thinking about how out of the two winchester parents, the only one dean ever said "i hate you" to was mary (in a dream-like state, yes, but still). because of her barely-informed choice, ten years before the brothers were even born, she died, orphaning her children, widowing her husband.
but it was john who doomed their bloodline — his and mary's — to a life of transience, of abdication. a family ravaged by grief, a man with his two sons turned funeral procession. a mother means the most, and absence makes the heart grow fonder, doesn't it? john noticed the yawning maw where mary would have once fit perfectly; he tried to fill it with alcohol, fits of rage, revenge-powered hunting — he even tried to fill it with absence. sam and dean were raised on it.
sand slips through fingers, it crumbles under pressure. but mary is, has always been, will always be so much more than these pesky material possessions, these feelings. she gives life, she takes it away. it's the role of a mother, after all.
even though sam and dean were raised on inadequacies, by their father, who quite often abandoned the ship and left the rudder to his eldest, when he's asked, "did you love your father?", without a beat he goes, "with everything i had."
maybe he doesn't even hate mary: what he hates is the impossibility of normalcy, which is the stigma of the mother — their mother.
this tree has roots, and these branches stem from her.
