I just read a beautiful blog "Bury" Onwritingbetweenthelines, by Angela Hart. She shared her feelings around the green burial of her mother, my friend, Christiane. It said so much.
It said so much about the death of a mother that I wish I felt. I just don't. I am really pissed at myself because I don't feel the appropriate things. Chris was just a few years older than I and my mom was 93, but I say that more as a weak excuse than a legitimate reason for the difference.
Don't get me wrong, I have crying spells and times when I really want to punch a wall. I remember when Papa died, about 20 years ago, I did punch walls. I knocked a couple of good holes in the bathroom wall and when I found the stud, I broke a little something in my hand. But I also felt differently when Papa died, than I do about Mom's death. Age difference again? Ninety-three seems a more respectable age to die than seventy-eight.
I loved my mother. I admired her strength, her fiercely independent spirit, her creativity and talent. She and my father loved each other in a way I've seen very few couples do. AND, there were many things about my mother that I did not admire. Those are the traits of hers that perhaps I've too much inherited. I loved her, but I didn't necessarily like her all the time and I feel like a real shit for that.
My sleep, when it comes, is haunted with angry dreams. Mean dreams. When I tell people about my having too many losses in too short a time. Mom, then Bean, then Chris died. But there were lots more losses, too. Most of them I caused by acting like a crazy, angry person, and let's face it. That's what I've been.
Then people support me, tell me to take care of myself, they say that I was a good daughter and that I must be happy I spent so much time with her in the past year. But see, they don't understand that I was not a good daughter. I did not feel the way I should have. I didn't happily give up my time to stay with her as my sister did. There is some comfort in the fact that she often told me things like, "You can leave now and you don't need to come back." But there is also pain in that because those statements were always associated with "When will Nancy be back?"
Papa died a little at a time physically. It took him years. Was it a blessing or curse that his mind was sharp right to the end? It was awful. But Mom, well, she died differently. She went through an ileostomy and a broken hip within eighteen months or so of her death and recovered well from both. But her memories, her mind, died a little at a time for a couple of years. And though the cause of her death was bleeding out after a stomach bug - something it would seem she'd have no control over - she planned to die as soon as my sister returned from a vacation and that's just what she did. I wasn't there.
This probably makes very little sense to any reader. How could it? It makes no sense to me. The very sad fact is that I'm grieving not so much the loss of my mother, but the fact that I was a shit daughter. I have never been good at this family stuff, which is weird because I come from a Family with a capital F. So this confession may disappoint (and by the way, disappoint is the worst thing you can do to Family) my family and extended family.
I tried so hard to do things differently with my children that I made big mistakes there, too. I love, love, love my children and grandchildren. I am amazed at how perfect they are in spite of me. I like them. I like being around them. In order to disappoint me they would have to become satanic Nazi animal abusing serial killers, and I don't see that happening. And I wonder.
And I wonder if coming from a Family with a ban on disappointing is really such a good thing. It has made me a very good pretender. It has encouraged me to accomplish things like collecting degrees and publishing books and travel. But I will never accomplish enough. I will always dread disappointing my family more than the loss of a limb. I fear holidays and special days because they are such ripe occasions for disappointing my family. Graduations, weddings, birthdays. I screw them up.
Oh, I'm remembering as I type how my mother bragged to the doctors at at hospital where Papa was being treated, about how I was affiliate staff at three hospitals, and how my name was on some big deal test that psychologists used there. She bragged to people (in front of me) about how I expanded the clinic I ran, and later how I'd had books and journal articles, and columns published. She didn't tell me directly, but bragging to others in front of me is just as good, isn't it? She loved little things I made for her. My God, she loved me every bit as much as I love my children. Why did I never understand that before?
In recent years Mom and I always remembered to tell the other "I love you," until Mom sometimes didn't know who I was. But after a while, when she didn't know who people were, she took to asking about their families and saying how much she loved them. She was a good pretender, too. She was so smart! Even with dementia, she was smart.
Oh, Mom, I am missing you now. I'm so sorry I didn't call you every day. I'm so sorry I didn't visit you more. I'm so sorry it was often so hard for us to be around each other. So honestly, now, Mama, please always be with me. I think I'm beginning to understand.
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