was wrong. Her blood-curdling scream scared the hell out of me.

I walked up those stairs one night in the pitch dark, only to have Rob jump out at me as I reached the top. In the dimness of the moon, he held up his arms and roared, while I let out a scream and nearly tumbled backward down the stairs. The dark was not my friend for a long time afterward, and I slept with a night-light for many years.

I recalled, with Mary's help, the day Daddy came down those dreadful stairs and said, "Mama's dead." He had gone to check on her because she was still in bed at ten in the morning. She was usually an early riser. It was a Saturday and everyone was already up and outside playing. That was the first time I ever saw Daddy cry, but it would not be the last.

I formed a picture in my mind of Mama lying in her bed with a distorted purple face, a tormented expression from choking on her own tongue. What a demented image to carry with me until I was old enough to look up the death certificate, which listed the cause of death as her heart stopped. Mama's gravestone only had the year of her death, 1964, so I also gained the revelation that she died three days after my ninth birthday. My aunt told me years later that she had been to visit Mama the weekend before, and she had looked better than she had in a long time. I was so relieved to know that Mama had actually slipped into the peaceful sleep of death without any discomfort.

The most graphic scene of Mama was when she was lying stiff and cold in a coffin. I stood there crying, looking at her, wanting her to wake up, while people were walking up behind me saying, "Doesn't she look good?" I was so angry. My Mama was lying there dead, and all anyone could say was how good she looked!

I wanted to scream, "She doesn't look good, SHE'S DEAD!"

I felt smothered when they lowered her casket into the ground and I knew Mama was not coming back up out of that hole. Mama was gone forever, along with any trace of my personally knowing the kind of woman or mother she was. Not only was Mama underground, but all my memories were buried that day, buried deep. Years later, in counseling, I would learn that the shock of her death was such a traumatic event that I blocked out most everything from my early years. My selective memory would leave me a very lonely person, searching for Mama. There is no blacker void in a woman's life than the absence of her mother.

About the Author

Brenda has been writing since the age of fifteen. She has compiled several booklets of poetry and written many short stories. This is her first book, a dream come true. She has written a fictional account of a lumberjack in Michigan which will soon be released. Brenda is working on a sequel to her autobiography as well as another work of fiction. She plans to write a series of children's books too. With four adult sons and a daughter, her children are her life.