Category Archives: mother’s day

Where are you?!

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Where are you?

On this, the twenty-third anniversary of the day you committed suicide, I ask, where are you?

You are missed by many (me!) beyond words, beyond the reach of creativity, beyond the reach of thought and emotion. It is your being, you, that we miss. You were and are loved, more than you knew, because, as you said, you did not believe anyone loved you. You were as mistaken and as flatly wrong in that believe as those who believed, with every honorable fiber of their being, that the world was flat.

I have slept a great deal today. When awake I find myself remembering the day you left this world, and I am immobilized. I remember being on the phone with someone and hearing my poor sister – your daughter! – in the background, wailing in agony. My little sister shattered. I could not rescue her.  And, God forgive me, I could not rescue you.

In our hours and hours of magical conversation those last ten years I told you once that the day you died would be one of the biggest blows of my life. You were utterly baffled. “Why?” you asked.  And in that moment I knew that you really didn’t understand, believe, how much I loved you and how much my sister and her children and my daughter loved you. How much your brother’s wife and children loved you. How much so many people loved you. Love for you was a foreign language you’d never learned. It was, I believe, your undoing.

Your son and daughter are doing better than anyone expected. You would be deeply proud of your daughter. I am. And we both know you loved us. And while I can’t speak for my sister, I think it safe to say we both wished you’d been able to not just believe, but fully know, that no son and daughter ever loved their mother more than we loved you – and still love you.

I miss you, Mommy.

Where are you?

My Mothers’ Day

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They both died at 68, one by her own hand, the other, cancer. Both gone too soon as far as I’m concerned and both were in the light of reality, my mother.

One of the things you learn as a child who has been adopted is this; blood may be thicker than water but family is thicker than blood. One of the phrases all adoptees I know truly hate is, “Well who are your real parents?”  Hell, I’ve known mothers and fathers who are anything but loving and kind to their genetic progeny. In fact, some of the most brutal experiences some children have gone through were inflicted by one or both of their parents. Like I said, blood may be thicker than water but family is thicker than blood.

Frankly, I only use the term adoptive mother and birth mother so the listener or reader can tell who I am talking about. In my heart, there are no qualifiers, they are both my mother. There is my mother Virginia who raised me and my mother Leona who surrendered me for adoption for reasons not of her making I would learn when we were reunited on January 8, 1987.

Like any human being, neither was perfect, but both loved me and from both I learned and gained an enormous amount. Both were instinctively supportive of equal rights for everyone and both were deeply empathetic to the underdog, the castaway, the persecuted. Both were fiercely supportive of my advocacy instincts. In fact, for years my mother Virginia was my number one confidant when it came to things like fighting for the Brady Bill and against the death penalty, when it came to fighting for Gay rights and disability rights and against things like anti-Semitism. 

My mother Leona was, without question, my emotional and spiritual familiar. Time with her allowed me to learn a lot about where who I am came from. To this day she is one of the most emotionally and physically courageous human beings I have ever known.

My mother Virginia ended her life August 12, 1992 and my mother Leona died of cancer on December 19, 2001.

I can tell you that I love both my mothers with all my heart and I miss them both – with all my heart.

I love them my whole wide world and then some.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom

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While my father was and is the person I am heart and soul closest to in life, and Michael Sulsona long ago stopped being my friend because he is now my brother, it is my mother, born Leona Patricia Clark, who was my emotional and spiritual twin.

Inklings of this truth could be found like flecks of diamonds in the air,soon after we were reunited on January 8, 1987. My mother had to surrender me for adoption seven days after my birth on October 2, 1953. However, the first headline of this truth was brought to my attention by Paula, an extraordinary woman I was once married too.

It was days after our wedding in September 1991 and, unbeknownst to me, Paula was in the living room watching a video of our wedding. I was likely in another room writing or growling at a coffee maker to hurry up and make the damned coffee. Suddenly Paula called out, “Peter! Look at this!”

I went into the living room. Paula was rewinding the tape. “Watch this,” she said, pressing play on the remote. It was an over-the-shoulder shot of the minister, my first childhood friend, William Damrow. Paula and I were in the frame and behind us you could see our 30 or so guests. My mother, Virginia, was sitting in a chair on the far left and my mother, Leona, was standing on the far right of the gathering. It was the moment of our final vows and Pastor Damrow said, “Paula and Peter have asked that you hold hands with the person next to you during the next portion of their vows.”

And then it happened. Leona moved her way through the gathering until she reached my Virginia and took her hand in hers. My mothers held hands during our final vows.

“That’s you!” Paula said. “That’s where you get it from. How you see those moments in life, you get it from her.”

I got that and more from my mother, Leona, my spiritual and emotional twin, my familiar. Much more. From my mother, I got life. I can think of no greater gift.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

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