Losing Mom

I am one of those odd people who had more than two parents. Yes, I had a mother and father when I was born, but my father abducted me when I was four. I didn't see my mother for 9 years, until shortly after my 13th birthday. We had been separated for 9 years, 3 months, 2 weeks when she came back into my life. For exactly 9 years, my father's third wife was my step-mom. But, my relationship with my mother wasn't fully restored when we reunited. No, I actually wound up with another "mom" when my father's girlfriend rescued me from a motel on the Bossier City strip when I was 14, after my father had abandoned me there for six weeks.

Between the time after Bonnie left and Ann taking me in, I had lived with my father's sister and her husband for a time, then my father's parents before he managed to get me removed from them and I went back to my aunt's. Between the ages of 13 and 17 I moved almost 15 times. But, that's a story for another day. Today's story is about Moms.

I lost my mother, Catherine Sue McElwee on 28 November 1998 when I was 35 years old. Mom and I never had a really great relationship, but we did have a relationship, for which I am grateful. It wasn't really until she was dying that I finally learned that it was her husband that was keeping us apart, and not she, herself. It wasn't until the week before she died that I really, truly understood that my Mom loved me, deeply and that I was important to her; that I mattered. By the time I learned that, she wasn't able to speak due to the brain tumor that killed her. Her death completely destroyed me for a while.

I lost Bonnie the moment she pulled out of the school driveway on 27 September 1976 heading to her parent's home in Waycross, GA for the final time. It was exactly 9 years, to the day, from when she and my father had taken me and my brother from our Mom in Altus, Oklahoma. Ironic that she left us on the anniversary of getting us, but less than a year after getting us, Bonnie gave birth to her miracle child; the child she was never supposed to be able to have. So she didn't really need Darren and I after 2 August 1968. There were attempts at reconciliation with Bonnie over the years because I truly wanted to believe that she loved me, but I never felt it from her. I was merely the son of her former husband to her.

My 'angel' was Annie Lucille Carson Hanson. She had no obligation to me, but when she learned my father had left me in a motel room on the Bossier City strip, she drove from her home in south Shreveport and picked me up, telling me to pack all my belongings and put them in her car and she took me back to her home and gave me a sense of belonging, of love, of acceptance and made me feel like I mattered to someone. That I was important to someone. Someone wanted me to be part of their life. She saved my life and she saved my heart.

I didn't make it easy for Ann, though. I had experienced so much rejection and abandonment in my young life that I made her prove, repeatedly, that she loved me, wanted me and wouldn't abandon me like everyone else. I tried her patience, her love and her endurance. But, through it all, she never gave up on me. Though it took me a lot of years to finally realize, she was the first person in my memory that truly showed me she loved me. For no other reason than she just did.

I remember once asking her if I could call her "Mom," and it hurt me when she said no. She told me she wasn't trying to replace Bonnie as my mother and I told her Bonnie had never been my mother. And I didn't really have memories of my Mom, so she couldn't replace her. But, still she said no. I later realized that she didn't need to be called Mom to be my Mom. Because she was that from day one. She was my protector, my provider, my instructor, my guide and my security. She was everything a mother is supposed to be, yet she didn't need to be called mother to justify it. She didn't need to be honored for doing it, and she didn't require me to say thank you. In fact, every time I did say thank you to her, she downplayed her role in my life as if it weren't everything it was.

Ann and I had a very special relationship. She confided in me and I confided in her. I told her almost everything there was to know about me. My secrets (or almost all of them,) my fears, my passions and my desires. I never really rebelled against Ann, because I was always too grateful for what she had done, and was doing, for me. Ann told me things she hadn't told many people, and some of them I never truly understood why she confided in me, but I knew that she trusted me with her secrets and I never let her down by revealing them. I never broke a promise to Ann. She was the only person who had ever put that much trust in me and I would have died before breaking that trust.

Ann had three kids when I moved in with her: Lisa (1 year older), Glen (9 months younger) and Ken (4 years younger.) Ann never treated me any differently than she did her own three kids. And her kids were sister and brothers to me. We truly fought and loved like brothers and sister, too! Since Dad never gave Ann any money for groceries, utilities, etc., she literally had taken me in and raised me without any help. And she never asked me for anything in return other than respect. And she taught me what respect was because she gave me respect. Not because I had earned it, but just because I was a person. She taught me how to give to others who were in need, without expecting anything in return. She taught me how to love people without expecting anything in return. She taught me that even in our need, we still have things to offer to those who are less fortunate than we are. She didn't teach me any of this with words, though. Every thing she taught me she taught me by example. She lived it and she taught me how to live it.

