Thoughts of my mother

This morning while feeding the horses and cleaning out the stable, thoughts of my mother came over me. It’s not that I don’t think of her often. She is always part of me, and when I look at my son, I often wonder how they would get on – stuff like that. But I usually don’t think much about her dying. The memories still hurt and there is the guilt. Which makes me avoid thinking too much about it.

She died of cancer when I was 24. She wasn’t much above 50 at the time, still a young women. And my parents had plans… I made the mistake to move back home when she was very ill. It seemed a good idea at the time, but today I think I could have served my family better by staying at a certain distance.

The months of her dying were horrible. The house was a depressing place through it all. Instead of bringing the family closer together, the situation brought out the worst in us. Sometimes my brothers and I would try to lighten up the atmosphere a bit, it was so stiffling. But every laughter was a bruise to my mothers soul. It hurt her to think that we were not in there with her, fighting the cancer.

We did not talk about the possibilty of her death, as this was seen as admitting defeat. Maybe it would have helped though.

My family had expectations of me, that I could and would not meet. I did not stay at home and care for my mother. I continued going to work like before. And when she died, I left for the USA, a trip I’d planed for years and had posponed through her illness. I’m glad I left, even though it did not help with the guilt. I never talk about this with my father, as the only time I tried made it clear to me that he too felt that I failed (him, my mother, the familiy). I don’t want to go down that road.

For years(?) to come I had nightmares about my mother being alive again. Either I was afraid of her reaction to my fathers new relationship to an old friend of hers. Or I knew she was going to die again and I just did not want to go through all that again.

I don’t know if my brothers dealt better with our mothers death than I did. They were younger, still living at home with our dad. They were a bachelor household of three, and in some ways it was great, as they did get to know our father much better, now that our mother was not in between to keep up the perfect image. No more translations for him, he had to interact with others and explain himself directly to them.

Expectations towards my brothers were not as big as towards me, as I was seen as the surviving female of the family. But because the men were by themselves, they were much admired for there independence, and for a while there was a flood of neighborly support towards them.

I used to tell myself that at 24 at least I was no longer dependent on having a mother. I had lived by myself for a while before I moved back home, I was my own person and well capable of taking care of myself. As we had lots of fights when being together, it did not feel like I was losing my best friend. But of course a mother just leaves an enormous hole in anybodies live. The person who carried you and nurtured you has immense impact on your live, and when she leaves, there is no way to compensate for that.

I really started missing my mother when my son came along. Not so much because of my lack of a social network for babysitting and stuff, but just because of my knowledge how much she would have enjoyed and adored him.

My father does his best to be a grandfather to him, and he does well, but he is just not the grandfatherly type. This is completely ok for me, I don’t want him to pretend and try to be something he just does not have in him. My son needs many different male role models, and my father certainly is a fascinating one.

My mother would certainly have driven me crazy from time to time with her grandmotherly influence taking and not understanding of the way we do things. But she could have brought an aspect to my sons live that he is now missing out on a bit: the complete adoration, the constant flow of affection that a grandmother can give.