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I can’t help but stop and ponder the portion of my mother’s letter I copied below.  My ‘sick’ mother would no doubt be turning over in her grave at the thought of her daughter, Linda, DARING to be so audacious as to take on the ‘coveted’ task of working with these ‘coveted’ letters.

My mother was cremated, so no grave to turn over in.  Her ashes were spread over her beloved homestead.  I was not there when this was done.

But I am here with this collection of 50-year-old letters, and for whatever reason it seems that I BELONG to this task that my mother could never complete herself.

I believe that in the next world our sicknesses are removed from us.  In that world, my mother can love me.  She can love herself.  In that world I do not believe that my mother minds that I am working on the task of putting order to this disheveled collection of envelopes, mixed up undated letters, journal fragments and thoughts that she wrote those 50 years ago.  And in both worlds, I can love my mother.

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In my mind there is some version of ‘mothering my mother’ going on for me here.  I can never fully explain and can never justify the insane abuse that she perpetrated against me, no matter WHAT the stress level was in her and my father’s life.

I work with these pages with love, care and gentleness.  I offer in my small way the kind of post-loving to my mother’s lifetime homesteading legacy as if she were one of my children.  I was able to love my children in spite of the terrible abuse that was done to me.  I believe a major contributing factor to my ability to love came from being on that mountain.

If she had not loved that mountain, had not, with my father, somehow found what it took to get that homesteading done, my ability to love would not have been exercised enough in my brain to allow those circuits and pathways to evolve, develop and grow.

My mother’s mental illness would have followed ME anywhere during my childhood.  It began with my birth and certainly flourished in its terribly sick way in Los Angeles LONG before I was moved to Alaska a month before my 6th birthday.  My mother’s mental illness was intertwined completely with her homesteading experience.  But the mountain was pure and sustaining.  It did help her.  It helped me.  I know this.

So when I read these following words that my mother wrote to her mother about the letters that she sent to my grandmother and WANTED BACK I understand that they DID belong to my mother during her lifetime.  She is no longer here to claim them.  They were her legacy that has somehow been passed on to me, as ironical as that seems to me to be.

Or is it irony?  Is it some strange kind of opportunity to orchestrate a healing of some kind between us?  How do I set aside the insanity and abuse as I work with these letters she wrote 50 years ago, knowing at the same time that behind the scene of her words existed a brutal, terrifying, dangerous, violently destructive mother toward me — really just me — that does not seem to appear anywhere on these pages that she wrote?

I am not going to waste this opportunity.  I have no solid or clear idea about what good use transcribing these letters is to anybody other than me — and perhaps my family.  I only know that I am MOVED to put them into order, to do what my mother could not do — was prevented by her mental illness from doing in her lifetime.

Somehow through all the progressive years of mental deterioration my mother’s mind went through long after I left home and until the time of her death in 2002, she did somehow manage to retain and protect these letters.

I feel I am honoring my mother in some kind of precious way by helping to construct a more coherent life story for her, and for each of her six children that shared our childhoods with her.  After all, the disorganized, disoriented incoherency of an insecure attachment disorder is more than reflected in this mess of papers as well as in the story they tell.  That does not mean — in spite of the unbelievable suffering she caused me when she threw her ‘fits of rage’ during the 18 years of abuse toward me that she could not STOP — that there is not still something beautiful to be found in anybody’s life, including hers.

Because life itself is a precious gift.  Because once my mother left THIS world I believe she left her terrible illness behind her.  She also left these letters.  Which voice of my mother’s do I now want to hear?

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Monday, May 18, 1959

“Dear Mother,

*I’ll be expecting all letters back in next mail!!  [Linda note:  So that 50 years later I can transcribe them now, put them in order, and let their words tell her story — now!]

Received your latest letter on the way to town.  Idea of book, good, but as you know it’s been my idea from beginning but rush job NO – Please send me back my letters now – I write to you instead of keeping notes – I don’t want a review.  I want my letters NOW PLEASE if you want to really know all that happens this is the only way I can keep you informed but you must send each letter right back so I can put it in my 3 hole note book in order.  So please send my letters back [from] March on –

I have so much to write and my ideas are endless and there were none at apartment so at least the tough homesteading brings release of ideas and who knows, perhaps some day a book or a movie but it must be done in my way or not at all.  You alone can understand that….they are MINE and MINE ALONE…. They are MINE to do with as I want.  You must never use them in any way.  Promise???”

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Read the rest of this letter here:

*May 1959 Mother’s Letters

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