If endings are difficult then beginnings are a nightmare, as so few of us bother to get a beginning right; somehow expecting things to muddle along.

I remember her as blonde.

Blonde with warm boobs, big skirts and a smell of perfume, people and beer. Anything else I know comes later and isn’t a memory of her more recollections, events given dolefully, spitefully and tattered by passing through minds belonging to others.

A mother. My mother.

A woman whose absence corrupts me years on. Not a hole within, or even a gap, more of a misshaped filling that has contoured the missing segment that once she may have created with love but now has grown through therapy, strangers and loss.

I’d like to hate her, hate her for leaving me in those long-gone colder days. Hate her for the love, cuddles, kisses, Christmases, birthdays, scraped knees, strength and direction never given. But then if this is my loss then it is hers too.

I was punished as a boy for needing her, punished for looking in corners, strangers’ eyes for her look, wounded for seeking her presence in places I hadn’t looked before.

I may not hate her, but I can be angry. Angry that she left me with strangers who abused me for my missing of her. Abused me to punish the hurt I wore as badge of my loss. Abused me for the stress I caused within them as I stood evidence of her gone. My anger at them is my anger at her for not only not stopping this but by her creation of it.

And yes I may have grown with child anger toward parents who were there and doing their best, even this is denied me, my anger is for absence of care, absence of love, absence of direction.

Worse; it is true. Undeniable. And still there is nowhere to place it.

What should I do? Go bang on her door, demand some satisfaction for all this? For what?

What satisfaction can there be but justifications, apologies for whatever, youth, infatuations…paths splintered in their wrong.

Nothing will lift this yoke.

Nothing, not even she can undo what is done.

Neil Benbow

©neilbenbow2026

neilbenbow@consultant.com