My Daughter My Teacher: A Single Mother’s Journey of Love, Pain and Transformation

Helping Aggressive Kids: 10 Positive Parenting Tips

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Comeback: A Mother and Daughter's Journey Through Hell and Back

She had to plan in advance what she was going to say. A lot of people knew my grandmother to be as nice as pie, just as a lot of people knew my mother as an incredibly talented theatre arts administrator and overall fun person to be around.

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But there again, what can you say to that? In the history of the world, a whole story has never been told. I recognised my cue and walked over and put my arm around her, knowing this would create a picture she wanted people to see and would therefore console her. My father understood this cruel twist, though at times he seemed to understand little else.

Since he lived a minute cab ride away and since their relationship, for all its animus, still extended to things like hospital visits and accompaniment to chemotherapy appointments, he did do his share of emptying buckets when she vomited and showing up at the emergency room when she had a crisis of pain or hydration.

Our family was not one to shirk its duties, even if we did not always perform them warmly. There were many ways my mother could have chosen to tell my father she was dying and there were many ways he could have chosen to respond. I said this not because I believed it but because it seemed like the kind of thing you should say. My mother felt grateful and vindicated. My father felt snubbed.

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Or, if he did, he refused to abide by it. The code had to do with not just showing up but actually being there, which was no longer really a part of their social contract. All around us were family members of other patients, people who sobbed in the hallways or set up camp at bedsides or emerged from the elevators carrying piles of blankets and needlepoint pillows and framed photos from home.

He looked to be in his sixties. I assumed he was crying over his wife, though I had no idea. No one was crying like that for my mother. Our family had a significantly different style. Some of that time has now passed.

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One day some months earlier I had entertained a passing fantasy that my mother would get hit by a bus. The oncologist had just delivered the news that the chemotherapy was working. She was so happy that day that she actually ventured outside the apartment on her own to buy a frappuccino and I remember thinking to myself how great it would be if she were hit by, say, the M7 express on Columbus Avenue and killed instantly and painlessly. I knew from the internet that chemotherapy for gallbladder cancer works when it works at all for about one cycle before the body develops immunity and the disease resumes the process of ravaging it.

She would never have a better day than this day. That night she drank half a vodka gimlet to celebrate and regretted it for the next several days. She vomited from the chemo through the rest of the summer until she landed back in the hospital with severe intestinal and bowel trouble. I had just got engaged to my longtime boyfriend, which had made my mother very happy.

I did this because I felt that if we were in a play this would surely be part of the stage directions. If I just sat there with my arms crossed against my chest, as I was inclined to, the doctor would make a note in the file suggesting that I might not be capable of offering sufficient support to the patient. I retrieved her hand from under the blanket and squeezed it in my own.

She did not reciprocate. I think we were both relieved when I let go. The doctor said she would most likely make it through Christmas, so we should feel free to go ahead with any holiday plans. For three nights in a row, my mother made me stay in her hospital room.

The people who came to clean her up were terse and tired and spoke mostly in heavy Caribbean accents. A few times she lay there in her own shit before they could get there. I know this because I was in the sleeping chair on the other side of the room, listening to it all while pretending to be asleep. I tell myself I did it out of compassion but the truth is I also did it, as I had done so many other things where she was concerned, out of rage. Later, when the horror of those nights had been eclipsed by other horrors — patient proxy forms, calls to an attorney, wrenching phone conversations with her friends — my mother was discharged from the hospital and my father and I took her back to her apartment in a taxi.

This day was no exception. Neither my brother nor I had ever shown an interest in reproducing. I had a dog, which she sometimes called her granddog. The three of us sat in silence through this advertisement and several others — for weight loss, for acne scar removal, for adjustable mattresses. It was a cold, gusty day and tree branches scraped the car while we waited at red lights. One thing I did for my mother that I would not have done for my father was get married.

