Embracing Appalachia: On Generational Pain & Legacy.

I was in Greensboro visiting friends when a message popped up from an aunt I hadn't spoken to in years.

"Michelle, call me immediately."

I knew before I hit dial that something was wrong.

When she answered, her voice shook.

"Are you sitting down?" she asked twice.

My mother, Penny, age 68 had been found unconscious in her apartment in Florida. She had a stroke. By the time paramedics reached her, she'd already been in a coma for days. They were looking for next of kin.

I'm her only child.

I hadn't seen her in 17 years. We'd spoken a few times, thin conversations that always fell into silence. My grandparents raised me as do so many. The ones who stepped in when a generation collapses under its own history.

They said she was being moved to a hospice, no awareness, & never wanted to be kept alive that way. I told myself there was no point in going. Then my cousin texted the next day:

"Are you sure you don't want to come?"

I wasn't sure of anything except that if I didn't go, I'd regret it. My biological father Michael died of AIDS when I was 19. He asked for me but back then my anger & pride wouldn't allow it. The 30 years since had taught me though and softened me. I packed, loaded my dog, & drove from North Carolina to Miami, 22 hours, no sleep, just highway, music, and thoughts.

Somewhere in Georgia my cousin called again.

"She's deteriorating, but we told her you're coming." Later, nurses said she stabilized that night.

Penny had decided to wait

When I finally got to her hospital room everyone left to give me privacy. She didn't move, but the monitor ticked steady, like she was listening.

For most of my life, I believed she wouldn't mother me.

She always chose distance, chaos, addiction & men over me. However, standing there, a mother myself, I finally saw maybe it wasn't that she wouldn't be the mother I needed. 

Maybe she couldn't.

Penny lived hard. She was kind & funny, a pool shark, a self taught mechanic & survivor.

Her Dr mentioned something about her being bipolar.

That was something I never knew.

No insurance for decades, working as a waitress, self-medicating with pain pills, I realized that was how she numbed herself.

She was drop dead gorgeous and used that beauty to survive in a world that punished women like her for needing help.

I judged her harshly when I was younger, swore I'd never be like that, never give a man that kind of power over me.

If they can feed you they can starve you I used to tell her.

She'd been abused as a child & adult. By the time I came along, she was already fighting ghosts too big to win against. That doesn't excuse her absence, but it explains it. She didn't have the tools to hold herself, let alone anyone else.

Where I come from, her story isn't rare. The mountains are full of women expected to keep going with no map, no medicine, & no margin for error. Poverty, addiction, & untreated mental illness don't just break families, they rearrange them. In Appalachia, we mistake endurance for healing & silence for strength. We just keep going.

She hitchhiked from WV to FL w/ baby me at 19, left me with a friend & didn't come back. My grandfather flew down to get me. I had pneumonia, couldn't sit up, had never eaten solid food. He'd say, "You were in bad shape." My uncles said she always planned to get me back but she never stabilized. For years I thought her failure to show up meant I wasn't worth staying for.

That it was proof I was hard to love and easy to leave.

When I became a mother, I cut her off. My anger & her chaos couldn't coexist. But seeing her lying there, I realized she hadn't refused to love me.

She just couldn't be a mother.

I stayed until the end & sang her favorite songs. I held her hand, told her I knew she did her best & that was enough.

She passed soon after, quiet, like she'd been waiting for permission.

We had forgiven each other.

In Appalachia, heritage is often generational pain, poverty & addiction.

It is up to us to alchemize that into something beautiful.