On June 11, 1978, my mother, Solveig “Sissi” Andersson, passed away. A few weeks earlier, I had come home from school at Bancroft Jr High and seen a friend and part-time assistant of my mother’s, Richard Ross, sitting on the edge of the bed in her bedroom at 842 Croft Avenue in West Hollywood.

My mother was lying in bed with a red towel covering one of her eyes – I don’t remember which eye. According to Richard, my mother had bent down to wash her underwear in the bathtub and struck her eye on the sharp edge of the metal handle on the bathtub’s glass door. The impact was so severe that she lost her balance, fell backward onto the bathroom floor, and hit the back of her head hard.

There was always drama at our house, and it was usually my mother who caused it. Her alcoholism guaranteed that, and her waking state constantly fluctuated between three stages: tipsy, drunk, and hungover. All three variations made her both unreliable and, above all, unpredictable.

No one doubted that she was intoxicated when the accident occurred. She drank pretty much from the time we left for school in the morning until she fell asleep at night. She would often lie on the couch, snoring loudly when Tyko and I came home from school in the afternoons.

On the carpet below the couch, there was almost always a blue plastic glass filled with vodka. I remember the stench and to this day cannot drink it. But then again, that’s the only spirit I can’t drink.

My mother was clever at hiding her bottles of Smirnoff, but after two or three drinks – which she drank with lime juice or club soda and ice – I suppose she couldn’t muster the energy to put the gallon bottle back in its hiding place. So, instead of making sure there was something for us her kids to eat, a large glass bottle of Smirnoff would sometimes be standing on the kitchen table.

When the ambulance arrived to pick up my mother, we thought she was just going to the hospital to get patched up, and then come back home. But she didn’t. She never came home. Following a surgery where they attempted to relieve the pressure that built up when her brain swelled after the fall, my mother slipped into a coma and died 48 years ago today.

Both Tyko and I were obviously deeply upset when the news arrived. The surgeon told me on the phone after the operation that my mother’s general condition was critical; above all, her liver was shriveled from years of alcohol abuse. He explained that she would not have lived much longer regardless, and would only have been able to pull through the surgery and recover if her body hadn’t been in such bad shape.

Looking back now, nearly half a century later, I can admit that I felt both a profound grief and a sense of guilty relief. My mother was rarely kind to me. In her eyes, I reminded her of my father and became intertwined with him as the root of everything that had gone wrong in her life. I was her convenient scapegoat for him abandoning her for a younger woman from Alaska who worked as an erotic dancer at strip joints along La Cienega Boulevard.

I spent most of the day on June 11, 1978, comforting Tyko. He was only 11 years old and understandably had a really tough time processing our mother’s death. Our dysfunctional family had now been decimated even further, but life for both of us, at least for a while, would actually turn around when we moved to Sweden a few weeks later.

I’ve come to learn more about my mother in recent years, and maybe I’ve even come to terms with some of the shit she’s had me carry with me for the rest of my life. Still, a part of me, the most generous part, would have loved to have her see how I managed to create a decent life for myself, despite her vindictive, vodka-fueled misbehavior. Above all, it would have been wonderful to see her amazing granddaughter, Elle and Charlotte.

I don’t celebrate my mother’s death today. But it certainly is a day that is hard to forget.

The photo is probably one of the very first of me, likely taken by my father.
This post isn’t about me seeking sympathy or empathy. It’s just another story that I needed to tell. However, if there are readers who can identify with it becasue they too grew up with an abusive parent, then maybe it can help them feel less alone in their lifelong struggle to feel good about themself.