Who is this lady I call mom?
Sat, Apr 3, 2010Have you ever looked at your mother and thought, who is this person? Well, that’s kind of how I am feeling and have been for a while now. It seems as time goes on the feeling has gotten worse, and I am not sure if it is because I see it more or if she really has changed. My mother, when we were growing up, always seemed the life of the party and a great person overall. She seemed to care about everyone and had a heart the size of the state. Family and friends seemed to be really important to her and helping others was always on her mind. She seemed to love my brother and myself no matter what and didn’t seem to judge anyone. She was kind, loving, and a great person to go to if you needed a little encouragement. Even as I became an adult it seemed like she was always optimistic and really proud of her kids no matter what. Of course we all make mistakes and she would not let that go unannounced, but she showed us love regardless of the mistakes.
Now it seems like the women I knew or thought I knew is gone, and in her place someone who says and does things that I cannot even comment on. I just sometimes look at her like “who are you”? Some of the comments that she makes I am dumbfounded. I am questioning every piece of myself and what I thought she was all of my life. I am confused about the person that I thought I knew. My mother has been diagnosed with a disease that will claim her young life much sooner than later, and in any case I would love to chalk this change up to her medications, but it has been going on far longer than her disease has been overcoming her.
I am a single mother, and was a young mother the first time of a now teen aged daughter. I remember telling my mom about 5 years ago how bad I wanted to have more children and my heart broke in two when she looked up to the sky and actually said out loud “oh GOD don’t let her have more children”. I thought, wow, how my mother could even wish such a thing on me. I have been a good mother, taking care of myself and my daughter with very little help from her or my dad, as I have gone to them for help, it is very few and far between in times. So imagine my anguish when I actually had MY prayers answered and was given a beautiful baby boy recently. My heart broke in two again when I told my mother that I was pregnant and the only thing she had to say is “well I am happy for you I guess if that’s what you wanted”. I think about these times that people are suppose to be happy, and I am saddened that each time something so wonderful happened to me my mother acted as if it was a tragedy. At one time she actually explained to me that she didn’t want to “share” time with my daughter. I am beside myself at the selfishness of this. She has other grandchildren that she has been less than a grandmother to, and over time has gotten even more distant from, explaining to my niece and nephews that as they get older she will not give them birthday presents or Christmas presents because they are too old, and this seems to be the same for her great-grandchild also. It is like I am living in someone else’s body and watching from afar.
Besides those incidents, it brings me to a recent visit with her. I try to visit her at least once a week, going to her house for the day, as she doesn’t feel well enough to get out of the house and come to my house because of her illness. Well, that’s what she says anyway, even though she never visited much before that either, and she feels well enough to go to her sister and dads house whenever they invite her….hmmmmm….
At this recent visit, I was complaining about a young mother in our family who seems to have “nested” at my house when she has nowhere else to go. Now, I am frustrated cause this family member should be working and trying to be a productive part of society and she is not. She has a two year old and hasn’t worked much since her baby was born. I do not condone the fact that she is not working, and I am trying hard to get her on the right path, by getting her to see how much better her life would be if she would work and get her own place. She is not a bad mother, but she is young and for some reason young mothers now days seem to put their kids after themselves instead of before them. She is worried about guys that like her and hanging out with her friends. Of course she does this when her daughter is mostly with her dad; she sill does not do what is best for herself and her daughter. I do not want her to “hang out” at my house all the time, as she does not clean up after herself or her daughter and it frustrates me to see her on the phone all day instead of looking for a job and spending quality time with her daughter. I can’t just throw her out with no place to live, her mother’s husband doesn’t want her there, her dad is lacking a place to live and a job also and he kicks her out every few weeks or so. In my eyes, she has learned what she has seen, and I am trying hard to get her to be better than that and to take pride in what she does with herself and her daughter. I want her to see that it can be done and possibly help her see what should be important to her. Needless to say it is frustrating, when I see she isn’t doing it. As a person, I cannot put her out and tell her she can’t stay here, if for anything than to give her daughter a little bit of stability somewhere. As I am frustrated because I have a new baby and a teen ager in a two bedroom apartment, I am tired from getting up with the baby and just doing things that have to be done on a daily basis. Besides this family member needing rides back and forth from everywhere and not helping out around my house, it all adds up to a big bit of upset. I cannot put her out with no place to go when she does need to stay here, but I am tired. I don’t have her here all the time, but sometimes dread when she will come over. Her mother feeds into it as she tells her she can go there when her husband is gone, but has to be gone when he gets home, and there is always a condition to her visit. Her mom needs help with her other kids or wants the house cleaned, sometimes offering money to my cousin for her help. Although my cousin is unreliable and does not do what she says she will all the time, I think it was a learned behavior, but still wrong. I see it much different than her mom, as it’s good that she tries to help her make money, it’s like her mom is just wanting her there when she wants her there. This is also inhibiting her, instead of helping her find a job. She doesn’t encourage her to get a job, she bitches about everything she doesn’t do.
