Shadowed Soul

by John Spagnoli

  “Probably a wrong number,” I said to the darkness, and returned to bed. As I settled back into the warmth of my bed, the phone rang again.

  This time I reached it.

  “Hello! Mrs. Who--? Do you mean, Mrs. Beth Milton?” I demanded.

  Two hours later I was in the hospital. A pointless visit: For what reason was I called here. There was nothing I could do for her. I did not care. I only resented as the young Asian doctor recounted what had happened. I had barely rallied sufficient interest to listen to him. I nodded at the right intervals to appear suitably humane.

  “I don't want to give you unrealistic expectations, Mr. Milton, this is quite a serious matter,” consoled the doctor, probably five or six years younger than me he placed a hand on my shoulder compassionately. “She will struggle to get well again. I'm not saying that it cannot be done but she will need a lot of help and support from you.”

  He reiterated what I should expect and I nodded and pretended to care. My mother had suffered a stroke. Her neighbor had heard a thump at about quarter after one. This had apparently been caused by her collapsing against a shared wall. It surprised me that my mother was on friendly terms with the neighbor. When my mother answered neither door nor phone, the neighbor had called 911. Paramedics had arrived along with police. As no one answered, they broken in to find my mother lying on the floor staring at the ceiling her mouth twisted. Her eyes roved helplessly in her head. I had no idea how they got my number but as I was her next of kin they called me. Dutiful son, I had to come. I had no idea why I was here. I could not give her comfort. I could not show her love nor could I do anything to help her. The way our lives had diverged had estranged us. Worse than strangers we were people who knew each other and should love each other but chose not to. I do not think that she hated me. To hate requires passion and emotion.

  And so here I was again in a place with the ceiling too low and walls too close and I wanted out. There was nothing I could do and I felt if I went in to see my mother then it would be hypocritical. I wondered how many other people in this hospital were going through a similar situation. I knew that families were problematic for many. But the lack of warmth and love exhibited by my mother was an aberration. Parents are meant to love their children. Though some may end up not liking them love should always be given unconditionally. She had carried me in her womb for nine months, the beginning and end of her obligation to me. Why on earth had she even had a child? Perhaps it had been a priority for my father. Perhaps she had agreed to get pregnant in order to shut him up? Whatever the reason it had been a mistake for everyone involved. Apart from the fact that I had at least at one point been able to maintain a successful loving relationship with Beth the world would have been completely fine without me being on it. Self-pity, I later learned, was a powerful component of the clinical depression I endured.

  From along the corridor a soft plaintive sobbing wafted like a phantom; perhaps someone had lost a loved one and now their life seemed empty. Maybe somewhere a patient lay awake looking back at his life and finding that it was nothing to be celebrated but something to be grieved. Someone’s heart was breaking. I wondered who would weep for my mother if she died. Not I. Of course the grim irony was that I could find myself in a very similar situation one day. I was skilled at alienating people who cared for me and of course the longer I remained away the less likely my son would be to ever find compassion when my time came. Was I doing nothing more than living out a self-fulfilling prophecy? I did not want to be alone. I did not want difficulty connecting with my son. On the most basic level it seemed as though I had completely lost the capacity to love my child. Was that because of the way my mother had been with me? Perhaps it was genetic? My mother barely acknowledged my existence and my father had disappeared when I had needed him most. So, I had never had any education in loving parenting. The most crippling aspect to my mother’s indifference resulted that I had no real desire to even try showing the boy anything other than acceptance. I knew deep down that that made me a neglectful parent, like my mother.

  Hopefully my therapy sessions with Sophie, my newly-hired therapist, would be able to unlock the binds I felt toward my mother so I would not poison my son. I needed to fix myself because this was not a whole life. Perhaps for the first time in decades I felt something resembling affection toward the woman who had given birth to me. Or pity. My mother had spent so much energy surrounding herself with a chasm of disinterest that now when she needed someone who genuinely cared what happened to her on an emotional level all she had was me. And I simply did not care whether she lived or died. I resented the fact that if she did need long-term care then it would fall to me to make sure she received emotional care as well as medical and physical care. I had no interest. This was a living nightmare. I was beginning to find some structure and cohesiveness within my life and I was finding that therapy was beginning to help me and now all of a sudden I had more crap to contend with. How could that be fair? Life was here, life was now. I knew that, I had always known that the test just seemed to be one step further than I could deal with.

  “Mr. Milton you can see your mother now,” said a large heavy set nurse. She probably assumed that my anguish was grief not self-pity. I looked at her and smiled a little nodding as I stood up. “We've made her comfortable. She's not in any pain. But you might find the visit distressing.”

  “I'll be fine.” My voice was dry and harsh. From the expression on the nurse’s face I took it that she assumed that this too was emotion rather than thirst. She smiled gently and nodded as she opened the door to my mother's room.

  “I’ll get you a cup of water, Mr. Milton, don’t you worry,” said the nurse as she headed down the hall and the door swung shut sealing me in with my mother.

