On Mothers, Dementia, & the Incredible Power of Forgetting

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I owe my mother; obviously I do, for carrying me in her womb for nine months, for birthing and raising me, but — I’ll put it this way — I never got the impression that she liked me. Sure, she had it in for my siblings, too, but I had two additional strikes: I looked like my father, her eventual ex, and I was the second daughter — practically a sin from where my mother came, Casablanca, where boys were cherished and girls not nearly as much. Her tongue was legendary for its sharpness. When she came home from work at the end of the day, I’d race up to my bedroom as soon as I heard her footsteps at the door.

When I was 18, she divorced my father and married another kind, mild-mannered man, and briefly, she seemed nicer and less critical. This expansive state lasted a few years, and then she turned sour on her new husband and on the rest of us, too.

I don’t want to talk trash about my mother — that’s not the point of this tale, so I’ll just add one little thing that drives the point home: how much I rubbed my mother the wrong way. She tried to disinherit me, too. Luckily, my youngest sister was able to distract her from doing so.

I have a confession to make. When I reached the age when my friends’ parents began to die, I would envy — be jealous — of anyone who mourned and deeply grieved the loss of…