Anyway, as I feel frustrated about having my time, space, and peace and quiet interrupted by her, but still feel the need to maybe be that person she will listen to, as I have raised my kids by myself and have done it successfully, going back to school and working. I am venting to my mother, knowing that some of this is my own fault for continuing to allow her to “nest” here, and my mother’s reaction is, “Maybe the state should take her kid and give her to someone that will take care of her”. I am baffled! Instead of trying to reach this girl and help her learn something her parents haven’t shown her you think that her kid should get taken away and put into a foster system that has too many kids in it already?????? What the hell?????? Whatever happened to it takes a village to raise a child? Now let’s just put them in the system. Let’s all not take responsibility for our actions and make the kids suffer more by not having their parents??? I know that she should do better, I am not minimizing that at all but isn’t that what our family is there for, to help us when we have gone off the beaten path?? This family member is misguided for sure, but she is not a horrible mother. She needs guidance. My dad accuses me of taking in all the strays. Maybe that’s true, sometimes from boyfriends to friends to anyone who is leaving their husband. It seems they all come stay with me. I don’t love it, but at the same time we are suppose to be here to help one another right? So here’s the bottom line, my mom at one time was a helper, now she is someone I feel like I don’t even know, she shows very “conditional” love to everyone, or at least that’s how I feel. I am finding myself thinking more and more often, what would I say at my mother’s funeral??? I am not happy about the person she has become over the last 10 years, she seems self righteous and judgmental. She forgets when we were young and she had nothing, when she left us with babysitters all the time to go to work, school, and out with her friends. She forgets that we had NOTHING when we were kids, and how the church had to bring US food because we didn’t have the money to buy any. Yet as my brother and I have, I think, done better financially with our kids, although maybe not always great, we are criticized for the places we live, the kind of things that we do or can buy. We are looked at as though we are failures that do not try to better ourselves. And overall they pride themselves on how much they have saved us in our lives financially and done for us. Well, nothing was given to us, all loans had to be repaid, and they do not support us. We ask for nothing, but we accept help when it is offered which is rare.
So maybe after seeing my mother steadily getting sicker and sicker it is hard for me to feel close to her because of how much she has hurt me through words and actions given to my niece, nephews and brother, and myself and my new son. My daughter seems to be the only one to be safe, which is wrong. As I sit and think about it, I am sad because I would love to be close to my mom in the last years of her life, but my feelings right now are of more obligation then true affection. I am sad, I feel like all the things that I knew her for are not really who she is. She has become, with the help of money, in my eyes, someone I am not proud of anymore. I will miss her when she’s gone, and I will be so sad, but another secret side of me doesn’t want my son to grow up around a grandmother that doesn’t love him as much as his sister. This to me is so heartbreaking to have seen these changes in my mother. I never thought it would be like this and my heart hurts over it.