  How frail my mother looked. I had barely seen her over the past 10 years and when I had she had appeared as cruel as always. But now as she lay in bed she looked like an old woman, decades older than she actually was. Pity gnawed at my soul. She was sleeping and her face held the tell-tale twisted imprint of a stroke. She always did wear a scowl but her mouth was pulled too far down and her right arm lay useless across her chest, her fingers like driftwood. Part of me wanted to tell her she deserved what she got, but that was just the Shadowed Soul wanting his voice to be heard. Another part of me wanted to leave and never see her again. And a third part wanted to hug her and make her well. She was my mother and had cared for me in her own way.

  I had never met my grandparents and as such I had no idea what her upbringing had been like. There was a famous Jesuit quote, “Give me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man” and it seemed that this held a great deal of validity. I had been awarded a loveless childhood and was in serious danger of visiting the same fate upon my son, although Jonathan would have the benefit of having at least one loving parent. So I supposed then, as I looked down upon my mother that her upbringing was similar to mine. Perhaps she had been unwanted and that had filled her with the same ineptitude as I felt for my child. There was no way that a mother would have chosen to be so distant.

  A low mournful sound came from my mother's bed and I moved forward to see that she was awake and staring helplessly at the ceiling. Corpse-like in the dim light of her room, tears trickled from her left eye.

  “Mom?” I spoke softly. “It's okay, I'm here.”

  I reached forward to take her good hand but she pulled it away from my touch, an angry, agitated noise gurgled from her throat as she did. There was nothing I could do. In fact there was nothing I wanted to do, so I left. Even in the grip of a stroke she had found the strength to make her feelings known and that was fine by me because that one gesture had succeeded in banishing the beginnings of compassion that germinated within my heart. She wanted me neither in life nor in death.

  “Thomas!” The familiar voice reached me as I stepped into the corridor and I turned to see Beth, compassion in her eyes. “The hospital called. Thomas, I'm just so sorry.”

  I o
pened my mouth to thank Beth for coming, but all I could do was cry. The sadness that exploded from within me as soon as I saw Beth took me by surprise. No strength was left in me and I fell into her arms to weep for my mother, for my childhood and for myself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “Thomas, from what you say, you're feeling guilty about this response to your mother's illness?” Sophie looked at me across her desk and I noticed that her hand was fidgeting with her pen. I wondered if she did so deliberately. She did not seem to otherwise have any kind of nervous tic. “May I give you some constructive advice? We’ll get further if you stop watching my pen.” I laughed and turned my attention to Sophie's face and saw that she had a kind smile playing on her mouth.

  “Sorry,” I shrugged a little and she smiled even more.

  “Don't be sorry, it's a terrible habit, sorrow,” she said and placed the pen on the desk. “Sometimes I think I'd be better with my hands tied behind my back.” I looked away deliberately.

  My stomach churned, the very idea that she mentioned her hands being tied. I had to wonder if I had accidentally mentioned my addiction to bondo-porn. After all, I forgot Beth’s gift. I had to wonder if Sophie deliberately mentioned her hands been tied in order to elicit a reaction from me.

  “So, are you feeling guilty?” asked Sophie.

  “About what?” I asked.

  “About your response to your mother's illness?” She looked at me with patience but the beginnings of a tiny little frown between her eyes.

  “Oh, sorry, my mind wandered,” I said. I pretended to think about her question before I answered because it was important to me that she at least thought I cared about my mom. “The truth is, Sophie, I don't feel guilty about my response. I know this sounds harsh but the truth is my mom doesn't really mean anything to me. She did, I mean she did once but there has been far too much water under the bridge for me to care. Makes me sound like a complete bastard, doesn't it?”

  “Thomas, I'm not going to agree or disagree with you,”

  replied Sophie. “These are your feelings, these come from a place that I don't know and never will because I wasn't there and it doesn't matter how much you tell me about your childhood, your relationship with your mother, all I can really do is listen and try to understand and try to guide you forward into your future, toward finding a resolution for yourself. So, no, it doesn't make you sound like a complete bastard to me. But what does interest me is the fact that it makes you feel like a bastard. Why do you think that is?”

  “Because she's my mom, I mean obviously I should be feeling something for her. Worry or sadness at what's happened, but to be honest it's like it's happened to a complete stranger.” I sat back in my chair and folded my arms across my chest subconsciously protecting myself from anything external that Sophie would have to say to me. It was weird, going to see Sophie had made me much more aware of my own actions and the way that I behaved and acted and moved. “I mean, you might feel something if something happened to your mom, right?”

  “If something happened to my mom I would feel devastated,” said Sophie and looked back at me in an almost challenging manner. “That doesn't matter though because I have a different relationship with my mom than you do with yours. You can’t judge my response to something bad against your response because we are different people with different experiences in different lives. Thomas, the one thing that I can say to anyone who comes through my office is this, one of the biggest mistakes that anyone can make is judging the way that they live their life against the way that other people live theirs.”

