Forgiveness

I had no idea who it could be – someone who doesn’t realise I’m teaching, although I was told they did say it was important. At least I know it’s not about Lily as she’s in this school too.

I quickly walked along the corridor passed the Principal’s office and into the foyer – the sight of the grey walls and floral carpet as enticing as ever.

My feet wouldn’t move once I had rounded the corner – I tried to step back as if perhaps she would disappear if I did. I don’t know what I wanted to say but no words would come out anyway. The years hadn’t been kind to her and her eyes looked sad. My initial thought after ‘how old she looked’ was ‘please don’t mess my life up. I don’t need you in my world’.

She spoke. “Hello Deidre”. She took a step towards me and held out her hand. It looked small and wrinkled through hard work. I don’t know if I wanted to take her hand or not. The shock was too much after all these years. I didn’t move but said “Hello Mum”, the words sounding strange and unreal.

Neither of us said anything after the initial greeting and then awkwardly we both went to speak at the same time. “I can’t…..” I started and at the same time she said “I didn’t know”….

“I can’t talk now as I’m teaching but if you give me your phone number I can ring you after school, if it’s important” I added.

She took out a piece of paper and a pen from her oversized bag and scribbled her phone number. Walking towards me, her outstretched hand held a piece of paper that could perhaps change my orderly life if I let it.  She almost threw it at me, turned and scurried off. I wasn’t sure if she had tears in her eyes, but I didn’t have time to think about that. I had a class waiting for me.

In between the teaching of ‘I’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’ and long division – this was turning out to be as difficult as multiplication – my thoughts always turned to the same question – ‘why was she here?’

I hadn’t seen my mother, or my father for that matter, for almost twelve years. Actually, to be honest, I did see her a couple of times not long after I left when I was visiting a friend who lived near the house I had lived in, and I suppose she was visiting an old friend too. I didn’t let her see me.

I couldn’t concentrate for the last couple of hours of the day so was quite relieved when the bell went. I had no meetings after school today so decided to go home early for a change, and Lily could do her homework at home.

My head was thumping. “Hi Mum” came the familiar happy sound of my daughter’s voice. She walked up to me, arms outstretched and hugged me. “How was your day?” she asked, eating a sandwich that she obviously hadn’t had time to eat for lunch.

“Umm, yeah, it was ok” I mumbled. My head was foggy and I wasn’t looking forward to the phone call I felt obliged to make.

The drive home from school was only about ten minutes and Lily chatted the whole time. I’m not even sure I heard half of what she was buoyantly saying as my mind was preoccupied. “What do you think then Mum?” she asked me.

“Oh Lily, I didn’t even hear what you said. Tell me again”.

“Oh don’t worry about it. It seems like there’s something wrong with you so when you’ve had your strong cup of tea I’ll ask again!”

Lily was the light of my life. There was no husband or dad living with us. At the time I was going out with Jake, I knew that he wasn’t ‘staying’ material, and this was ok by me. Even when I told him I was pregnant, and he gave me the alternative of ‘get rid of it or I’m leaving’, I knew I was keeping this baby and that he would go. I’ve always told Lily the truth about Jake, but making sure she was aware, that I knew I had made the right decision. I never heard from Jake again – I doubt if he knows if he fathered a girl or a boy but who wants someone like that in their lives?

Lily had gone to her room to do homework and I sat with the phone in my perspiring hand, the crumpled piece of paper sitting next to me on the couch. The one thing I hadn’t told Lily about was why I left home. I told her it was ‘unbearable’ and that I needed to leave but not the reason why. Somehow I thought it was not something she should necessarily hear. I knew that when she was older, I would tell her, but not at ten or even almost eleven.

“Hello, Mum?” my voice asked, a little shaky, feeling like a child – scared and a bit nervous.

“Yes Deidre, it’s me. How are you?” her voice sounded old and tired.

I couldn’t help but launch right in with “Mum, why are you here? Why do you want to see me? It’s been nearly twelve years, so why now?” I asked, just wanting to know, somehow afraid to hear the answers.

“I don’t want to talk over the phone love. I need to see you face to face to have this conversation”

The silence seemed to go on for ever, only broken by my voice, telling her, commanding, “Well we can meet tomorrow as its Saturday, but I don’t have long”.

