Happy Mother's Day!

Sunday May 10th, 2009 - Lake Villa, IL

Another Mother’s Day and I still don’t know if my mother is living or dead. She would be 66 now but I can’t confirm that either. I always heard she wasn’t even 21 before I was born and I was her third child. I think it may be accurate because I heard it many times.

I’ve only seen my mother a few times in my life that I can remember. She left the family when I was five months old and I was sent to live with my paternal grandparents. Both of my siblings stayed with my father who eventually remarried a short time later. It wasn’t a pleasant life for any of us and we were never really raised as two brothers and a sister.

I was always the outsider and growing up with the grandparents had it’s own set of ugly problems. They fought like soccer hooligans and I had to grow up in the middle of all that until they finally split up when I was about 12. None of us kids had a positive home life.

Gramps was my only ray of light as a kid. He would tell me the truth about pretty much everything, even when it wasn’t pretty - and it usually wasn’t. The one subject he’d never talk much about was my mother. She just wasn’t a part of my life and that’s how it was.

I was about nine or ten when I heard she was coming to take all of us kids to the zoo for a day. I was less than thrilled to hear it because I didn’t know her at all plus at that time it wasn’t fun to be the youngest sibling. Both my sister Tammy and brother Larry had heard from my father I was living the life of leisure with the grandparents and they hated that.

For a while they were both very mean to me but I blame that on the old man. He was an instigator and probably jealous that I was getting all the attention from his father he never got. Whatever it was it wasn’t fun to be me and seeing Mommy Dearest didn’t thrill me.

All I remember was how awkward it felt to be with our ‘mother’. She wanted us to call her that but I remember how none of us really wanted to because we didn’t look at her as our mother. She was Jeannie and we’d always been pumped full of bad stories about her.

I didn’t see her again after that one day at the zoo for another several years. I don’t even know how we got back in touch but I was in high school when I saw her again. I was with my sister and brother and I remember going to a gathering of people who were allegedly a group of our relatives. We felt like total outsiders but I don’t remember them being mean.

Then for whatever reason we drifted apart again and I didn’t hear from her again until a birthday card came in the mail for me when I was 27. Why that year I don’t know but I do remember finding it odd to get a card on such an odd numbered birthday from my mother.

She wrote (or tried to) a letter that I had a hard time deciphering because it looked like a third grader wrote it. I’d heard she never finished high school and that letter confirmed it. I was embarrassed to read it with all it’s spelling errors and know that neither she nor my illustrious father were ever going to do anything positive in my life and I sure was right.

I remember writing her back and sending her some of my press clippings as a comedian because I was starting to get a few by then. I told her I didn’t know why I was doing it but I thought she might want to know her son actually tried to make something out of his life.

I also remember letting her have it about abandoning us all and how horrible it felt to be left alone and have to grow up not even knowing if my mother was living or dead. I never got a response and didn’t end up hearing from her again until I was lying in intensive care at St. Michael’s hospital in Milwaukee in March of 1993 after my infamous car accident.

I was really hurting and had broken my jaw once and my sternum twice. I was really in a bad way and the phone rang in my room. It was my mother. Click. She called again and I hung up again. She called a third time and I told her I was not emotionally or physically ready to talk to her but if she wanted to visit me after I got out I’d be able to see her then.

She did call me again when I got out and we arranged a meeting time when she’d come over to see me and visit. She said she wanted to get to know me and even though I wasn’t really thrilled about that I was open for giving her a chance. She seemed to sound sincere.

She was supposed to come over at 6:00 on a Wednesday. I can remember looking at the clock on the wall of where I was living then and seeing it go from 6:00 to 6:30 to 8:00 to 2am. She never showed up and never called to tell me why. That was the last time I heard from her. There was a part of me that died that night and I don’t enjoy thinking about it.

Sitting there with broken bones didn’t hurt as much as her not showing up. Every time a car drove past I thought it might be her but then I just gave up. I had two roommates then and both of them were gone that particular night so I sat there by myself wondering why I was even born. Before or since I can’t describe anything that’s been so intensely painful.

Loneliness. Abandonment. Torture. Those are only words and they can’t get to the pain I felt with that experience. This is only something a dented can is able to relate to and I’m very glad not everyone is able to feel what I felt that night. It was pure and uncut raw hell.

All these years later it still hurts to think about that story. I had heard she was still alive from one of her half brothers who came out to see me at a show a while back but I’m not really interested in finding her or trying to start a relationship this late in the game. She’s dead to me and after not trying to contact me in 16 years it’s a little late to do it over now.

I’m the first one to admit I’m a nut in many ways but hopefully this explains a little bit of why that is. This is cruel and unusual punishment and I admit it still stings. No, stings isn’t the word. It’s EXCRUCIATING when I think about it but I don’t always do that on a regular basis. I try to work past it and get on with my life but days like today are horrific.

People have a lot of inner things like this inside and I know I’m not the only one. I sure do try to not let it ruin my life but many times that anger and hurt lays there and festers. It will be with me for the rest of my life and that’s just how it is. Happy Mother’s Day Ma.