This piece was very powerful. It made me think of all the times my mom called me "a bitch," yet I still had it in my mind till she died that she was my greatest champion and my best friend. I still can't really write about her without sanitizing a lot of our relationship, probably because I've trimmed a lot of the pain away from what I choose to remember - or maybe because my relationship with my mom was still far better than what I had/continue to have in my relationship with my father - whose silence and distance may as well always have been a kind of neglect. He lives less than an hour away from me, and I still haven't seen him in almost three years. I know he tells his friends that I'm the bad daughter for not visiting him (even though I don't have my own car and driving gives me terrible anxiety), but I try to push away the pain I feel over that situation too. I worry that the only time we will ever have to "bond" is the time in his life when he might need me because of his age and declining health. Basically, all that to say - I do understand and hear you.