It’s Never Too Late

My mother lived a long life—slightly more than nine decades. Ours was a complicated relationship for a slew of reasons; my mother’s desperate attempts to keep my normal separation process at bay and my corresponding lurches toward independence and liberation, for instance; and most disappointing, her inability to offer comfort and support to ten-year-old me in the wake of my father’s suicide.

Yet she taught by example (clumsy as it was) that life moves on even after devastating loss. As a young widow determined to find her way to a new beginning, my mother set about searching for a husband who would agree to help her bring up the children, in her words. She soon found one, and in the throes of my early adolescence, I cringed at the sight of this stranger who through no choice of my own assumed the role of stepfather to me and my brother Lee.

Proof that “it’s never too late,” decades later I would express my gratitude to him, albeit posthumously, for offering my mother a second chance at happiness; for his forbearance with a wife who brought her complicated self to the marriage; and for his patience with a stepdaughter who barely disguised her indifference to his attempts to be an acceptable stepparent.

In 1998, my mother became a widow again. By this time, I was soon to be liberated from a difficult, lengthy marriage. For almost a decade, she lived independently and assumed a “merry widow” role with ease. She reveled in her friendships, travelled to Florida each February, and performed volunteer work with pride. My mother gladly made frequent three-hour bus trips to visit me, and her three treasured granddaughters.

A few years before my mother’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease, she agreed to leave her ten-room home in the suburbs of Boston, the city where she’d lived all her life. She moved across the state to a two-bedroom apartment in Amherst, just ten minutes from my home. Even as dementia intruded on her ability to maintain her independence, my mother kept up social engagements with friends and family.

During this period, I discovered the truth of the truism “it’s never too late.” Not surprisingly, our roles reversed as my mother’s mental functioning faltered; the stress of her daily needs and demands sometimes overwhelmed my patience and energy. Yet, to my surprise we developed a close bond that was both novel and cherished. For the first time ever, we reminisced comfortably about the life we’d shared. For instance, when I confessed adolescent misdemeanors I’d never yet admitted to her, my mother heard them dispassionately as entertaining sagas.

The most astonishing, welcome surprise of these last years was her newly expressed affection and deep appreciation for her son, my brother Lee. Throughout our childhood and adolescence, I’d witnessed with angst our mother’s burgeoning harshness toward him as the years progressed. Despite my continuous efforts, I was powerless to invigorate their relationship with mutual fondness or respect. 

How could I have peered into the future to the day, not long before our mother’s long life ebbed, when she would write on a page of her calendar (which she was using as a diary by then) my darling son Lee called me today? Handing my brother this priceless document soon after our mother’s funeral was proof that it’s never too late…to redeem wishes long held close to one’s heart.