In the early years of her relationship with my father, when she would break up with him, I'd have to leave with him. But, most times we were back at Ann's within a couple days. Years later she told me there were some of those times she only took him back because of me. It broke my heart to learn that she put up with his abuse and use and other behaviors because of me, but I realized that was her choice and I didn't have any responsibility for it. But, I am so grateful she did. In the latter years, when she would throw him out, I would hear her tell him that he was to leave me there. Of course, he didn't have any problem doing that because he never wanted the responsibility for his children, anyway. If he had, he wouldn't have left me in that motel for six weeks without me knowing where he was or how to contact him.

Through the years of my relationship with Ann, I didn't always treat her with the respect she deserved, however. It wasn't that I really rebelled, but I had my moments of not really wanting to hear the things she needed to say to me. But, she was always right when she would tell me those things and eventually I would listen to what she was trying to teach me and do the right thing. But, I was always stubborn about it. And she always taught me to stay on the straight and narrow, to do what's right and to be honest. It was odd to me that she was the most honest person I ever met and she was in a relationship with the most dishonest person I've ever known: my father. They were truly the exact opposite of one another in every way. She was responsible and she worked hard; he was irresponsible and lazy. She took care of her children and he couldn't care less about his. She had a mother's heart and he didn't have one, at all, it seemed. She could stretch a dollar like no one I've ever met and he blew money without having anything to show for it.

After many attempts to move out of Shreveport, I returned from Los Angeles in August 1989 only to discover that Ann had met someone and had been dating him for a while. His name was Bill and Bill didn't much like me. Ann told me he had asked her why I was still hanging around her since she and my father had split up so many years earlier. He never understood what Ann meant to me or what she had done for me and my relationship with Ann began to falter. Even after I moved to Nashville, though, our relationship continued for a little while. It wasn't until after Ken's death that I had to let the relationship go.

My continued contact with Ann was causing problems in her marriage to Bill and though I hated to let go, I knew I had to. It wasn't right to put Ann in the middle and make her choose because she would, of course, have chosen her husband over me. And I understood that, but that didn't make letting go any easier. Letting go of the one person in your life who had shown you love and acceptance and proved to you that you mattered is extremely hard to do, even when you know it's the right thing to do. It's like ripping your arm or leg off your body and throwing it in a trash heap.

I won't say I severed all ties, because I didn't. Any time I had a real need for prayer there was only one person on the planet I would call: Ann! She was the most amazing prayer warrior I have ever known. Even knowing that God would hear my prayers, I knew He heard Ann's and I made sure if it was something of vital importance, she was the one I called to pray for me. And she always did. She never rejected my prayer requests.

Then came the darkest day I think I've ever faced: 8 October 2015. I saw a post from Lisa on Facebook that Ann had passed away earlier that day. I knew she had been in very poor health for a year or so. She had beat lung cancer in 2014, but soon after she suffered heart failure and was bedridden the last year or so of her life. I had heard people talking about a light going out in the world when a loved one passed, but I had never truly experienced it until that day. The world suddenly became colder and darker and I truly felt lost. It was like a part of me had been ripped out of my soul.

In my life, there was only one person I was ever 100% certain loved me while they loved me and that was Ann. She was the only person who had ever made me feel like I mattered while they were in my life or me in theirs. I had never once had any doubts about her love for me and now she was gone beyond my reach and I would never be able to tell her, again, how much I loved her, respected her and how very, very grateful I was to her and still am, to this day. Without Ann, I wouldn't be the man I am today. I wouldn't be the Christian I am today. I wouldn't even be here, today.

Yes, I know my mother loved me. But, I also know that Mom had prioritized others over me. I never got to have the relationship with her I wanted. Ann had given me what I needed and wanted. And she had never held that back during the times I needed it most. She had always been there for me and I wanted so desperately to be there for her if and when she ever needed it. She is my Mom in every sense except the word. She was from that very first day when she picked me up at the Colonial Inn and took me into her home and into her life, heart and family. She will be until eternity ends as far as my heart is concerned. I didn't get to call her Mom, but she is, was and always be exactly that to me. And I miss her so!