DMC

 Rosie O’Donnell and Madonna became close friends when they did a movie together called League of Their Own. The two were an unlikely pair to most people on the outside looking in, but not  for me. I knew they were in an exclusive club that I also belonged to. For that reason, I felt a kinship and sisterhood with these two strangers, two celebrities, that I had seemingly nothing in common with. I was initiated when I was just 7 years old to the club that no one wants to join. 

There is only one way to become a member of the Dead Mothers Club.

After my parents’ divorce, my mom and I moved in with Tony, her boyfriend and her sanctuary from my father’s abuse. At first, he showered her with affection and gifts and attention, things that she had been a craving for a long time from my father, who was too busy going through his own issues to be able to take care of her. 

While Tony was not always good to my mother, he was always kind to me. For my sixth birthday he and my mom took me to the Palatka mall (a big deal back then) and gave me a one hundred dollar bill to spend. My eyes just about bugged out of my head. I couldn't believe it. After playing in the button bin at the Fabric King for 10 minutes, an absolute must every time I was there, I was off to spend my crisp bill. The only way I know or remember what I bought that day is because every conversation my mother had for the next week, she bragged to everybody about how her daughter got $100 and spent every dime on books, not one toy, but all books. 

Thanks to Tony I actually believed in Santa Claus for the first and ultimately the last time. I will never forget that Christmas. All I had wanted and all that I had asked for that year was a Hungry Hungry Hippo. The commercials were all over the Saturday cartoons, and I had been coveting that silly marble game for weeks. So as you can imagine, I was sick with anticipation hoping that this would be the day. When I walked out of my bedroom on Christmas morning, Mom and Tony were still asleep. I couldn't believe my eyes. Santa Claus had been here!  Had to have been! Against the wall, there was a Brandy-sized pinball machine. My jaw dropped. I was a game nerd even then. I kept walking further into the dining room to the table where there were a hundred little green army men engaged in battle, carefully placed into two opposing armies. “It must have taken hours to set this up,” I thought.  And under the tree there were dozens of small presents, half wrapped and half unwrapped. I couldn't believe what I was seeing; I was so overwhelmed with emotion. I don't think I had ever experienced that much joy before. Once everyone was awake, it was time to open the presents. I was dazed at all the clothes and toys, gifts in an abundance I had never received. Mom saved the best for last, the final package that contained none other than the Hungry Hungry Hippo I had been wanting. I was deliriously giddy. My mom, who was normally not a get-on-the-floor kind of parent, spent an hour with me there manning two of the hippos, while I fed the other two. I can remember going to sleep that night, thinking about all the work that went into my Christmas spread,  and believing, “Wow, I guess there really is a Santa Claus.”

Shortly after I turned 7, my mom became pregnant with her third child. Just like my father, Tony liked to drink,and just like my father, he could get out of hand when he did. Luckily for me, most of the fights that they got into actually happened at the bar and not at our house where I had to witness it. As their relationship progressed, it started to get heavier, weighed down by insecurities and alcohol use. Things seem to take even a darker turn after my mother got pregnant. My mom became really concerned that she was going to miscarry her baby.  She became concerned because he was becoming more physical with her, and didn't seem too concerned that she was carrying his child. 

Even though my mom and dad had a volatile relationship, considering the way they split, infidelity on both sides, they were extremely amicable after the fact. My mother made sure that I saw my dad as often as I possibly could and as much as I possibly wanted. She knew that no matter how bad he had been for her that he was still a good father to me, and in some ways she  understood that he was a better parent. When I started school,  I was able to spend every single holiday with my dad and the entire summer. Since my brother was three and a half years younger than me and didn't live with me, I was so excited to be able to see that little guy. My brother was the sweetest little boy ever, and would follow me around like a puppy dog. We were inseparable when we got to spend time together. 

When things started to go south with my mom and Tony, she called my dad, someone she still trusted.  She asked him if she could come and stay with him, as she was starting to fear for her safety and that of her unborn baby. My father, who had lived three years in complete regret for the mistakes that he made during their marriage, jumped on the opportunity to maybe have another chance. It wasn't what my mother had intended, and he knew it wasn't, but he did see it as an opportunity to make amends and hopefully get a fresh start. My mom was almost six months pregnant at that time, and her belly had become quite noticeable. I have one single memory of putting my hand on her belly and feeling my new sibling kick just beneath the skin. I remember her laugh, her delight at my fascination. Mom and Dad did not formalize any plans over the phone, but left it open-ended. She wanted to make sure that if or when she needed to leave, she would have a safe place to land. Unfortunately my dad would never get that opportunity and he would never see or talk to my mother again. 

In the days after her call, my mom suddenly became extremely ill. She was vomiting constantly, unable to keep anything down. Several days went by like this.For some reason, my mother never went to the doctor, not even to see an obstetrician. She had no idea what she was having. 

I tried to stay out of the way, and spent a lot of time outside playing. At the time, we lived on South 16th street in a tiny block home.There was a giant median between our street and 17th street where a small park with monkey bars sat next to a merry-go-round, and most times I was the only kid playing there, so it felt like my personal playground. Across 17th street, there was an empty lot full of azalea bushes that I loved to hide out in.

