Dear joyce

my runaway occasional mother, which in itself is a too polite way of saying: a woman who abandoned her children twice, once when they were little more than babies & once when they were adults.

I know the excuses: john b was abusive & violent, but somehow it was ok to abandon us there when you ran away with john chapman.

I know of this violence because; I was woken in the night with screaming & came down to find you cowering saying ‘your dad is going to hit me, get me the poker’ I think I did. I remember you throwing a shoe at him that shattered a door & too I remembered you getting my sister to take me home from the funfair after I’d got my nose bloody on one of the rides. because you wanted to stay there & have fun.

there’s other sad memories I have of you missing at night & drunk parties of strangers while the old man was at work.

yours is an old story, one that still plays out: young pregnant, married, lumbered with kids missing the fun & you chose to abandon them, rather take any responsibility for your own poor decisions.

I remember joyce, which doesn’t mean I didn’t need you or want you as a mother, if I do remember one day you being gone. no goodbyes no nothing just silence & an empty space.

I saw you once 4 years later, then not until I was 13 & then you came through on a phone call at my uncle noels place.

this same uncle I did not know might be my biological father-every now & then he’d buy me a gift at Christmas & that was his involvement eh? (noel/neil is either not very subtle or more gaslighting of the old man)

this same uncle’s wife refused to look after us when you disappeared because she thought I was his child & she already had four at home, I wasn’t to know of this myth of fatherhood until was fully an adult.

we had a few hidden meetings-your name could still not be spoken of at home- I was told that I ‘had bad blood’ or  had come from a bad background.

then I ran away from my father & stepmothers house one December, ended up sleeping on a building site, bricks under me & a plastic tarpaulin on top. I called you in desperation, you came & got me, let me stay for a couple of days.

there was a meeting between you & john b my dad, where it was agreed I’d come & stay every other weekend but that fell apart pretty quickly, I got in the way of you going out & drinking.

& that was it, I’d see you occasionally, birthdays & Christmas did not change: no parties, no meet ups & I still never got to meet your wider family.

during all of this I was frightened if I said the one wrong word, did anything you didn’t like, you’d be gone.

I went off to the navy at fifteen & a half, having to get away from my stepmother who hated me.

you never visited me there, no letters unless I sent one first. this I grew used to with you.

my sister got involved with you too, her experience being much the same as mine.

then I too followed the old old story: pregnant girlfriend, married for a few years & then divorced.

I guess I wasn’t good enough for you because you engineered a fight, a row, telling my sisters man I thought he was not very bright. (which might’ve been true) meaning none of us talked for six months & when eventually I tried to break the ice with you, you’d moved to who knows where? no forwarding address or number to call.

gone again.

but this time I was older, still sad about you’re being gone yet able to recognise the problem wasn’t mine, it was yours, your need to have no encumbrances.

your sister told me you ran a pub (I found her by being an amateur detective & she too did not continue any conversation) where you contracted cancer as did john c your husband, I guess that came from you being a keen smoker & pubs those days allowing smoking. I have no clue if you’re buried or cremated.

mandy my half sister (the daughter you did let live with you) did not tell me you were dying or even had died, this I found out five years after the fact by an internet search of your name.

you left me nothing of course much like you gave me during my life, except these genes & an ache for somebody who popular culture tells me should be there for me. though you weren’t, ever.

you & the old man have a lot in common eh?

he left me nothing when he died as did you. I have no pictures of you, nothing you gave me & no last goodbye.

I was a burden to him & you were the one who helped burden him-he told me of bills you put in his name & clearing out the family home. that happened twice joyce, once with you & the second time with the family who I came out of the children’s home to be looked after by. they tortured me, physically & emotionally beatties by name & nature.

imagine my shock when you tried to tell me they were friends of yours who you’d engineered to come in & look after us-get us out of the kids home. vile vicious people. when they left (when john married gill) they cleared the place out, taking all of my toys & clothes.

your kind of people joyce?

& that’s about it, I never knew you or you to know me.

with you running away before I grew up to have a decent life, you gave no regrets or second thoughts & definitely no apologies for not being there for me.

this is your loss completely

It is easy to dodge responsibility, but you cannot dodge the consequences of dodging responsibility

Sir Josiah Stamp