My Relationship With My Mother Got Better After She Died
I Loved My Mother. I Also Blamed Her for a Lot.
My Relationship With My Mother Got Better After She Died
This is going to sound a little woo-woo.
Fine.
My relationship with my mother got better after she died.
Actually, that’s not quite right.
I got better at understanding my relationship with my mother after she died.
And somewhere along the way, I began to believe that Mom wasn’t entirely finished with the relationship either.
Welcome to How I Killed My Mother.
I Loved My Mother. I Also Blamed Her for a Lot.
My mother and I loved each other.
Let’s establish that before I make us both sound terrible.
But love doesn’t prevent two people from hurting each other.
For years, I could tell you exactly what my mother had done wrong. I knew the stories. I knew the arguments. I knew where she’d disappointed me, where she’d misunderstood me, and where I believed she’d damaged my trust.
I could probably have presented a PowerPoint.
What I wasn’t nearly as good at seeing was my own part in the relationship.
That’s one of the uncomfortable discoveries behind How I Killed My Mother.
For much of my life, I thought I was reacting to my mother.
Looking back, I can see how many decisions I made either to please her or to spite her.
That’s still allowing another person to control your life.
You just get to pretend you’re the one driving.
Self-Discovery Through Storytelling
Then She Died
Death does something strange to an argument.
The other person stops arguing back.
Suddenly, you’re holding both sides of the conversation.
There are things you wish you’d said.
Things you wish you hadn’t said.
Questions that will never be answered in the ordinary way.
And memories begin changing because you are changing.
That’s what happened to me.
I began reconsidering the stories I’d told myself about Mom.
Not erasing them.
Not pretending painful things didn’t happen.
And certainly not turning my mother into a saint simply because she was dead.
Mom would have hated being a saint anyway. I can’t imagine she’d have enjoyed the wardrobe.
But I began asking a much harder question:
What if my version of our story wasn’t the only version?
Then Things Got Weird
Or spiritual.
Pick your adjective.
After my mother died, I began having experiences that made me wonder whether she was still involved in my life.
I’ve always had a spiritual side, but this became different.
It became personal.
There were coincidences that didn’t feel coincidental to me. People appeared at peculiar moments. Questions I’d been carrying for years seemed to get answered in ways I couldn’t have orchestrated.
Most remarkably, people from my past began coming back.
Old loves.
Old unfinished relationships.
People I had spent years remembering as possibilities.
You know the romantic mythology:
The one who got away.
Except sometimes the person who got away got away for a perfectly good reason.
Forgiveness and Healing
More Than a Family Dynamics Podcast
Mom Started Returning My Boyfriends
That’s how I think about it.
My dead mother started returning my old boyfriends.
Thanks, Mom.
She brought people from the back of my life to the front again—including Kyle and Chuck—and seeing them again did something I hadn’t expected.
It didn’t restart the past.
It finished it.
These men had occupied enormous emotional real estate in my memory. Time had allowed me to turn relationships into stories, and stories into mythology.
Then I encountered the actual human beings again.
And I loved seeing them.
I could appreciate what we’d had.
I could appreciate who they had become.
Most importantly, I could finally understand that they weren’t necessarily men I was supposed to spend my life with.
They were people I was supposed to learn from.
That realization healed something in me.
And yes, I believe Mom had something to do with it.
You don’t have to.
I Started Testing It
This is one of the stranger parts of How I Killed My Mother.
I started experimenting with prayer.
Not in a laboratory, obviously.
I didn’t have Mom appearing behind protective glass while scientists took notes.
But I began asking.
I began paying attention.
I started noticing what happened after I prayed, what people appeared, what conversations occurred, and what information seemed to arrive when I needed it.
I had experiences involving psychics and mediums.
I began thinking differently about intuition.
I began wondering whether some of what I’d dismissed as coincidence might deserve another look.
And the more I explored it, the less interested I became in proving any of it to anybody else.
I don’t need you to believe my mother is helping me from wherever she is.
I believe it.