On a warm December day, I was playing with my neighbor in those azalea bushes, completely out of bloom. We were sitting, talking, out of sight of any adults, when I heard a siren. I said to my friend, “Hey, that’s the dog catcher. I saw it yesterday. Let’s go see.” Us two girls peeked our heads through the azalea bushes. The loud siren was not coming from a dog catcher; It was coming from an ambulance, and that ambulance was pulling into my driveway. I sprinted across the street into my open front door to find my mom lying on the floor, in only her underwear, her eyes looking to the ceiling searching, a combination of confusion and fear. She didn’t see me even though I was standing right there behind the EMTs. The paramedics were hunched over her, one trying to take her vitals while the other shoved an oxygen mask onto her face. She wasn’t breathing. They quickly lifted her body onto the stretcher. This was a real emergency. When they took her away, Tony grabbed a few of my things and drove me to the babysitter, so that he could join her at the hospital.

My babysitter was Kate Levy. She lived on Cherry Lane by the golf course, and I loved going to her house. She was a kind, older, heavyset woman who cared for quite a few kids. My memories of those days are faded, but I can recall several of us kids eating cereal with powdered milk. It was different from my cereal at home, because it was room temperature rather than cold and always a little watery. I also remember a couple of boys convincing me that it was a good idea to throw rocks at passing cars going to and from Lundy Road, which I did, until one stopped and the driver got out to yell at us. And just like that, my rock throwing career was over. 

A few hours after the ambulance took my mother away, Kate received a call. Without a word, she put me into the car and drove me to Tony’s bar where my mom worked as well. Another girl rode in the backseat with me, a friend I had made at Kate’s house. We sat in thick silence for a while, when Kate finally got up the nerve and cleared her throat, speaking to me from the rear-view mirror. “Brandy...honey...your mom died.” I sat there still. It was as if I was watching it happen on TV to someone else. It felt like I left my body, my mind floating away. My first foray into denial. I snapped out of it when my friend started bawling, and grabbed me, holding me, hugging me, comforting me. This little girl couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than me, but had a deep understanding of what that news meant, in a way I would only learn to comprehend through time and absence. She knew, because the year before, she lost her mom to domestic violence.  She was crying a waterfall and comforting me, because she knew the pain and loneliness I would feel growing up without my mother, the pain she had felt every day since she lost hers.

Once the tears slowed, for my friend, because mine never came that day, Kate told me that my Aunt Terri, my mom’s sister was on her way to pick me up, and that I was going to live with my grandparents. 

The funeral was the first one I had ever been to. My grandmother was sobbing for most of it. Everyone else was silent and somber. I walked up slowly to her resting body, lying in the casket. I remember reaching into the casket to touch her hand, folded gently over the other one. I withdrew my hand fiercely and quickly, as though I had pressed a hot burner. It was the opposite though; the cold was jarring. Her hand was like ice, lifeless. She was gone. My mother was gone. There was no denying that this was real now, but the tears still didn’t come. 

I used to love to brush her long beautiful wavy black hair. Just a few short weeks prior, she had chopped her locks so short that nothing was touching the back of her neck. She wanted something easier to care for with her pregnancy and new baby on the way. There she lay in the casket, with her short hair and pale face, looking like my mother, but not looking like her either. 

During the years that followed my mother’s passing, my visits to my dad became fewer and farther between which hit me hard, as it felt like I was losing two parents instead of one. I’m sure my grandparents were well-meaning, but going from entire summers with my dad to just two weeks was devastating. My brother was my best friend, and I would only get to visit him on occasion like a distant cousin or a great aunt. Spring Break and Christmas vacation were now split 50/50. I spent many nights crying myself to sleep, wondering why my dad didn’t want me, wishing he would come scoop me up, mumbling through snot, “I miss my daddy. I miss my daddy. I miss my daddy.” I don’t know if I ever asked my dad why, but he told me either way, “Your momma made me promise that if anything happened to her, you would go live with your grandparents.” I wondered why on earth he would ever agree to something like that. I questioned if it were even true. I felt betrayed.

I never got to meet my sibling, as he or she perished when my mom did, too young and small to survive even with intervention. Only after my father passed away would I find out the true cause of death on her death certificate which he had kept so many years: hyperemesis and Mallory-Weiss Syndrome. I had never heard of either. With the help of Google, I was in my thirties when I learned that my mother died of morning sickness so severe from her pregnancy that her esophagus suffered a tear at her stomach, one that was left untreated to the point it became fatal. 

Losing my mom at such a young age changed my psychological DNA. There was a huge piece of my identity gone. Since I was so young when she passed, I tried to learn more about her as I got older by asking questions, but I made people terribly uncomfortable when I tried to talk about her, so I stopped trying and kept most of  that emotion and curiosity inside. Family friends would sometimes offer me a tidbit or two. 

The tears that never came the day of her death or the day of her funeral didn’t show up until a month before my high school graduation. Anyone who has lost a parent can tell you that the big days in your life are the hardest, because that parent won’t be there to see it or celebrate with you. Those are the days the emptiness is at its deepest depths. That semester, I was lucky enough to take creative writing with Mrs. Michaels, and through writing, I was able to process and get through that grief, although I still felt completely alone in it, save for her sweet comments in red ink. 

Dealing with her own unresolved grief, In 2014, Rosie O’Donnell made an HBO documentary called, “Dead Mothers Club”, dedicated to sharing stories of women like us, women who forever identify themselves as motherless daughters. She interviewed other women, like us, who had to grow up without a mom and deal with the fallout that came from it. Even though I felt a kinship with her from my teen years, I had never actually heard her talk about losing her mother to cancer. For the first time, I was hearing stories and pain I could finally relate to, and for the first time, I no longer felt alone in my grief.