Life Worth Living Extract

Wednesday, 4th July. This morning I will sever the ties to my past, become truly independent. “Is this torrential rain a bad omen?” I half jest to the psychiatrist as I pass him in the corridor. “No, it’s a good sign.” I meet in a small room with two ministers, one Anglican, the other Quaker and Patricia, a psychologist. On a table covered with a white cloth are a lighted candle and letters to my parents. A weighty bag on the floor contains my natural mother’s letters. The ministers pray for my liberation from the oppression of my past. They ask for inner healing, peace, love; for understanding and pity for those who mistreated me. We leave the building. The downpour has dwindled to a fine mist. We approach a secluded garden. A log fire blazes in a giant brick incinerator. Everything is ready. I’m filled with a sense of awe in the presence of the primitive elements of nature: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Suddenly I feel shaky, fearful as I prepare to read aloud words that hand back total responsibility to the perpetrators of the physical and emotional abuse I suffered. “Adoptive Mother, Can you hear me…?” Although I begin confidently my voice quickly becomes unsteady. This public announcement of my decision to break her influence over my life feels risky. I stop reading, doubting my courage to continue. I knew this wouldn’t be easy but it feels impossible. Keep going, you’re doing well, I silently encourage myself. Summoning all my strength, I continue reading. My voice breaks as I read about the loving care denied the little girl that was me. Tears flow unchecked down my face. Heather, the Quaker minister, places a comforting arm round my shoulder. The warmth of her touch gives me renewed confidence. By the time I read “I’m free. Finally I can be me”, I know I mean it. I throw the letter into the incinerator. It smoulders but refuses to catch fire. I wait anxiously, willing it to burn. What if she makes sure it doesn’t? She has no more control over you, I tell myself. I breathe freely as a gust of wind causes the letter to catch fire, reduces it to crumpling, wispy blackness. I glance at Patricia, surprised to see a tear rolling down her cheek. I brace myself for the next letter, begin reading softly. Dear Adoptive Father This is the first time I’ve not called you “Daddy”. I’m not a little girl any more and you are not my daddy.” My voice falters. I calm myself, determined to continue. Although I sensed that you really cared about me as a child, I was hurt and confused when you beat me ruthlessly until I was sore and bleeding. I blamed myself, convinced it must be my fault, that it was only me that you reacted to so powerfully, so

negatively. Shut off as you were in your own distant world I needed to break through the iron control of your feelings. I longed for you to spend time with me, take a fatherly, warm, loving interest in what I did and what I said, not tell me I talked too much. I needed you to say you loved me, console me when children called me names in the playground because I was adopted, not ignore the unhappiness I brought home from school. I needed you to stand up to your wife, protect me from her daily sharp, belittling comments. Instead, you read your newspaper, ate your supper, closed your eyes, feigned sleep. You silently colluded with her cruelty. If you had looked up you would have seen the tears running down my face. Had you opened your ears you would have heard the desperation in my tone as I tried to defend myself. Or did you hear? Were you aware of me silently begging you to end that flow of evil words but chose to remain silent, too cowardly, too fearful she might turn on you instead, crack the wall you’d built around yourself? Those games of mine, “Let’s Nearly Defy Daddy”, went wrong, finished with me being dragged off your knee before you could inflict even greater physical damage. Why didn’t you just once understand that I so wanted you to hold me, smile at me, talk with me? I would have stopped at nothing to get you to notice me. I found a possible cause for your nastiness only when you had Alzheimer’s, when for months you acknowledged no-one. The last time we were together, in that hospital, our eyes met and the light of recognition shone in yours. “Daddy, you know me!” I said delightedly. “Of course I do, darling,” you replied. We both hugged so closely, so warmly... Your wife looked at Les, bitterness distorting her face. She spat out the words, “She always was her dad’s favourite!” And I watched as you slid away once more to a place where no-one could reach you…” Again I stop, the intensity of sadness, longing, loss, sweeping through me in powerful waves. It’s like I’m experiencing again the acute hurt of long ago. I cried that night. I’m crying today for what we missed, for the happy times we never shared. I’m angry you didn’t show me your love openly before that brief moment. But to move forward I must let you go. I loved you then. I love you now – and I need you to hear just how much you hurt me. Marie As I finish, I become aware of Patricia crying openly. Her empathy seems to add justification to my pain. The letter burns instantly. One more to go… * Dear Mum This, my last letter to you, is the most painful… Once more I’m overcome by memories. Taking a deep breath I resume.

