Dear Mother:
It's Sunday. It's raining hard. It's dreary
outside.
I woke up this morning with a sense of dread. You've been
gone for 40 years. I last wrote to you 39 years ago. After you died, I
wrote to you every day for a year, then I stopped. Today will be the
day I write again.
A while back, I attended a conference on wrongful convictions and
the death penalty. While there, I ran into Tim Hennis. He was sentenced
to death after being convicted of rape and murder but was later
acquitted. He wanted to be there to support the falsely accused, but he
didn't want to walk across that stage and speak out loud, "My name is
Timothy Hennis." Too shy? Too hard? Maybe he worried he wouldn't be able
to get through it. Just like I worry about writing to you.
The beauty I find in helping the falsely accused is something I
like about myself. It's the deeper part of who I am, and maybe this has
something to do with you. I wasn't always like this. There is written
proof in my diary that before you died, my l4-year-old mind was soaked
with thoughts of teenage boys:
Wednesday, April 29, 1959. I had so much fun at school.
Wowsville. Tonight, John called again, and so did this guy named Hil
Silvers. We talked for over an hour. He's an A+ doll. Neal's been mean
lately. I don't know what's wrong, but I like him muchly.
Friday, May 8, 1959. Tonight I had a party. There were 16
kids, and then a bunch from Duke's came. It was really blasty except
for the fact that David kept bothering us. One of the guys, from
Reviere, is named Harry Watkins, and now I have a crush on him--he's so
darling. I like Nealie, too, but after 16 months I can't help my
crushes on other guys.
Reading my diary entries written before you died, I see a picture
of a self-absorbed adolescent. I read page after page hoping for some
modicum of self-examination. Of course, back then, my somewhat steady
boyfriend Neal would try to read my diary, and I do remember writing only
good things in case he got his hands on it. Because I was so
self-conscious that someone might find my unhappy thoughts, I
occasionally wrote them on separate pieces of paper then clipped them to
the diary. They were my removable truths. If Neal ever said, "If you love
me, you'll let me read the diary," I could easily unclip these private
entries.
So I wonder now how much of my diary is what novelist Tim O'Brien
calls "happening truth" (the indisputable reality of what happened) and
how much of it is "story truth" (the personal colorized version of what
happened)? Memories, with or without diaries, that supposedly record the
past, are generally colorized versions of the past. That's something I've
learned in spades through my work. But there I go, digressing, trying to
busy myself with work matters.
It's hardest for me to reread the diary entries written right
before you died. Those summer days at the lake at Bear Rock--the
swimming, the cabins, the teenage boys. It's all about to come to an
end.
I felt my stomach tightening when I saw my entry two days before
you died:
Nothing much happened today. Just usual stuff. Tonight my dad
called and we were very happy. My mother and I had a long talk until
midnight about her childhood and other things. I was really happy
because we'd never been too close before, and now we were talking like
we really were.
And then the worst happened.
Today, July 10, 1959, was the most tragic day of my life. My
dearly beloved mother, whom I had just gotten to be really close with,
died. We woke up this morning and she was missing, and an hour later we
found her in the swimming pool. Only God knows what happened. I know
that life must go on and that we all must be brave. I try to tell
myself that she is gone only physically and that her soul and her love
remain with us. Now that she is gone, I realize how very much I love
her and how hard it will be to carry on. I feel so empty inside, like I
lost a big part of me. If my mother could hear me I would want her to
know that she has all my love and always will.
The day after you died, I began to write to you. I wrote to you
every day. "Dear Mother" or "Dear Mom." Signed "Love, Beth" or "Lovingly,
Beth." And sometimes "Love forever." I wrote about the sympathy cards we
received. I wrote to tell you that "you were, and still are, the kindest,
most wonderful person who has ever lived." I wrote about all the people
crying at your funeral, "Everyone was crying so hard, including myself. I
thought I'd faint--it took so much out of me."
But the diary reveals that my teenage self-absorption returned. I'm
embarrassed to read how few days had passed before this happened. A month
had hardly gone by, and I'm telling you which boys called me that day. I
even wrote to you about a New Year's Eve party I attended:
December 31, 1959. Dear Mom--I was with Kenny all night. We
went to a party at Bob D'Amore's first. Some girl got drunk, passed out
and barfed all over her date. Poor guy. At twelve, Kenny kissed me, we
were watching TV, and everyone threw streamers. It's sort of sad to
leave this year behind, it was such a wonderful year for me. Goodbye,
1959! Love, Beth.
Wonderful year? Who was I kidding? It was an awful year.
Tags:
adolescent,
april 29,
death,
death penalty,
diary entries,
duke,
family,
Memory,
mother,
one of the guys,
Proof,
remorse,
reviere,
teenage boys,
tim hennis,
watkins,
wowsville,
wrongful convictions
