My opinion (worth either 2 cents or decades of life-wages, depending on one's vantage point):
Richie [how I admire him!] showed his former congregation and his mother that he is to be considered [at least] their equal in all things. Why should his mother or any of his judges be given a pass to feel that they have free and exclusive rein to injure, slight, hurt, shun or exclude simply because they believe that they are right in their beliefs and actions? Their training inculcates them to think that God-given power to express displeasure (to former or disapproved members) is entirely in their hands, and that like power to extend forgiveness and social/spiritual/psychic 'resurrection' is also their prerogative. His mother, apparently, holds this view as well -- seeing her son and his affective sphere as her own creation... to manipulate and shape at will. It is actually healthful for her to be forced out of a comfortable, I-am-at-the-centre-of-the-universe zone and to see her son as his own creature, having his own will and his own valid reasoning and impulses.
So, she cried. One of the advantages of having had JW-religious training (if one *had* to be 'born into' a nominally Christian religion) is that we avoided the cult of Marianism (over-the-top veneration of Mary, mother of Jesus) and its common extension to the worship of mothers simply because of their position of motherhood -- no matter what the quality of their actual mothering skills. In the absence of a pedestal, it should be obvious that one's mother should be valued, appreciated and dealt with as with any other fallible human: on the basis of her character and her actions. There is no free pass! Naturally, one is inclined to give a mother more opportunities to sound her character and to correct injurious dealings than one allows to other connections; however, to sit back and swallow a lifetime of one-way directed judgmentalism or condemnation, and even to invite more by leaving open the door to one's life with no expectations of mutual respect and honour, is immature and unnecessarily self-deprecating. This is not a reasonable enactment of the Fourth Commandment.
Richie's mother does not have a child; she gave birth to a child, who is now an adult human. The sooner she can see him as a man in his own right - one whom she should make an effort to match in growing up (for parents *do* have to grow up and out of the mindset of babytalk, diapers, feeding, nursing and shepherding... no easy task after 15+ years in a role begun after one's own mental and emotional fast-growth period has ended) - the sooner their relationship can mature and become mutually nurturing.
In the meanwhile, I think it is healthy that Richie refuses to deny the progression of his own maturation and his growing intellectual and emotional dependence. By making clear his own standards for a relationship (mutual respect, agreement optional), he is in essence raising his mother. As he sometimes cried under the rigours of her training - yet grew tall, straight and strong, so cries she under his. Hopefully, she grows too.
-V