The fate of a mother is waiting for children. You wait for them while pregnant, you wait for them when they return from nursery. Wait for them when they leave school. You wait for them when they start their life when they come home after a party. You wait for them when they come back from work so they can always find a hot meal. You wait for them with love, with anxiety sometimes with anger that immediately passes when you see them and you can hug them. So make sure your elderly mom doesn’t have to wait any longer. Visit her, love her, hug the one who loved you like no one else ever will. Don’t ever make her wait. Because they age limbs but a mom’s heart never grows old. Love her as you can. No woman will love you like a mother.

{Author Unknown}

To His “Mother THING“:

I recently stumbled upon the most beautiful passage about “the fate of a mother,” and I couldn’t have said it better myself. Stumble as I may have countless times in my motherhood journey thus far, the gift of all my children has been my highest calling and honor. But what do these words mean to you? You never waited for your son—he only ever waited for you—because you left him, like trash, to die in his own remains.

YOU LEFT HIM!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: your “son” stopped living the day he was born. But it was one year ago today that the hands of Fate threw the final spin of the wheel that ultimately led not only to his demise, but to the end of the most beautiful chapter of my life. Looking back, I can say the very first hint of change in him was June 5, 2014, because that was truly the day the “rock” that was OUR Zack began crumbling. Slowly, subtly, yet ever so steadily, he began slipping down the hole that devoured him on January 11th that year. But it wasn’t really until May 12th of the previous year that he started coming apart at the seams. I remember that morning as if it were right now—exactly where he was standing, what he was wearing, the angst on his face, what he was saying, and the tears falling from his eyes. Suffice it to say, Mother’s Day 2019 marked the beginning of his end.

Still, on the surface, he seemed to have made peace with it all, so he moved on down the road. We made our own little family, and he left you all behind in his dust. “Their loss, not mine,” he would say—and he couldn’t have been more right, because none of you were worthy of his presence. Trust me when I tell you that, because of our professions, we knew plenty of people who knew them. The general consensus about all your other Williamsons—the ones you actually managed to want? “They’re selfish, shallow, greedy, social-climbing wannabes in one of the greatest shows on Earth.” Everything about Zack’s character was so far removed from theirs that no one who realized the familial connection could fathom it. Watching random strangers literally scratch their heads, and hearing what people would say about them, were among the highest compliments he ever received. He absolutely reveled in knowing that no one could begin to correlate him to “all of them.” But I’ve digressed. Suffice it to say, every Mother’s Day hurt him the most—even more than all the birthdays you forgot, as he waited year after year, phone in hand, for you to fucking remember him.

So, with that, today is bittersweet. Not a Mother’s Day passed after he walked into my life that I wasn’t cherished, celebrated, and placed so high upon the pedestal he built for me that there literally are no words. It was no secret to anyone that your “son” was hell-bent on making sure I understood how deeply he revered my role—not just in his life, but in my children’s as well, and especially on Mother’s Day. When we first met, he told me about his past and how not just you, but his entire “blood family,” had abandoned him for reasons only God knows. He was so ambivalent about the things you people had done to him, but it still outraged me to the core of my being—not only to hear the stories of his maternal abandonment and childhood, but to watch, live, and experience the abysmal things his “family” did to him. As for those other “Williamsons” you spat upon this Earth, who still get to live and breathe in the very same city where their “brother” slipped through the void? If a stranger met any one of them without knowing who they really were, they’d probably be impressed with the personas they present. But his truth is the truth: he spoke it, I witnessed it, and God watched every single bit of it. So congratulations, “mother.” You made self-consumed, dressed-up narcissists with plastic smiles and shallow hearts that only a “THING” like you could possibly be proud of.

Here’s all you really need to know now …

It’s Mother’s Day 2020, and 264 days ago your “son” shot himself in the head with a Springfield handgun and a hollow point bullet at just before midnight. You were nothing to him but a stranger, and what a shame you never knew what an amazing human being you threw away and the gift he was to this world.

Only God knows what was going through his mind in the very last moments of his life, and not knowing what that may have been will break my heart forever. Alas, he’s at rest now—finally at peace after the legacy of abandonment you chose to burden him with. But here’s what I do know about the things that lived in his mind during the years I was lucky enough to give him the only real home he ever had, and the only real love from a woman—other than his Grandma—that he had ever known:

Your “son” hurt us all with a broken mind and heart that were jaded beyond comprehension. “He must have had mommy issues” is what some will surely say, and sadly? IT WAS TRUE! He wasn’t quite two when you left him behind – him, and only him – but not your other kids, because for what good reason he could never understand you just didn’t want him like the others! You never turned back to see the tears that burned through his heart every day for the rest of his life.

When your “son” was just a boy, he had to sit in classrooms making Mother’s Day cards he never really knew what to do with. So he would tear them up and put them in the garbage as he left the school grounds, watching all the other kids being greeted by their mommies while he walked home to nothing, all alone.

When your “son” was just a boy, he would go to his friends’ birthday parties while his heart physically ached because you apparently couldn’t remember the day he was born. It was October 5, 1982, just in case you forgot—which, by the way, I know you did, since you never once called him on his birthday.

When your “son” was just a boy, Mother’s Day broke his heart into little, tiny pieces that none of us who really loved him could ever put back together. He cried for you. He ached for you. He longed for you. He dreamt of you. He disappeared inside of himself waiting for you to want him!

Despite all these words and my more than apparent hostility, I have forgiven you and yours to the best of my ability for all the ways you destroyed my beautiful husband, especially given that I wholeheartedly believe that the entire lot of you are truly evil:

I really can forgive anyone for just about anything, and as God is my witness, I HAVE! But I’ll just keeping taking people on a case-by-case basis. The Devil’s Own really do walk among us, but I’m not even sure they’re “people”. They’re a different kind of breed “thing” altogether. I’m not quite sure I’ll ever get to the point that I stop avidly praying that God really DOES sort us all out in the end. I’m just a mortal human, not a god or Jesus Christ, so I’ll just keeping asking for “forgiveness” for not being too excited about the idea of “mercy for the merciless”.

{“The Walk Amongst Us“}

But never will I forget the last ten years of watching him try so hard not to break because none of you gave a FUCK about “the Zack of shit”—your “son,” their “brother.” You know, now that I think of it, there were so many things I was prepared to do for your son over the course of our lifetime, but having to pick out his urn was never one of them. It’s all good, though, because his remains will forever be mine, and not yours, because as he famously and repeatedly said to me:

Catherine, if they couldn’t be bothered with me when I was alive, then they don’t get to have me when I’m dead!

So, with that, Happy Mother’s Day to you, “mother THING” of my fallen king. May you sleep well this night and at the end of every Mother’s Day going forward that you’re able to enjoy with the other kids you did somehow manage to “mother”. Hold your hand over your chest now and breathe in all that you feel. It’s the still beating heart of the one woman in this world that was supposed to love my husband forever! Also? It is my most avid and fervent prayer that one day you will burn in ACTUAL hell!

IN HIS REMAINS

Separate. He sifted through the wreckage. He couldn’t concentrate – searching for a message in the fear and pain. Broken down and waiting for the chance to feel alive. Now in his remains are promises that never came. Set the silence free to wash away the worst of him. Come apart. Falling in the cracks of every broken heart. Digging through the wreckage of your disregard. Sinking down and waiting for the chance, to feel alive. Now in his remains are promises that never came. Set the silence free to wash away the worst of him. Like an army, falling one by one by one. {Linkin’ Park}