My experience losing my mother: An essay in honor of my mom, myself, and the relationship we shared

Geneviéve Germaine Torres

January 3rd, 1947 - July 7, 2021

On Wednesday, July 7, 2021, my beautiful mom passed away. May she rest in peace. Just like that with my late father (RIP), I had a very challenging relationship with my her. I’m writing this homage to honor her history, her strengths as a person, and to thank her for giving me life.

My mom, age 28, with my half-brother, before I was born

 

Her history

My mom’s parents - my grandma Jeanine (from France) and grandpa (from México) Ernesto settled into a Mexican neighborhood in the town of Emporia, Kansas: La Colonia de Emporia, after meeting in France when Ernesto was fighting for the US in WW2. My grandma was pregnant when she moved to Kansas (!), and my mom was born shortly after she arrived. My mom was the eldest child and eventually ended up with seven little siblings. She lived a poor and hard life in la Colonia, and without getting into the details, she suffered from a lot of abuse and violence from a very young age. Despite this, she and her siblings had little bursts of light and positivity in them as well. My mom was always a caretaker, helping her mother run the household and taking care of her younger siblings. She lived a very troublesome adolescence, and as such, my grandma sent her away to a catholic boarding school in Tulsa, Oklahoma when she was about 15 or 16. Grandma said it was to help her because she was getting into drugs and sleeping around, but perhaps she had an intuition about some abuse and mistreatment toward her among family and people in the community. In any case, my mom left and got “straightened out,” or so that was the idea.

My mom, age 7 or 8

At some point, my mom became trained in beauty and became a hairdresser. She loved everything about beauty – makeup, skin and body care, perfume, hair, and fashion. She worked tirelessly at this profession, which she adored, always trying to make people feel good about themselves. From what I’ve heard from her sisters, my tias, my mom’s life as an adult was never easy. She had different men in her life, none of them proving to be good men or to “stick around.” About 15-20 years before I was born, she met a man in Houston, Texas. She later had a child with this man, my half-brother who is 14 years older than me. I’m not sure what ended up of this relationship, but they separated and my mother had my half-brother full-time. She did whatever she had to do in other to provide for him - including stripping and other lines of work outside of cosmetology/hair. I have so much respect and admiration for her for this.

Our story

I was conceived in the desert. At some point, my gorgeous Californian parents, who had already split up, decided to “re-connect,” I believe it was near or on Thanksgiving 1987. My mother found out she was pregnant on New Year’s Eve, 1987. They were not together and had very dysfunctional dynamics. I was born on a summer Sunday evening in about 3 hours with no drugs. My mother’s OB/GYN was not around, so I was “caught” by my Auntie Jackie, a friend of my mother’s whom I adored as a baby. My mom loved having a little baby girl. She pampered and bathed me, taking exquisite care of me when she could, in many ways. She breastfed me until I was 3.5 - when my dad got custody of me. I was a happy baby. She would always put on "BBB" for me - Bach, Beethoven, and Barry White. Ha!!! Very on-brand for me.

 

Triple fire sign baby, fresh out the womb, ready to live life

First day at home

From when I was just a baby to about three and a half years old, I was going back and forth between my parents’ custody. I don’t know exactly when they decided that they both wanted full custody, probably when I was about two and a half, but as soon as they did, a nasty custody battle began. Looking back on this, it pains me to know that they were both so sick, violent, addicted, and unable to have a working co-parenting relationship with one another. They fought for full custody of me for a little over a year, and about eight months of that year I ended up in the foster care system. CPS came to my preschool one day and took me into the state’s custody. I was just under four years old when my father won full custody of me in Palm Desert, California. I cannot imagine her pain, not being able, for many reasons, to mother her baby girl. 

One of few photos I have of my parents together, before I was born

 

After that, it was just me and dad. I saw my mom a few times when she tried to fight for custody again when I was 7 and 8, another time when I was 10, and then I didn’t see her again until I was 20. And then, I went from age 20 to 30 without ever speaking to or writing her, due to the challenging nature of our relationship which I’m not going to explain in detail because just like with my dad - that is not the point of this homage. I got back in contact with her when I was 30, when I learned how to “dance in the gray” with her. Which basically meant not completely trusting her and intimately letting her into my life, while simultaneously not withholding love, and still maintaining some contact but with a lot of boundaries. I wrote her monthly, and we would talk on the phone every so often. She had been living in Kansas in her later years.

My last texts with my mom, early June 2021

When I think about my mom, I think about the fact that she really never got to “mother” me past 3 years old. About the fact that really, I didn’t ever have a mom in the traditional sense. But, I did have a biological mom. No one can take away that experience from her, or from me. She conceived and birthed me, and breastfed me for a long time; and she gave up all drugs and alcohol, and even smoking cigarettes (she was a life-long smoker) during that time! She gave me life - my beautiful life. And just like my dad, I see her in me all the time. My face, my skin, my taste in clothes and my aesthetics. My mom, even into her older and sicker years, always wanted to look put together. Call it vanity; I call it dignity and carrying oneself with pride and confidence. This is something I definitely inherited from her. She was so feminine - loving all kinds of flowers and perfumes and makeup and jewelry. While it took me about 25 years to really embody and embrace my femininity in that same way, I am grateful to her for sharing how much she did with me, so that I can combine her tips and tricks with mine.

 I have never doubted - for a moment - how much she absolutely loved me.

May she rest in peace, as I honor her for so many blessings. Thanks for reading.