I was ecstatic when your sister finally told you she’d been in contact with me. You had read every bit of correspondence I sent her. My hands were trembling as I opened that first letter from America, from you. I felt so relieved when I read that you had never wanted to part with me, that you’d thought of me not just on my birthday but every day you’d parted with me. I was soothed by your loving words, your desire to get to know me and my family. On my desk as I write is that photo you sent of yourself, a beautiful young woman who dressed smartly, styled her thick black curly hair, shaped her eyebrows, tastefully applied make-up. I was so proud of you, my real mother. What a shining example for me, who had spent thirty-seven years with such low self esteem. I could hardly wait for your next letter, to feel your warmth. I ached to be with you, to hold you close, to feel I was, after all, lovable for just being me. I flew out to meet you with Les and the children, your photo in my bag, so happy, so excited… I caught a good look at you from the window of the car before you saw me. I held baby Ben to me, felt my stomach tighten unbearably. You were propped up on crutches, grossly overweight, wearing a shapeless skirt and tee shirt, a cigarette dangling from the corner of your mouth. I couldn’t believe you were my mother. Without your false teeth, so down at heel, you looked more like a helpless, loveless, homeless tramp than someone with several properties, ten acres of land and a family who cared about you. I wanted to disappear, never set eyes on you again. I composed myself, hid my disappointment, my disgust, my anger as we embraced. I clung to the hope that during that month together you’d change, be the mum I’d always longed for. Suffering from post-natal depression I needed you to comfort me. But instead I listened to the story of your guilt at having me adopted and worse, how giving me up had ruined your life, how you’d never again found happiness. Marriage and a son did nothing to diminish your pain. Loaded down by your own problems you didn’t see the grown woman that was me. You were back in the past, grieving for the baby you couldn’t keep. As I listened, watched you cry and empathised with your plight, my dreams, my hopes, my yearnings for the relationship we might have known faded fast. Why did you miss each opportunity for us to share new, positive, rewarding experiences? I wasn’t enough for my adoptive parents and I couldn’t satisfy your needs. They weren’t there for me, neither were you. That left me feeling inadequate, a misfit, a failure, one of life’s mistakes. And I left you, feeling guilty that I felt angry with you. I was relieved to go back to England. I realised that, although you loved me, you would never understand me, wrapped up as you were in your grief about the past, about those lost years you talked about for hours. Why couldn’t we have compensated by having fun together? Why did you smile so rarely? ‘Life is so unfair, nothing but trials and sorrows all the time,’ you wrote. Why couldn’t you realise that life could be different from the moment we were reunited? You never knew how hard it was to watch you continuing to destroy yourself, chain-smoking, comfort eating, without an ounce of interest in yourself? And I grew to resent your outpourings of everything that troubled you. Each week I’d leave your letters lying around unopened, sometimes for days, knowing the content of them. You thought you could tell me everything. I became your confidante, your priest, your psychiatrist. And I encouraged you to pour your heart out, fearing

that without me as your listening ear you would give up completely. I felt compelled to pull you from your deep, dark pit of despair. But instead, I got sucked into it. Imagine for a moment that you are in my shoes, being fed a constant stream of depressing letters, filled with your resignation to a miserable existence: ‘I have no hope. I must continue my prayers or I would lose my mind…’ ‘I am a nervous wreck. I have to take a nerve pill every day…’ ‘I’m glad when each day is over for I really dread each day. I find it so hard to cope any more and get the feeling I want to get up and run…’ A mere taste of the tone of the hundreds of letters you wrote me. Of course I cried for you, raged at myself, too. I made no significant difference to how you thought or felt, or what you did. If only you had seen meeting me as motivation for changing your view of yourself, your world! The harshest punishment was having to sit in your bedroom beside you – just you, me and baby Joel – as you slipped away from me, let go on your hold on life. Too late for the tenderness, the closeness of those last ten days to take root, grow, flourish. At the age of sixty-four you died of lung cancer, deserted me, this time forever. I still carry the weight of the anger I was never able to express directly to you about giving your baby away, devastated as you already were by too much guilt and grief. I’m burdened by your sad life, by my remorse for not making you happy, not giving you the will to live – yet you made those choices. I now hand back the responsibility for your entire life, for your death, to you. I wish only to treasure the knowledge that you never ceased to love me with the pure, unconditional love that I have for my children, that you had for me Your loving daughter Marie Heather prays for peace, for an end to sadness and abuse. I conclude with a prayer for courage to put closure on the past, to face the future bravely. I place the papers on the flames, then empty the bag of Mum’s letters in handfuls. Grief sears through me. We watch the blazing letters diminish to dying embers. Suddenly the wind stirs blackened scraps of paper and ash, blows them swiftly upwards. “I’m honoured to be here with you,” Patricia says softly. Back in the tranquillity of the candle-lit room, I place a vase of freshly picked flowers and a smiling photo of myself on the table. The Anglican minister anoints my forehead with oil. I thank each one for being here, for sharing in this momentous experience that has clearly affected us all. * I’ve returned to the garden where I stood twenty-four hours ago. The sun is warm on my skin. I look into the sky, its blueness a contrast with the rain-laden, overcast greyness of yesterday.

And I feel a strange contentment, staring at mounds of powdery grey ash. Here lie the dusty remnants of my past – the anger, hurt and bitterness, those invisible, emotional bonds that held me back. Only sadness remains…