So.... if you know me, you know that my relationship with my mother is not the greatest. What is sad is that my mother thinks it's wonderful. I tolerate her, sometimes rebelliously, more recently compassionately. But it's difficult getting past the history.
The world thinks of my mother as a spicy, humorous, delightful woman. I remember when I first moved back to this area, I saw Patty, a woman I knew from my church, after many years of not having seen her. One of the first things Patty did was to tell me how much she loves my mother, what a delightful person she is. I hear this all the time. My sisters and I are stunned by it. Who is this woman everyone thinks is so great? No-one we know!
My earliest childhood memories of my mother are of her knocking us around. She would knock us to the floor, then stand over us and kick us. I had it good, I was one of the younger kids. My older sisters and my brother lived a nightmare life. My brother wet the bed, so she dressed him in a girl's dress and put make up on him and tied him to the tongue of the trailer, telling all the neighborhood kids to call him "Orina" instead of "Orrin." Poor Orrin was the only boy, raised by a mother who had no brothers, and when he did normal boy things, he was punished severely. He lived and died never having overcome the effects of her abuse.
I was actually a mother before I understood that I had been abused. I thought this was how parents treated their children. When my oldest daughter was born, I sat and looked with her, and the thought of beating that sweet little baby filled me with horror. Then I knew that it wasn't normal or good.
My mother married two men who abused her children and grandchildren sexually. In both cases she protected her husband at the expense of the children. She even moved the family to another state to keep him from being caught. This was in the 50s when records were not connected, and it was easy to flee and escape responsibility. She later told her grandchildren not to tell so her husband would not go to jail. She always protected herself and her abusive husbands.
I did not cast off the effects of my mother's abuse for many years. I had low self esteem, and she intimidated me. She used many weapons to control us even into adulthood. Guilt was a major one. When you called her, she never said how nice it was to hear from you. She chastised you for not calling more. It took a lot of years to recognize her manipulation for what it was. I recognized the angry response long before I understood just why I had that response. And even recognizing it, it is still hard to deal with. She still uses it today.
My mother is dying of cancer. Last December she was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer, and the doctor gave her 2-4 weeks to live. My daughter is a caregiver, and her patient in Washington had just died. So she decided she could spend a month of so in Arizona caring for her Grandmother. I was grateful; with my health issues, I could not handle it.
I don't know if I have EVER felt the kind of rage I felt watching my mother abuse my daughter. After a month of my mother growing more and more demanding and more and more hostile, we put her in hospice for some respite care. There she freaked out, angry at not getting enough attention, and broke out the windows to her room, yanking the telephone out of the wall to do it with. It took 4 nurses and 3 cops to sedate her. Everyone blamed the medicine... but to me, it was like a trip to the past. The entire behaviors, rude, demanding, violent, reminded me of my childhood. It was like the illness stripped her of filters she had developed as she got older. I was seeing the woman I knew, disliked, and was intimidated by.
Hospice basically kept her in a chemical straight jacket after that until they could transfer into a long term nursing facility. She has been there since January. Her condition is gradually declining. She has ceased to be hostile, and mainly now is whiny and demanding. Her attention span is short, so she hates to wait for anything. I am transferring her tomorrow to a smaller facility where she can receive more attention from the staff.
The hardest thing for me is the attention I have to give her. I wish I could just walk away, be done with her. But I am a Christian. I am bound by a commandment to honor my parents. I am obligated by rules of compassion. I am both envious and frustrated by my sisters. My older two sisters have totally broken off ties, my younger sister lives and works out of town and can only see our mother an hour or so a week. My brother is dead. So that leaves me, trying to help her final days have some measure of comfort.
I hate it. I dread it. I tell myself it's not about what kind of a mother she was, but about what kind of a daughter I am. I ask myself how I would feel if one of my beloved daughters were to decide I had been a horrible mother, and they didn't like me. I'm forcing myself to go through the motions. But I don't like it. Oh, no, I do not like it. If I have to do this, I wish I could do it more willingly, less reluctantly. I can't see that happening.
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