Difference between revisions of "Mom"

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So my Mom passed last week. Everyone dies, and she got out pretty easy, just quick heart pains, and a few minutes later she was gone. While we weren't very close, in some ways it's been a lot harder on me than I expected. In my mind in prepping for this inevitability, I'd focused on the grief of her not being there, the loss, her never being able to grow and admit our past, and so on. All that was easy to understand, and prep for, and cope with. What is hard is having to re-live the past, bite my tongue, and ignore the fictions.  
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There's a lot of complex past.
  
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My Mom (and her Mom and her brother) had these Italian alternate realities of events -- they'd just imagine what happened, tell the story of how they wanted it to have happened, and then believe it. It's tough when you were there, their actions hurt you, and don't do lies (fictions) well. You have this friction of living in two different realities, with no chance to bridge them.
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For years, I'd tried to get her to admit or see my reality -- but to do that would require that she admitted she'd done anything wrong. Or worse, that her actions had been callous or cruel. So she couldn't do it. We were arguing once about one of her fictional versions of events (I in my early 20's), and she said, "I've made it 40 years being this way and I haven't changed yet -- why do you think I'm going to change in the future, or want to change?" It was sort of the epiphany -- I could never have a relationship with her, and get her out of her reality or to accept mine. Nor would I lie to myself to accept hers. So I could just either cut her off, or just built firewalls around the past that we couldn't broach in conversation or we'd both get mad. (Me at her lies, and her at my truths). Or some degree of both.
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We reached detente. We would both avoid the past as much as possible. She was still a self-centered person in the present. But she could also be funny, smart, and entertaining -- and I can deal with other self-centered people, as long as they aren't my Mom, selling the fiction of having sacrificed for me -- when I was a child that had to raise myself, as I was often more responsible than my parents. So the present, or even the past back to my 20's was fine -- but beyond there was dragons.
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Planning for the memorial, writing the eulogy, building a photo montage of her life -- all forces me to look deep and hard at our life and relationship. And that's tough. I'm not bitter, and don't wallow in bitterness or the past. But seeing photos and realizing, how few with you there are, how much happier she is with her other son, and putting in each vacation/outing photo, and remembering how you were hurt or disappointed you were at that event. And knowing that you can't talk about any of it. That's the hard part.
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Photos have a memory, and that memory is attached to feelings. And not all of them are good.
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* Oh look, there was the time you forgot my birthday and went out to a party that night instead.
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* There's the pictures of her in the UK with family (but they left me behind).
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* There's the family desert motorcycle rides that I was never a part of.
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* There's my college graduation, an accomplishment that made them most proud of me. But there's a ton of baggage that it was because I'd finally capitulated to the rules/system.
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* There's a baby picture, that came with an alternate version of my father -- a lie I was told for decades, and she still wouldn't the truth to her death
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Stuff like that.
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So I don't like the past, because I don't have control over it -- and it wasn't nice to me. I prefer the present, or the future -- I can fix things, be better, adapt, avoid conflict, and so on. All a much better place to be, than having to recognize the abuse (verbal or physical), that I was born of a mistake -- and too often treated like that, or that my parents treated my brother and I so very differently, in front of everyone. To the point where people would ask me why my Parents didn't love me.
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This isn't to wallow in self-pity. My grandparents and uncle did try to compensate growing up, and I had plenty of surrogates. Friends parents, and others saw the dynamic, and would take pity and try to fill the hole. And because they treated me poorly, I reflected it with the delicacy of a teenager, which fed the cycle. In some ways having nurturing was hard, because it reminded me of what I missed at home. In a lot of ways, it made me very strong and independent: I had to learn to survive on my own, because I could never count on them. For self-validation, attention, or economically. Thus it's not all bad... there are just many parts of it, that I don't like to visit.  
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Revision as of 15:49, 6 July 2020

So my Mom passed last week. Everyone dies, and she got out pretty easy, just quick heart pains, and a few minutes later she was gone. While we weren't very close, in some ways it's been a lot harder on me than I expected. In my mind in prepping for this inevitability, I'd focused on the grief of her not being there, the loss, her never being able to grow and admit our past, and so on. All that was easy to understand, and prep for, and cope with. What is hard is having to re-live the past, bite my tongue, and ignore the fictions.


There's a lot of complex past.

My Mom (and her Mom and her brother) had these Italian alternate realities of events -- they'd just imagine what happened, tell the story of how they wanted it to have happened, and then believe it. It's tough when you were there, their actions hurt you, and don't do lies (fictions) well. You have this friction of living in two different realities, with no chance to bridge them.

For years, I'd tried to get her to admit or see my reality -- but to do that would require that she admitted she'd done anything wrong. Or worse, that her actions had been callous or cruel. So she couldn't do it. We were arguing once about one of her fictional versions of events (I in my early 20's), and she said, "I've made it 40 years being this way and I haven't changed yet -- why do you think I'm going to change in the future, or want to change?" It was sort of the epiphany -- I could never have a relationship with her, and get her out of her reality or to accept mine. Nor would I lie to myself to accept hers. So I could just either cut her off, or just built firewalls around the past that we couldn't broach in conversation or we'd both get mad. (Me at her lies, and her at my truths). Or some degree of both.

We reached detente. We would both avoid the past as much as possible. She was still a self-centered person in the present. But she could also be funny, smart, and entertaining -- and I can deal with other self-centered people, as long as they aren't my Mom, selling the fiction of having sacrificed for me -- when I was a child that had to raise myself, as I was often more responsible than my parents. So the present, or even the past back to my 20's was fine -- but beyond there was dragons.

Planning for the memorial, writing the eulogy, building a photo montage of her life -- all forces me to look deep and hard at our life and relationship. And that's tough. I'm not bitter, and don't wallow in bitterness or the past. But seeing photos and realizing, how few with you there are, how much happier she is with her other son, and putting in each vacation/outing photo, and remembering how you were hurt or disappointed you were at that event. And knowing that you can't talk about any of it. That's the hard part.

Photos have a memory, and that memory is attached to feelings. And not all of them are good.

  • Oh look, there was the time you forgot my birthday and went out to a party that night instead.
  • There's the pictures of her in the UK with family (but they left me behind).
  • There's the family desert motorcycle rides that I was never a part of.
  • There's my college graduation, an accomplishment that made them most proud of me. But there's a ton of baggage that it was because I'd finally capitulated to the rules/system.
  • There's a baby picture, that came with an alternate version of my father -- a lie I was told for decades, and she still wouldn't the truth to her death

Stuff like that.

So I don't like the past, because I don't have control over it -- and it wasn't nice to me. I prefer the present, or the future -- I can fix things, be better, adapt, avoid conflict, and so on. All a much better place to be, than having to recognize the abuse (verbal or physical), that I was born of a mistake -- and too often treated like that, or that my parents treated my brother and I so very differently, in front of everyone. To the point where people would ask me why my Parents didn't love me.

This isn't to wallow in self-pity. My grandparents and uncle did try to compensate growing up, and I had plenty of surrogates. Friends parents, and others saw the dynamic, and would take pity and try to fill the hole. And because they treated me poorly, I reflected it with the delicacy of a teenager, which fed the cycle. In some ways having nurturing was hard, because it reminded me of what I missed at home. In a lot of ways, it made me very strong and independent: I had to learn to survive on my own, because I could never count on them. For self-validation, attention, or economically. Thus it's not all bad... there are just many parts of it, that I don't like to visit.










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