My Hero, My Mom

47 Ways Forward - Strategies for Navigating the Next Four Years

“A setback is just a set-up for a comeback.” – Dr. Willie Jolley

1

A few nights ago - after an ultimately frustrating day where I couldn’t find adequate words - I set out to organize my second desk – the one where my 1966 Smith-Corona Electra 110 typewriter waits, ready; the one where favorite photos of family and friends are taped to the walls, photos that often cheer me up when I’m riddled with self-doubt. But that night - after a deep dive into the daily news - I was reeling - angry and upset and feeling on the hopeless side of things. That’s when I stumbled on a handwritten letter that my mom had sent me dated February 7, 1996. At that time, I had decamped to a Convent - yes, a Convent in Connecticut - for a week of writing. It’s one of those here’s-what’s-happening-letters which lulled me, until her final paragraph, when her tender and wise words walloped me. It was as if she knew in 1996 exactly what I would so need to hear 29 years later. And in that moment, my anger gave way to the fear and ache underneath, and I broke open.

One way to keep going is to bring along that person or people who may no longer be physically here. This leads me to the next of my 47 Ways Forward:

#7 Gather Your Ghosts

In the days after the election, I set out to make a list of at least 47 no-longer-here human game-changers. People who impacted me, life-altered me. People who - were they still physically present - might know the very words to say (or not say) that could make all the difference during hard times.

We are not just ourselves. We descend. We are the culmination of, the accumulation of, the continuation of. We are the Next Up, the Now Happening, and soon-to-be The Once Was.

The first on my list was …

[Carole Hedges, early 1960’s, around the time I was born.]

2

My mother, Carole Hedges, was my world until she walked out of our house when I was 7. Actually, she didn’t walk out. Alcohol walked her out. Around the time of my birth, she started to drink heavily, and by the time she bolted, leaving behind four kids (ages 12, 10, 7 and 5), she was no longer herself.

Had my mother been sober, she would never have left her kids behind. She may have left her contentious marriage, but she would have taken us with her.

How do I know?

After two attempts at rehab in the early 70’s, Carole Hedges went back for a charmed third time, and days after my 15th birthday, my mom took her last drink.

Why did it finally stick? A variety of reasons, perhaps. Sometimes it takes three tries. Maybe it’s because she had nearly died. Or was it because my heroic (20 years old at the time) sister, a non-drinker, volunteered to go through rehab with her. I believe it was my sister’s unwillingness to give up on our mother that made the difference. My mom didn’t think she was worth much. But she certainly knew my sister was. And if my sister was willing to go through it with her, maybe she could do it.

And she did.

One day at a time for the rest of her life, my mother stayed sober and devoted herself to helping others do the same.

3

In 1994, my wife and I were new parents living in Greenwich Village when I got a call that my mother, who lived fifteen blocks away in Chelsea, had just had a heart attack. I ran to nearby St. Vincent’s Hospital, arriving before the ambulance that would soon bring her. As I looked up 7th Avenue waiting for the flashing lights, a doctor approached and asked me if I was Carole’s son.

“Yes,” I said, “how did you know?”

“Well, you look just like her.”

Then he told me a story almost too remarkable to believe.

Years earlier he’d been a heroin addict living on the streets in the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco. “Your mom brought me coffee every morning and was kind to me.” Over time, she gained his trust. She took him to an NA meeting, then many more meetings, and then helped him into rehab.

I was stunned.

He went on: “12 years ago I was an addict living on the streets and your mother helped save my life. And now I’m a doctor in this hospital and I’m standing here waiting to help save hers.”

We never know our impact.

4

My mother lived six more years and loved every day.

In the fall of 1999, she planted hundreds and hundreds of tulip bulbs on the land around her grandparent’s farmhouse in Russell. Iowa, just north of Corydon. She didn’t live to see them bloom. She died, surrounded by family, in that same farmhouse on February 11, 2000 - twenty-five years ago today.

[Mother and Son, on my 37th birthday. The last picture taken of us together.]

5

When I was younger, alcohol hijacked my mother’s heart and she couldn’t love us enough. For her last 22 ½ years, she loved us too much, which turns out to be my favorite kind of love.

Too much love.

Everything good in my life can be traced back to my mother’s sobriety.

She hit an untenable and seemingly insurmountable bottom. She admitted she was powerless over alcohol, She asked for help. She turned her life over. She made a fearless, moral inventory. She made amends to all those she could, and the rest of her life she did all she could to help others.

She was proof that hurting, broken people can turn themselves around.

And if my mom can come back, then maybe a country can, too.

***

Who from The Once Was do you call upon during times like these?