Word: sextons
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Sent off to relatives as a baby, Gray Sexton's recalls being "abandoned" by her mother at an early age. In probably the longest case of post-partum depression, the poet-to-be insisted for years that she was unable to take care of her daughters (the author has a sister, Joy, two years her junior), claiming at times that she hated them and even desired to kill them. This feeling of dismissal was only punctuated by the indifference and/or actual abuse Gray Sexton met in her different foster homes...
This period of their relationship lapsed into an even more destructive one in which "Mother", as Gray Sexton refers to her, insisted on becoming intimate and close with her daughter. Their relationship wore many masks during this period. At times there was complete role-reversal in which Anne looked to Linda for mothering and nurturing. At age 10, Linda was ordered to come home from summer camp prematurely in order to take care of mommy. At other instances, Anne acted as if the two were both adult girlfriends as she would discuss her adulterous affairs with her daughter even encouraging...
With Gray Sexton's late adolescence came a certain awakening and a desire to "abandon" her mother. Fortunately, she was able to escape to Harvard and distance herself from the chaotic hold of her mother's constant need for attention and care. As a busy student, Gray Sexton found herself ignoring her mother's phone calls and obvious cries for help. Chronic depression, loneliness and alcoholism were taking their toll on her mother, but Gray Sexton, exhausted from care-giving, was compelled to remain distant. She writes, "in the last months of my mother's life I chose to ignore...
...Gray Sexton was finally gaining her independence and the cycle seemed to have been broken, when in an ironic turn of events, Anne asked/insisted that Linda be her literary executor. This position would interminably link Gray Sexton with her mother's life even after her imminent death by suicide. The cycle had been set into perpetual motion. It could not be broken...
Though she could not change her fate, Gray Sexton learned to control the ramifications of that fate. The later part of the memoirs, the post-suicide years, details the ways in which Gray Sexton fought the ghosts of her family history. All the problems that swirled around her mother's depression (suicidal tendencies, alcoholism, writer's block) seemed liable to reappear in the author's life at any time, and indeed they did. As hard as she tried to fight them (or perhaps because she tried so hard), Gray Sexton was forced to confront all of her mother's anxieties...