The Hardest Goodbye

This summer, we’ve been looking at commitment and what it takes to make communities and relationships work. Sticking it out has its place, certainly, but what about its opposite, calling it quits? Is there ever a time when we are justified in stepping away from relationships, even one as sacred as that between a parent and child?

Content Warning: suicidal ideation. If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, please call or text 988 for help.

During the summer of 2020, I debated going no-contact with my mother. While my social media feed lit up with photos of people retreating to childhood homes, praises for grandparents as backup daycare, and even intergenerational TikToks, I was staring at the bland cover of a self-help book that detailed the process of cutting off a loved one. I couldn’t even decide whether to read it.

The library had been closed for months, so this book sat in a stack next to my desk, calling to me like the tell-tale heart each time I sat down to write. What was I going to do?

Part of me was stuck in disbelief that things had gotten this bad. As a child, I’d idolized my mother. I remember going to JoAnne’s to pick out fabric for matching dresses, watching her lay out the pattern pieces on the fabric: her larger pieces in the center, my smaller ones filling in the gaps. I would ask her endless questions about her life before me, making note of how I ought to be in the world. My baby book catalogues my aspirations at various ages: ballerina, teacher, nurse, mommy—all her ambitions became my own.

I loved her biting sense of humor and her creativity. Her smile, when she turned it my way, felt like stepping out of a cold shadow into sunlight. And if she often kept me at a distance, shooing me towards the TV whenever I broached the kitchen where she spent most of the day cleaning, cooking, and drinking white wine, well, I aspired to be less annoying, more useful.

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We had our ups and downs. When I left home for college, she sank into a depression so deep I felt it even 500 miles away. She joked about how I “abandoned” her. When we’d lived together, I’d been adept at gauging her mood and avoiding her triggers, but on the phone it was difficult to take her emotional temperature and figure out the right thing to say.

In the summer of 2020, our conversations felt like stepping on landmines. I wrestled with duty—what did I owe the woman who gave me life, who raised, fed, and clothed me? Who, as she often reminded me, “only lived” to be a grandma to my kids, then 8 and 5.

I never doubted that she loved us. But I also could no longer ignore her increasingly erratic behavior. On our weekly Skype calls she was usually drunk and moody. One night, she accused me of not being grateful for the matching sweaters she’d recently sent my kids. I objected that I had thanked her on a previous call and promised to send a photo of the kids wearing them when the weather was…you know…more sweater appropriate? My explanation only enraged her further: she accused me of secretly hating the sweaters and her, before enlisting the help of family members to harangue me for my ingratitude.

By now this was a familiar pattern. After many years of therapy, I’d begun to wonder about my mother’s drinking and the way my family readily accepted her version of events. As I’d worked towards having healthier communication in my own relationships, the difference between my household and my parents’ was thrown into stark relief.

This new self-knowledge also made me question the past: had I always wanted to be just like Mom, or had that been my only safe option?