My mom had two famous lines. I still don’t fully know why she loved them so much, but she said them constantly: “get over it” and “go for the gold.”
“Get over it” in particular had the worst timing of any phrase I’ve ever heard a human being use. You fall down and hurt yourself — get over it. Someone breaks up with you — get over it. It was never the right moment, not once, not ever. She thought she was hilarious. And to be fair, she could be funny. But there was a cruel, evil edge underneath the humor that never fully went away, no matter how many times she laughed it off.
# Two Different Women
Before hospice, before she got sick, plenty of people in my life told me to move out, to get away from her. That was mostly during the years she was drinking, smoking, and being her normal vicious self. What’s strange, looking back, is how she could show one version of herself to the world and a completely different one behind closed doors. Only a small handful of my friends ever saw that other side. A very small handful.
Most people just saw funny, loud Dottie. The one who made a room laugh. They didn’t see what came after the door closed.
# The Social Worker Saw It
During hospice, our social worker saw it too. I’ll call her Pam here.
Pam asked my mom, in a pretty routine, gentle way, if she had a good relationship with me. And honestly, most of the time, we did. I made a joke back — something like, “yeah, except when she wasn’t throwing cups of beer at my face.” I said it lightly, the way you learn to say things like that when you’ve lived with them long enough that they’ve turned into dark humor instead of open wounds.
My mom laughed. She actually laughed and agreed — yes, she said, she was so mean, get over it.
Pam looked at her and said, “Dottie, really?”
And my mom just said, “Yeah, so what. It’s not a big deal.”
That was her, completely unbothered, completely unfiltered, in front of a stranger whose job it was to check in on our relationship. Not defensive. Not ashamed. Just… so what.
I think about that exchange a lot. Not because it was the worst thing she ever did — it wasn’t, not by a long shot — but because of how casually she owned it. No performance, no softening it for the person taking notes. That was real Dottie, unedited, and it’s part of why “get over it” still echoes for me the way it does.
More stories from hospice, and more of her, soon.
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