Chapter 147

Around the beginning of 2024, we received an offer on the house that we felt comfortable accepting. My mom was still staying afloat, thanks to a cash infusion from my dad, and things were finally starting to settle down. For the first time in a long while, everyone could breathe a little easier.

But there were still things to take care of. I couldn’t forget that I had a wedding coming up.

Now, you’d think that with my mother-in-law planning pretty much everything, my fiancée and I would have nothing to worry about. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. I had one very simple, and yet excruciatingly difficult, task:

Convincing my mom to come to the wedding.

My mom—now more ashamed of herself than ever—was unsure whether she wanted to attend. I, still bitter about everything that had happened, didn’t exactly feel a strong urge to have her there. She wanted me to essentially beg her to show up, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted her there at all.

But I couldn’t have no parents on my side of the wedding. That would just look bad. And since my dad was already out of the picture, there was no choice but to convince my mom. If only my fiancée’s family showed up, it wouldn’t just look bad—it would feel bad. And frankly, it would be rude as hell. I couldn’t do that to my future in-laws, who had done nothing but support me.

So, for them, I had to find a way to get my mom to show up. The only thing I could come up with was to try and force myself to forgive her. At least enough to swallow my pride, suck up all the anger, and ask her to attend.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to force yourself to forgive someone, but honestly—it’s not fun. This whole ordeal made me respect my Christian friends a bit more. How does one just… choose to forgive? I’m way too vindictive for that.

The only workaround I could think of was to turn to self-help books. When those didn’t work, I moved on to psychology and philosophy books—which actually helped a bit.

I especially liked the psychology books that categorized behavior. That gave certain actions a name, and naming things makes them tangible. After reading just a few, I found I could say, “My mom has this kind of behavior,” instead of just ranting endlessly about what she did. It wasn’t a solution, but… it was something.

Understanding is a way into my mom’s world. That context can make all the difference between seeing your family member as an enemy and seeing them as a flawed individual with behavioral patterns. Still not healthy—but at least more tolerable.

Understanding also does something else: it creates cognitive distance. This is a Stoic technique—an early tool from a school of philosophy—that helps you separate emotion from reality by analyzing the situation logically.

Once you name something and de-catastrophize it, you can remove some of the emotional weight and focus on what needs to be done. Instead of saying “my parents are horrible,” you list what happened. Then, you choose to see those events as objective facts, instead of being consumed by your emotional response to them. (Apparently, this Stoic method helped inspire what we now know as cognitive behavioral therapy.)

One other somewhat Stoic idea stuck with me was memento mori—”remember that you will die.” It’s meant to remind us to cherish life, to appreciate what we have because our time is limited.

Nice idea. But when you grow up selfish, it loses some of its punch.

What I mean is—I don’t think of my death as the loss. I think of it in terms of its effect on others. I wonder how I’ll be remembered. What people will feel. If anyone will regret how they treated me. Take CC, for example. When I applied this Stoic mindset to him, I didn’t imagine my own death as an end. I imagined his reaction. Would he feel bad about scolding me after I died? Things like that. The whole train of thought is still toxic because it’s just being spiteful. I was really just trying to get the last laugh.

So then I asked: how do you create the same emotional impact that memento mori is supposed to have—for someone like me?

Well, for me, the shift came when I stopped thinking about my death, and started thinking about everyone else’s. One day, not only will I die—but everyone who ever knew me will die too. Even with legacies like Bach or Beethoven, eventually there will come a time when they’re forgotten too.

So what happens when they die? What happens when CC and my mom are gone? If I died and got the last laugh—okay, neat. But what happens after that? What happens when those who I’ve spited also die?

The last laugh in an empty room is silent.

It’s easy to see how pointless all of it is if you just look one generation beyond. What happens when there’s no one left to scold me? No one to side with or against? No narrative at all? Just… nothing. It turns out, everything fades. 

Remembering that you’ll die is one thing. But it’s even more powerful to remember that everything you care about, every joy and every grudge, will one day be lost to time.

All this existential thinking led me down a pretty solemn path. But unlike what you might expect, I never spiraled into nihilism. I didn’t dread the senselessness of life. In fact, it gave me solace—just enough to open the door to a couple of difficult conversations with my mom and formally invite her to the wedding.

In the end, none of this brought peace in the way I’d imagined—but it gave me perspective. It didn’t erase the pain, or suddenly make my mom someone she wasn’t. But it let me see her not as the villain of my story, but as a flawed human. This is still a sin and still not forgivable with the standards I had in place. But, I’m told recognition is often the first step to remediation.

With the road to forgiveness, there are often good days and bad days. On my best days, I can wholeheartedly believe in the positive thoughts that if our lives are destined to fade into silence, then maybe forgiveness is possible. Not because my mom deserves it. But because while we’re here, for this brief and ridiculous moment, we might as well try to share the room before it empties.