“Oh ok Deidre. I understand. You must be busy. I’m staying in a hotel in town, The Towers, do you know it?” she asked.

“Yes I do and they have a coffee shop at the bottom. I’ve had coffee there before.

(Why did I tell her that for goodness sake?) Shall we meet at 10?”

“Oh yes please. I look forward to seeing you Deidre. Will you come on your own?” she asked tentatively.

“Yes” was all I answered. I wondered who she thought I would bring. Does she know about Lily?”

“Bye Deidre” her voice quivered, and for some reason I wanted to hug her. “No, don’t feel sorry for her – remember what happened”.

We had finished a very simple dinner; I felt tired and couldn’t be bothered making anything. But I needed to talk to Lily before tomorrow and now seemed the right time.

I had always wondered why I was blessed with such a mature and resilient child. No finger pointing, no judgement and only a few questions. It seemed as if she understood things that were far above her years, and then a little while later, I had my ten year old daughter back who could laugh at the sound of flatulence or loud burps and sing at the top of her lungs while still eating a biscuit, spraying the crumbs everywhere!!

“It wasn’t your Mum’s fault you know. It was your dad’s. I think your Mum didn’t let you tell anyone because she was ashamed….and scared”.

“Well maybe. I will perhaps find out tomorrow. I guess this is what it’s about. What else can it be? I just want to hear what she has to say and then for her to go”

“Mum, that’s a terrible thing to say about your own mother. Do I get to see my Grandma? I’d like to”

“This is exactly what I mean. No, you don’t get to see your Grandma” I told Lily abruptly. I felt drained, wanting tomorrow to come and go and for life to get back to normal again with just the two of us.

“Why not?” she persisted, and then realising that I wasn’t going to discuss it any more, gave me a kiss goodnight and went up to bed, calling out “Night Mum, love you”.

I was dreading the meeting with my mother. I had been awake since five am and felt tired before I’d even got to the coffee shop. Lily had gone up the road to play with a friend at her house, and I promised to collect her on the way home and tell her what it was ‘all about’.

The Towers looked as I felt, weary. The old building was in need of a fresh coat of paint and some structural fixing up. Inside the front desk and furnishings looked drab and dark, the foyer only being lightened up by some large old fashioned lights shining on the wall.

The coffee shop was much the same as the entrance of the hotel, but it was clean and their coffee was good.

She was sitting in the corner, away from everyone, staring out of the window, watching the people passing by, Saturday shoppers, rushing to get in to the shops before everyone else did. She wore a dark blue jacket and a floral scarf hung from her neck. As I walked up to the table she turned quickly and smiled, a genuine smile of delight, the same colour lipstick that I remember her using, applied to her thin lips.

This time when she stood up and came towards me, I did hug her, not a tight hug but close enough for me to smell the perfume that I remembered.

We ordered our coffee and sitting opposite each other we were ready to talk.

“Deidre, this is very difficult for me to say. I will just tell you everything and then you can say what you want to”. She took a deep breath. “ I know your childhood wasn’t fun for you. Being an only child you had no other sibling to talk to about things and you couldn’t bring friends home.  Your father was a difficult man to live with and….

I stopped her there. I couldn’t help myself – “A difficult man to live with, difficult? He used to hit you all the time Mum. How many times did you end up in hospital, let alone the times I ran up the road to get the doctor, and if he hadn’t been such a good friend to you, it would have been the hospital every time. How can you give such a mild description of a man who was so savage to you?” I could feel myself getting angry with her, the way I used to as I got older and realised that the black eyes and split lips weren’t really from her tripping over or walking into something.

“I know Deidre, but please let me finish. Don’t you think that I have lived with the guilt of you witnessing all the violence when you were just a young girl, all the times you wiped blood off my face and put cold flannels on bruises? Knowing what was going on but never being allowed to tell anyone, making up stories for my sake. I have lived with the torment of it all. I have suffered because you saw my suffering and I didn’t help you”.

She pulled a tissue out of her bag as our coffee was put in front of us, turning her head so the young girl serving us wouldn’t see her tears.

