I just found out that one of my parents died last night.

Fortunately, it wasn’t my father. He’s been the one solid backdrop of my life from the moment I was born. For a long stretch between when he divorced when I was 5 and remarried when I was 12, he was the only solid thing in my life. He’s a man of simple virtues, deeply held. He instilled in me, from my earliest memories, a deep and life-long value of honesty, hard work, humor, and family. To this day, I marvel at how he raised two challenging young boys on his own, while dealing with the pain of a messy divorce. He means a great deal to me, and I’d be a wreck right now if I’d just lost him. I’m getting choked up right now even thinking about the possibility. Fortunately, it wasn’t my father.

Fortunately, it wasn’t my mother. I only met her at 11 years old when she and my father started dating. I’m not sure I would have had the courage to jump into a family with two almost feral boys and with a father working two jobs to keep it all together, but she did. She instilled in me a love of culture: fine music, theater, fine dining, cultured manners. She also turned me from a bright, but indifferent student to someone who excelled in school and graduated with multiple honors. On my 18th birthday, we went down to the city hall and adopted each other, and she’s been my mother ever since. I’d be devastated if I’d just lost her. Fortunately, it wasn’t my mother.

It was my father’s first wife, my natural mother. She walked out on our family when I was 5. She was already seeing another man who was heavily into drugs and an alcoholic. Soon after, they married and moved away. My memories of the rare occasions when my brother and I would go stay with them are not pleasant. He was abusive to my mother, and while not abusive to us, still terrifying. She continued the path of drugs and alcoholism as I became an adult, and started my own family. Right around the time my own son was born, I broke off my relationship with her forever.

That was over 15 years ago. I haven’t seen her, or talked to her since. The little bits and pieces I hear though my cousins have made it clear that nothing had changed with her. And, last night, her long-abused body finally gave up.

Am I sad? No, not really. That may seem callous now, but I did my grieving for her as a 5-year-old boy. And, how did I grieve. I didn’t understand who she was, or why she was gone, but my mother—half of my universe of trusted people—was gone. I wished and longed for my parents to be reunited. No matter the shouting and arguments. Eventually, as I grew older and started to understand more, that feeling settled into anger. Finally, as an adult facing those same choices, my feelings changed into disgust.

So, to me, my natural mother died over 30 years ago. I cried. I mourned. And I finished along time ago. Now, I don’t have anything left for the person who didn’t want to be my mother all those years ago.

✧✧✧

My real parents are those people who choose to love me. They are the people who gave of their own character to shape mine, and to set me on the best course in life that they could possibly manage. They are the people who have walked the tightrope with me of growing up and striking out on my own. They’ve been with me as I’ve built my career, and as I’ve grown my own family. I literally have tears streaming down my face as I write this: the depth of feeling I have for these two people is so overwhelming.

I regret that my experience with my natural mother has made it difficult to say in person to my real parents what they so richly deserve:

I love you both much more deeply than I could ever express in person, and much more than these written words covey. Thank you for choosing to be my parents.