Three years

It’s been three years since my mother had her heart attack. The 26th was the last day I spoke to her. She had been having some weird sleeping issues and reflux. The night she died she had been out with her friends seeing a play, had gone home and woke in the night with chest pains. When I went on her computer she had googled ‘chest pains’. For months I had told her to go to the doctors with her strange symptoms and in her defence, she had, but I think with a downgraded sense of urgency. Anyway, that is all water under the proverbial bridge now. She fought in hospital for two weeks and died on March 11th. My grandmother’s birthday. At 12:23, my son’s birthday. I got in the car as I left the hospital and changed radio stations and ‘Ain’t Nothing Gonna Break MY stride’ was on. Our song.

When I got back to the house, I heard something fall upstairs. Her golfing hat with a USA pin fell with my father’s hat (he had died 2 years prior) with a UK pin on it had fallen to the floor with a box of paperwork. For no apparent reason. I went to make coffee and on the deck were two mourning doves. At first I thought it was breeding pair, but upon further inspection, it was a mother and fledgling baby.

I am not a religious person. I stopped going to church a long long time ago. I only mention these things because they happened just as I say them. I am not putting meaning to them, I am trying not to fill in any blanks because I don’t know what I believe about what happens when we die.

Since she died, I have had a really hard time. My mom and I had an odd relationship. I loved her so much. I was always trying to please her. I wanted nothing more than to make her proud and to have some sort of recognition of that. I never got it. My opinions and beliefs were often rejected and I was put down often for being overweight or not being successful or for making stupid choices in life and for not being exactly what my mom wanted for me. I’ve spent so many years of verbal self flagellation. So many years of feeling like I wasn’t worth it and the things I wanted to do with my life were stupid. So many years being compared to my beautiful and perfect cousins making successes of their lives. Nothing I ever did was good enough. I was never worthy of apologies or acknowledgement. I was punished for not being the capitalist money making American success that she wanted me to be.

These three years have been a lot of self reflection and trying to fight past these negative thoughts. My life is mine now and I don’t have a bloody clue what to do with it. Where do I get motivation from if I have spent my whole life feeling like I am worthless. How do I break that cycle? How do I let go of this sadness and anger and love her for doing the best job she could? I know she had a hard life and I know that when her mom remarried and had her sister that the wheels were set in motion. Kathy was the pretty perfect one that my mother had to live up to. She was a product of the father that had betrayed her mother and caused her endless pain. It couldn’t have been easy for her. I am trying to remember things like this so I can put this to rest and just …….. miss her.

And I do. I really really miss her.