“Mum, I’ve tried to put it all in the past. I really have. I have a good life now. I’m happy. Do you remember that last day I had at home? Dad was so drunk and angry at the world….do you recall that Mum…the way he slapped you really hard and then grabbed your hair. I knew I would never let him do that to you again no matter what, and I tried to pull him off you – do you remember that? How he started on me, his fists pounding my head and face. I was his daughter for goodness sake. I don’t even know how I got to hospital. All I knew was waking up in the cool white bed, and the nurses hovering and asking questions. But you know what Mum, I never told them anything. They all knew but I wouldn’t confirm it. And the reason I did that was because of you. I loved you so much Mum…A sob caught in my throat and I tried to breathe deeply to stop myself from crying. I didn’t want to cry in public. There were always so many students around.

She kept dabbing at her eyes in between sipping her coffee. She looked pale now and I felt sorrow, love, disappointment and confusion all at the same time.

“Why would you stay with a man like that? You should have taken me away with you and we could have had a good life together – just the two of us. Instead we have the awful memories of being nervous, lying to everyone, tiptoeing around him, always scared of his drunken moods. You were such a loving mother to me, especially when it was just the two of us but you didn’t protect me from something we could have left behind. What do you want from me now after all this time?” I was beginning to feel drained.

“I couldn’t leave him Deidre – he would never have left us alone. God knows I wanted to. He was always a very possessive man, and he wouldn’t have stopped looking until he found us. I used to beg you not to tell anyone about the abuse because of what he would do if anyone else found out about it. He would threaten me all the time- telling me what he would do if I ever left him. I used to be grateful that it was only me he hit and not you, until that day…..

I felt sad. My immediate anger had subsided and I thought about what I had really always known. It wasn’t her fault. She was the victim and it just impacted on others, like me.

“I need to tell you and then ask you something” she said to me. She had stopped crying but her eyes looked puffy and her cheeks rosy – as if she was nervous about what was coming. She took a deep breath before starting to talk “Your father is dying Deidre – he doesn’t have long now”.

Even though he had been a violent drunk throughout my childhood and abused my mother, for some inexplicable reason the news that my father would die soon jolted me. I felt a wave of a mixture of emotions, one of them being sadness, but I couldn’t explain why.

She continued “He has been battling cancer for about three years now, liver cancer to start with but now it is everywhere and he is in palliative care. He had to stop drinking with the initial diagnosis and that changed things a bit. Not long after he felt the need to go on some sort of spiritual journey and he has been on it ever since. As time went on he seemed like a different person to the aggressive and horrible one that he was.  He wanted to find out where you were Deidre to talk to you, but I said ‘no’. While he was still alive I wanted the past to be just that. But he wants to ask your forgiveness for all the wrong he did in your life. He is desperate to hear you say you forgive him before he goes. He cries Deidre, truly sorry for all the misery he caused”.

I didn’t know what to say. My mum looked shattered, as if it had taken all of her strength to first come here and to now say her piece. I wasn’t sure if I could forgive him. He had robbed me of the innocence of a childhood. I can forgive my mum – it wasn’t her fault but him I’m uncertain about.

“I don’t know Mum. I’m not sure if I want to see him and I’m confused about how I feel. It’s a lot to take in and think about. When are you going back?” I asked, wondering where she actually lived.

We parted ways and this time I gave her a hug that said “I’ve missed you Mum”.

I really didn’t feel like talking about it after I had picked Lily up so we left it for the remainder of the day, me promising to tell her about the discussion after a night’s sleep.

It’s like having a split personality. One part of me, the part that remembers the drunken and violent husband and father thinks ‘who cares if he goes? I haven’t seen him for twelve years, haven’t missed him and only thought about him occasionally and those occasions were for what ‘he’ was missing out on, not me. Things like a wonderful grandchild – his only grandchild and the enjoyment we could all have had if our family was ‘normal’. The other part of my mind thinks no matter what, he is my father. It’s because of him that I am in this world. It’s because of him that I have Lily. It’s too late to change the past but what harm will it do to forgive a cancer riddled man before he leaves this earth. I still hadn’t made my decision but knew that I didn’t have long before it would be too late.

I knew what Lily thought I should do and she told me so. She was a kind and loving old soul who told me that to choose to forgive doesn’t excuse what the person has done, nor does it let us forget, but it does release us of negative feelings and help us to enjoy life to the full.

We ate breakfast together and then I told her “Today Lily I am going to offer forgiveness to my father, and introduce you to your Grandmother”.