That is to say, I got married pretty much right then and there, less than six weeks after getting engaged, so she could be in attendance. We spent three weeks discussing the wedding and five days actually arranging for it, which in retrospect I think is the perfect amount of time to plan a wedding. During the time we were discussing it my mother became fixated on hosting the event in her apartment and inviting her friends and associates.

She also made it clear she did not want children in her apartment for fear of their knocking over her pottery or damaging her art. The discussion period ended when my mother realised she was too sick to orchestrate anything. This was one of our more authentic conversations because it so happened that I authentically wanted her there. My father, as far as I could tell, regarded marriage as a fatuous institution.

In moments, he seemed to regard my wedding plans as yet another complication that had been thrown into the mix of our crisis. My mother was the only person on earth for whom my getting married really meant something. Photos taken by another close friend later suggested my mother was in an extraordinary amount of pain. Wearing a wig, being humiliatingly pushed along in a wheelchair by my brother with whom, a month later, at Thanksgiving, I would trade earsplitting obscenities as she lay in the next room after vomiting at the dinner table , she is wincing in every shot.

After seeming relatively alert during the pre-show champagne at her apartment, compliments on the decor , she appeared to unravel throughout the ceremony, shifting from barely living to officially dying in the time it took me to slip from lack of official attachment into wedlock. The next day, the four members of the hospice team came to the apartment to introduce themselves.

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When they asked her to describe her level of pain on a scale from one to 10 — one being no pain, 10 being unbearable — she told them eight. She said she had never in her life been able to answer that sort of question. A few times I saw Vera kneeling by my mother praying. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.

If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.

Our family is everything. Her greatest skill was encouraging me to find my own person and own independence. When you become a mother, you are no longer the center of your own universe. You relinquish that position to your children. She says, Toughen up, this is reality we are living in.

I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.

Reader Interactions

I don't need another plaque. Everything gets reduced to essentials. They had ongoing conversations. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her. I'm years-old, and I don't want to sleep on a sleeping bag down in the basement. My mom made me stop. She didn't want me to conform. My mom's the only reason I know it's a real thing. It's like riding a bike, you never forget. They cared deeply about who we would be, and much less about what we would do. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.

What about kids who are never aggressive until another child is? They show aggression to defend themselves from a bully… because my son had a play date like this. The family with the child that hit, kicked and whined with dramatic display for attention all day had stayed with us in our home for days and by the time the family left, my son was doing all the same things unprovoked. He was being blamed for starting it and then after day 2 of their stay in our home… he started it constantly and physically all the same aggressive behaviors. But with this family as a guest in our home for several days… there was no getting away from it.

My son never stopped being friendly, sharing, hugging etc but the little girl would respond with drama… crying, pushing, shoving and scratching! Was my son becoming aggressive for attention? He was very well behaved all his 4 years with all children until this little girl treating him this way.

The parents responded appropriately in our home as you would suggest. My son began emulating her behavior with her and unprovoked.

Like he was looking for and now enjoying her reaction and to gain control. What do I do? What if this is how he handles other children now with aggression? I tell him all of the above things in your article and in the situation with the child in our home and constant presence of her bullying… nothing worked.

My sweet, caring and sharing son returned all of that little girls actions and ten some. Thanks so much for taking the time to comment Joie. This sounds like it was a very difficult few days for your son and for you. He likely became aggressive in response to feeling threatened by the other child. It might have continued because he was feeling stressed, or as you say, to see the reaction. You might be interested in reading a recent post that outlines how to teach kids to use their words assertively.

The hope is, he will do this instead of responding physically aggressive — especially if you make it very clear that hitting and being physical is not okay with you. I wish you the best of luck with your son. Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Thank you so much for this post I really needed to read this. My lovely 3 year old boy is currently finding lots of things tough and is hitting out especially at louder more assertive children who he feels threatened by.

Thanks for taking the time to comment Ruth. Try to be a detective: Teach him how to ask politely. Thanks for your great tips. My son is 2 26 mos and can get pretty aggressive.

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