{"id":235,"date":"2010-09-16T07:46:12","date_gmt":"2010-09-16T14:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themook.net\/blog\/?p=235"},"modified":"2010-09-16T07:47:29","modified_gmt":"2010-09-16T14:47:29","slug":"esther-beausoleil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/blog\/2010\/09\/16\/esther-beausoleil\/","title":{"rendered":"Esther Beausoleil"},"content":{"rendered":"

My mother died this morning (though my mom<\/a> passed a few years back – I have an unusual family tree). I just received the call I knew was coming. She had been in the hospital for a number of weeks, her liver began failing a few days ago, and she hadn’t regained consciousness for nearly 5 days. I’m glad to say she didn’t seem to be in great pain or suffering, and had family by her side.<\/p>\n

There’s no point in pretending we had much of a relationship, because sadly we didn’t. We had, maybe, twenty brief “hellos” in as many years; I don’t believe I have even a single photograph of her, and I deserved more from her than what I got.<\/p>\n

She also deserved a lot more from me than I ever gave. Though she didn’t raise me, I was still her firstborn, her only son. Instead of honoring her as my mother, instead of reaching out more actively to build a bridge between us, I too chose the easy way out of just assuming she would come to me, that there would always be a “someday” when we would have a normal relationship. It was shameful and childish.<\/p>\n

There are no more somedays now, and I wish I had known her better. She was, after all, the reason I exist, my link to the human chain, and her passing leaves a hole in me. Just a couple weeks before she went into the hospital for the last time, I started an email conversation with her that seemed like a great beginning to our first real conversation ever. I will always regret that we’ll never see where that would take us. But that was a conversation I should have begun decades ago, as a young man fresh out of high school, not as a middle-aged man seeking selfish truth and answers.<\/p>\n

If you still have parents in your life – call them today, now. You may not have as many somedays left as you’d like.<\/p>\n

I love you mother. I’m sure you’re more aware of that now in death than you ever were in life, and for that I’m truly sorry. I know that in your own way you did try to do right by me, even when that meant letting someone else raise me. Give mom a hug and a kiss from me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My mother died this morning (though my mom passed a few years back – I have an unusual family tree). I just received the call I knew was coming. She had been in the hospital for a number of weeks, her liver began failing a few days ago, and she hadn’t regained consciousness for nearly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions\/238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}