In the end, she chose to carry both the pain and the love, and to let the love speak louder. She was born the third of four children to loving parents who did their best. Angela came first, then Spencer, then her, and years later little Duncan. As a child she was anxious and clung to her mother. In the 1960s, doctors sometimes gave tranquilizers to soothe nervous kids. She learned early that quiet could come from a pill, never knowing how heavy that lesson would grow.
Home was not safe. Her brother’s cruelty crossed any line of normal teasing. She ran away as a teen and moved through foster homes, where harm found her again. With pills tied to calm in her mind, she kept chasing relief. At seventeen she was pregnant. The year before, she had been forced to end a pregnancy, so this time she hid her growing belly until her sister noticed the missing belly button one night. She was determined to keep the baby.
Her daughter was born on a May morning in 1979. The delivery was easy and the love immediate. But the house still held abuse, and two weeks after coming home, the young mother left, searching for the peace she had never known. With no time to bond, their connection frayed. By six months, the grandparents took custody. They were worn out and busy, so the aunt, only eleven when the baby arrived, became the main caregiver. The little girl grew up hearing whispers that her mother was high somewhere. She wondered, again and again, why pills had been chosen over her.
In 1985 the mother met William, the love of her life. He was charming and reckless. They ran to Colorado, hid in a small town, and for a while were happy. When he was arrested, she returned to Florida, but the promises she made her daughter often broke. The child would sit at the end of the driveway with a grocery bag of clothes, waiting. Most days, no car came. When it did, they made bright memories at the beach with music and snacks, laughing in the sun. There were dark moments too: days left alone, near overdoses, fear she would not wake up.
By high school, the daughter was angry. She loved her mother and resented her deeply. She began to rebel, picked up cigarettes and beer, then drugs. Her mother’s dependency had hardened into heroin. They pushed each other away and pulled each other close, sharing silly dinners, sitcoms, and records, singing Landslide at the top of their lungs. For a while, those songs held them together. The daughter moved to California near Duncan, the aunt who had been her sister and mother. She fell in love, married, and asked her mom to walk her down the aisle. Her mother arrived high. A long silence followed. Then came loss after loss: her grandfather’s stroke, William’s death from cancer, her sister Angela’s overdose. The mother was shattered.
In time, the daughter found faith and stopped drinking. She called her mother to say, I love you, I forgive you, please forgive yourself. It helped, but healing was slow. Boundaries were needed and often resented. By 2019, they were talking every day. They celebrated birthdays, sang karaoke, and felt hopeful. Then, in early 2020, a crisis. The daughter mentioned possible surgery. The mother, high, drove across states without being asked. The daughter held the line, got her a hotel, called the police when she found pills in someone else’s name, and tucked her in, praying she would one day accept help. It was the hardest kind of love.
Months later, the mother opened her door and said she no longer had a daughter. That was the last time they saw each other. In October 2020, the call came. The mother had drowned after an overdose. The daughter pulled to the side of the road and screamed Why into the dark. She had always known this ending was possible and had never stopped hoping for another one. She grieved by singing their songs and telling the truth. Her mother’s addiction had never been personal.
It was the only way she had been taught to survive. The daughter scattered her ashes in Colorado, on a hill beneath Pikes Peak, where black birds danced in the wind and a lone wildflower nodded in the grass. She planted a garden at home and sings to it often. She misses her mother daily and holds fast to what she learned: love with boundaries, pray without expecting to change another’s will, and remember that many hurts are not about you.
