My mother is dying

[zenolalia]

My mother is dying, so the rest of this post is going underneath a cut so people can avoid hearing about a potentially fucked up topic.

My mother was my primary abuser, for most of my life. She starved me, beat me, locked me in closets for days on end, forced me to eat rotten food and punished me for getting sick afterwards, and far more that I can't even be bothered to write out. Eventually, I managed to escape her by way of marriage, and of course, that marriage too was abusive. In the process of freeing myself from it, I came to realize that she was still going to every possible length to destroy my life and bring me back under her control.

Eventually, I reached a breaking point. She made a stupid, transphobic joke on facebook, and I told her that was it for me. Unless she was willing to apologize, I would not speak to her again.

That was years ago.

She still insists that she doesn't owe me any kind of apology, and though my girlfriend and my brother have both explained to her that it's not the joke itself that's the issue, but this years long refusal to say, "I'm sorry," (she doesn't even have to mean it, just say it), that is the problem. Again and again, she expects me to apologize for her actions, and I reached my limits and refused to continue. Until she can gum up the respect necessary to say two words, no matter how false or scathing her delivery may be... it's such a small request. Such a tiny thing.

To refuse such a small thing.

Anyway, she got legionnaires pneumonia, most likely from the well water in her home, with its 80 year old plumbing and never-tested never-inspected water quality. She's only 58, but she's also asthmatic, so it was a rapid and vicious progression. She was put on extremely powerful antibiotics to control the infection. The antibiotics appear to have successfully done that.

She had a severe allergic reaction to them, however, and as a result has an unknown amount of damage to her liver.

I say unknown, because as soon as she was able to speak again after waking up, she demanded to be released from the hospital and is refusing all further treatment. No one will tell me what her actual medical status is. But they all keep saying, "no one lives forever," and, "this is your last chance," and I just.

I dunno.

There's nothing that I want from her. There's nothing that I want to tell her. And I know that speaking to her again will be hellish.

But I also know that being the ungrateful child who refused to speak to a dying mother isn't a role I want to deal with the consequences of for the rest of my life.

I just don't know what I'm supposed to even feel, honestly. It doesn't feel like a real problem. Like a real event. I've had text based RPs that felt more real than all this.

I'm so tired.
 

Comments

[stardust_rifle]

If you're tired, it's okay to go to sleep.

[feotakahari]

“I also know that being the ungrateful child who refused to speak to a dying mother isn't a role I want to deal with the consequences of for the rest of my life.”

Let’s say you do agree to speak with her. Does that put you in a better role? What actual benefit will you get from interacting with this person again?

[zenolalia]

I'mn trying not to think about the scathing hatred the rest of my family would spew on me if I refused: in the end, I ran off to another state and I've successfully separated my life from theirs entirely. They can't do anything to me.

But I can certainly do things to myself. And while I am working on the unhealthy thought patterns, the self-blame and the guilt, the panic attacks that guilt induces, etc etc... The fact is, I'm not mentally healthy enough to actually internalize that the "spiteful child" trope does not apply. And I know enough about myself and my tendencies towards self-harm and self-punishment that I do think, genuinely, that refusing to contact her will have psychological consequences that I'm not ready to deal with.

The question, though, is would the consequences of contacting her be lesser or more manageable than the consequences of ignoring her.

And that's the one I don't have an answer for, unfortunately.

I'm going to head to bed and see if maybe things don't make a little more sense when I'm not sleep-deprived, but thank you for this comment. You have such insight into things, and considering this question has definitely helped me process this entire... mess.

[palominocorn]

I am so, so sorry that your mom abused you and that now you're in this position.

Honestly, I think you'd be 100% justified, when she dies and people start bothering you about it, in lying through your teeth and saying that the two of you had a tearful reconciliation straight out of a Hallmark movie, or that you tried to contact her to talk things through but it was too late, or something like that. People who would punish you for keeping yourself safe from abuse do not deserve the truth.

[wolffyluna]

That sucks super hard. I dont have any advice, but I hope things work out for the best for you.

[starshipfox]

This is such a brutal emotional blow. I don't know how anyone would process this -- there is no right or wrong thing to do here. Try to be kind to yourself and don't judge yourself for what you do or don't feel.

[anarfea]

I'm so sorry. It sounds like your mother was a terrible person and doesn't deserve a goodbye, but I understand where you're coming from re not wanting to be placed into the role of ungrateful child. Know you're not that, though, whatever you decide.

[damnfooltalk]

You really don't owe her anything, including a conversation on her self-imposed deathbed. She owes you a long list of reparations, and her fatally neglecting her own care does not even that score.

This may not work the same way for you as it did for me, but when I was first cutting off contact with my mom it helped me to ask myself "ungrateful for *what*", and compare the basic parental obligations my mom should have fulfilled to the frivolous "mom feels guilty for her last outburst" showy gifts she'd give to absolve herself. It helped the examples that I knew my relatives would pull out as proof that she was a Good Mom Trying Her Best and that she deserved infinite chances to hurt me & my siblings again to ring hollow so they couldn't get in my head over it.

Sometimes I feel like it was too easy to convince myself I am in the right and that's actually proof that I'm a Bad Child (TM), but most days having a distinct list of parental failures to wave at the brain gremlins helps.

Still, it doesn't sound like you have anything to say to her, or like there is a real hope of her giving you even the smallest apology for anything she's ever done- my impulse would be to stay away, or if you can't rest easy with that decision, to go, flip the script by telling her that this is her last chance to make things right with you (because her dying first does not make her not in the wrong), and if she refused to apologize for anything she's done even when confronting her own mortality, leave.

You'll have done everything that could be asked of a diligent child by giving her her last chance to make things right, and it won't be your fault if she fails.

I can't calculate for what kind of damage confronting her directly like that could do, but it's one possibility for trying to appease the ungrateful child accusations without pretending that your mom was anything other than what she was.

Whatever else you do, try to take care of yourself. I'd say I hope you're ok, but that makes no sense. So. I hope things get better as quickly as they can.

*Edited to fix typo