It’s been a dozen years since my mother died in the fall of 2013, but in my mind her death seems more recent. Yet when I think about the last dozen years, I realize how much she has missed.

My mom died never knowing the rise of Donald Trump in American politics. On June 16, 2015, about 20 months after her death, Trump rode down the golden escalator in the Trump Tower, looked at the few dozen people who had gathered, and then looked into a television camera and said, “That’s some crowd. Thousands. Thousands.” He then launched into a diatribe about immigrants being criminals and rapists. The world has not been the same since.

My mom didn’t see the January 6, 2021 insurrection, nor hear the 30,573 false and misleading statements Trump made during his first term (I wonder what the number is now?). She didn’t live to witness the ICE raids and inhumane deportations of Trump’s second term. But here’s the thing—I don’t know how all of this would have struck her. I am not sure whether or not my mother would have gone full MAGA. She well might have, and it would have strained our relationship. Is it wrong to feel some gratitude that she died before all this happened?

Her father was a life-long Republican who was involved in state politics in Michigan. My grandfather’s Republican ideal was Dwight D. Eisenhower, and my grandfather served in state government under Republican governors George Romney and William Milliken. I’m sure those moderates would not recognize today’s Republican party, and I suppose I could write another blog about whether or not my grandfather would have supported Trump. But I’m writing about my mother, and there was no question her upbringing molded her as a Republican.    

The first Presidential candidate my mother voted for was Eisenhower in 1956. I have a hunch she might have strayed from family orthodoxy in 1960 and voted for the dashing John F. Kennedy because she was devastated when he was assassinated. No one in my family voted for Barry Goldwater (yet I doubt they could bring themselves to vote for Lyndon Johnson), but I’m sure that beginning with Richard Nixon in 1968, my mother voted for Republican Presidential candidates the rest of her life.

She became fervently religious as she grew older, and Ronald Reagan’s appeal to religious conservatives spoke directly to her. In the 1980s, she stated listening to Focus on the Family radio and reading James Dobson’s books. She told me at that time that secular humanism was a grave threat to Christianity and wondered what I was doing about it. I didn’t have an answer, but what I wanted to say was, “Where are you getting this?”

She was scandalized by Bill Clinton’s moral flexibility in the 1990s and loved the evangelical sincerity of George W. Bush. As time went on, Focus on the Family radio was replaced by Fox News. She developed Alzheimer’s Disease in 2007 and I doubt she voted after that. But let’s say she never developed Alzheimer’s and was still with us. Would that background have led her to support Trump?

I don’t know.

I can’t imagine her turning a blind eye to Trump’s own moral flexibility. I also wonder if she would have taken it as gospel that being conservative meant doubting vaccine efficacy and other scientific facts, questioning climate science, and swallowing various conspiracy theories. There is a violent tone to the current administration that would have disturbed her. But would she have turned a blind eye? I don’t know.

She didn’t live long enough to experience the pandemic, and again I’m grateful she wasn’t around for that—not only because millions died but also because one’s response to the pandemic became a partisan litmus test. Would she have felt masks were assaults on liberty? I can’t say.

My father was also a life-long Republican, but he drew the line at Trump. However, my parents were divorced in 1979, so my dad’s politics became irrelevant to her (my mother’s growing evangelical fervor was one of many things that divided them). Here are two stories about my dad. Sometime when I was in high school in the mid-1970s, my mother attended a Basic Youth Conflicts seminar with Bill Gothard. (Pick up Jesus and John Wayne if you’re not familiar.) She came home and presented the notebook to my father. He looked it over and said, “We’re not doing that.” I’m grateful.

During the first Trump Presidency, we took my dad to the emergency room because he couldn’t get words out of his mouth. Turned out to be a TIA, and he wound up having several of these. Eventually, we learned that we just needed to give it some time and it would clear up. But on this occasion, we were in the emergency room and a doctor was asking diagnostic questions. “What’s the name of the President?” the doctor asked. The TIA had cleared up by then and my dad had answered a couple of questions successfully, but at this question he just glared at the doctor, who then started scribbling down notes.

“Ask him a different question,” I said, laughing. He knows who the President is. He just won’t say his name.”

But my mother? I’ll never know if she would have been a Trumper or a never-Trumper.

My overwhelming feeling for the last decade has been that her dying from Alzheimer’s Disease was a terrible thing. But thinking about it today, I have mixed feelings. As much as I wish she were alive, I’m grateful she was spared the last decade of authoritarian ascendency. I’m grateful she was spared the pandemic. And I’m grateful our relationship didn’t have to go through the partisan ordeals that have ripped so many other families apart.