  “There are just some things that you should do or feel, aren't there?” I leaned forward a little.

  “There are social norms, of course, Thomas, and while loving your parents might seem like one of these norms, it's not mandatory,” said Sophie.

  “Everyone else loves their parents, Sophie,” I practically bleated.

  “Do they?” replied Sophie. “There are certain things that fall within the category of being a responsible human being and a member of society. Loving your mother is not necessarily one of them.” She looked at me for a long second and I noticed that she had picked up that pen again. “If you want to look at things in a purely natural way then you could argue that human beings are one of the very few species that maintain any type of relationship with their parents once they have moved on.”

  “Yes, but we are not animals,” I argued.

  “We are animals,” replied Sophie. “We're cultivated animals but we are still living biological creatures.” She paused and realized that she was playing with her pen again and put it down. I was reminded of her remark about tied hands. “No, from what you've told me, your mother has not been particularly loving or supportive. No social normality would suggest that she should have been, but, and I say this with absolutely no knowledge of her as a person apart from what you have told me, your mother has struggled with what could be seen as her social contract. I don't find it particularly odd that you don't have a very good relationship with her. What I wonder is how is this response affecting you?”

  I sat in silence for quite some time as I tried to formulate a response, and as I thought, I began to gain more insight into the effect this situation had on me.

  “Yeah, I suppose I do feel sort of guilt,” I admitted. “The thing is, Sophie, I just want a normal life, if that makes any sense? I want to have the kind of life that I know other people have and that includes loving my mom and being upset that she is very ill. So, being so unaffected by this thing has left me feeling a bit lost and angry.”

  “Angry at your mom, or angry at the stroke?”

  “Angry at the Shadowed Soul, at the illness, or however you want to put it, I mean, it's the thing that’s robbed me of a normal life. So, it makes sense to be angry at that more than anything else. Doesn't it?”

  “These are your emotions, Thomas,” said Sophie. “I'm not going to tell you how to feel but I want you to try and explore and understand where these feelings come from. I mean your mother is in hospital and from what you've said it's perhaps looking unlikely that she will get much better. Now, what do you perceive as being the socially normal way of dealing with something like that?”

  “I should be visiting every day, I should be consumed with worry and I should be crying and sad. All the things you see on television, all the things that you know that normal people go through. But I feel nothing. Perhaps relief that she got what was coming to her.”

  “Right, do you mind if I tell you little story?” asked Sophie. She waited for my response. I nodded and shrugged. “I'll take that as a yes, shall I? Okay when I was 15-years-old my older brother was killed in a car accident on his way home to Oxford from London. It was a senseless thing and it didn't really seem to be anybody's fault, just a series of events that ended up with three people being killed and five people badly injured. Mark was the best older brother anyone could ever ask for, though of course I'm only saying that because he was my big brother but for me it was a universal truth. I loved him and he loved me. And then one day he was killed. Straight away he was taken to hospital and put on a life-support and doctors and nurses kept Mark alive for seven hours and ultimately they asked us if we wanted to switch off the machine that was keeping him technically alive. My mum and dad talked for an hour or so and ultimately they decided that the best thing to do was to just let him go, they didn't particularly involve me in the decision because I was 15, and I would not have said yes. So Mark died and 10 days later he was buried and then life went on.”

  She paused and I saw that her face reflect long-held grief and I began to feel slightly uncomfortable; surely it should be me telling the stories, not her.

  “Now the socially normal thing to do at the time would have been for me to cry and cry, but I didn't,” said Sophie. “I did spend some time hating my parents and accusing them of murdering my brother but I didn't cry and I felt so guilty about that because I knew that if I had been killed and he had been
left alive then he would have cried his eyes out. It would have broken his heart that I went to the funeral and I pretended as much as I could to be upset but I felt nothing.” She smiled sadly and looked at the pen on her desk and I willed her to pick it up and start playing with it again if it gave her any relief. “Six years later I was turning 21. I woke up on the morning of my birthday and it was that moment that my grief decided to manifest itself and I honestly could not stop weeping. I have no idea why it took six years before I could experience what would be classed as normal grief but I do know that's how long it took me. Do I feel guilty about that now? No, I honestly don't because the one thing I've learned through speaking to hundreds if not thousands of different people throughout my life is that fundamentally there is no such thing as normal. Normal is a lie. Normality is a big, fat, crippling lie. We’re all individuals, we've all got different upbringings and genetic codes and we all have our own issues. Society thrives on the idea of being normal, of fitting in with the crowd. Whether that's in our society where advertising continuously punches you around about the head with this never-ending need to be part of the in-crowd, or if it's in a society that depends on cohesive units for survival, either way someone keeps suggesting that we are supposed to be normal. However, you can fit in with society and still be a complete individual. We are a tribal breed, we want to belong and do whatever we can to be part of something bigger. And sometimes if, no matter how hard you try, you struggle to find a place, then that can be something that affects you badly on a number of levels.”

  “So, you're saying that it's normal for me not to feel anything for my mother at this time?” I asked.