That’s enough.
The interesting question isn’t whether I can prove the afterlife.
The interesting question is what these experiences did to the life I’m living now.
Family Dynamics and the Echoes of Relationships
Forgiveness Wasn’t What I Thought It Was
I used to think forgiveness involved reaching some grand conclusion about the other person.
I forgive you.
Cue the violins.
Roll credits.
That’s not what happened.
Writing How I Killed My Mother forced me to revisit my mother as a human being instead of merely as my mother.
That’s a big difference.
Parents existed before we did.
They had fears we didn’t understand, disappointments we never witnessed, dreams that had nothing to do with us, and childhoods we didn’t experience.
Eventually I had to ask myself whether I’d given my mother the same complexity I expected her to give me.
Ouch.
I also discovered that forgiving Mom was only part of the work.
I had to forgive myself.
For things I did.
For things I didn’t do.
For years I wasted being angry.
For relationships I misunderstood.
For the versions of myself I created because I thought becoming somebody else would finally make everything okay.
That’s where How I Killed My Mother stopped being a podcast about my mother.
It became a story about me.
Maybe We Don’t Finish Our Relationships When Someone Dies
I know what death looks like.
Someone is here.
Then they’re not.
But I’m no longer convinced that’s where a relationship ends.
Maybe relationships continue because we’re still learning from them.
Maybe the dead remain part of us psychologically.
Maybe there’s something spiritual happening.
Maybe both things are true.
I don’t know.
And for perhaps the first time in my life, I’m comfortable saying that.
I don’t know.
What I do know is that my relationship with my mother has continued to change since her death.
I’ve gotten angry with her.
I’ve laughed at her.
I’ve talked to her.
I’ve prayed.
I’ve thanked her.
I’ve blamed her less.
I’ve understood her more.
And occasionally, I believe she’s answered.
That’s the Real Personal Growth Story
The original version of How I Killed My Mother was made up of stories from my life.
But when I went back and wrote the book, I discovered something underneath them.
I had spent much of my life reinventing myself.
Hairdresser.
Salon owner.
Mafia Hairdresser.
Writer.
Podcaster.
Boyfriend.
Ex-boyfriend.
Son.
Caregiver.
Each reinvention felt like moving forward.
But eventually I discovered that growth wasn’t about creating another Jon-David.
It was about understanding all the previous ones.
Including the little boy who loved his mother.
The young man who fought with her.
The adult who blamed her.
And the older man who finally began to understand her after she was gone.
Maybe that’s why I called it How I Killed My Mother.
The mother I had carried around in my head for decades had to die too.
Not the real woman.
My version of her.
And when I finally let that version go, something surprising took its place.
Compassion.
For her.
For myself.
And for the two imperfect people who spent a lifetime loving each other while occasionally driving each other absolutely crazy.
If Mom really is producing this thing from the other side, I’m sure she’ll have notes.
She always did.
Keep Climbing!
My mom says, hello.
TRAILER: HOW I KILLED MY MOTHER
Told with humor, candor, and an occasional trip into the spiritual and unexplained, How I Killed My Mother explores what it means to forgive a parent, forgive yourself, survive grief, and discover that our memories of the people who raised us aren’t always the whole story.
This trailer introduces the story and the journey ahead.
Start here. Then listen to Episode 1 of How I Killed My Mother.
Listen on Most Podcast Channels
Explore More
Novels by Jon-David
Discover the compelling stories of the Mafia Hairdresser in our exclusive book collection.
Jon-David & Goliath True Crime Podcast (Season 3)
5-part Series about corporate fraud that cost this author/hairdresser his savings, him home, and career. 2024 Podcast
Season 1 & 2 The Mafia Hairdresser Chronicles
Dive into the heart of Southern California during the flashy 1980s with our Comedy Serial Podcast
“What happens when a father who doesn’t believe in anything faces the end? Saving The Father is a heartfelt and irreverent exploration of a son’s attempt to help his dad find meaning—and maybe even a bit of faith—before his time runs out.”
