Yesterday marked two weeks and I've yet to really shed a tear. I can't! I've tried...they just won't come. It makes me feel like a terrible person, guilty even. I just can't grieve for her. The logical part of me says she lost that right to my grief when she chose to cut us out of her life. What gets me is that no one knows why. The truth of it is too, even if I had had the opportunity to ask I doubt I would have gotten the truth.
I'll tell you thought what I really am. I AM PISSED! I am so fucking angry at her. Her and fucking gambling addiction. Anything of value, she sold it. Gone! Lost forever!
She had her mother's (who would have been 108 yesterday) mink stole. It's gone! She sold it. She had a charm from her mother's charm bracelet. It's gone too! She sold it! Thank the gods my aunt had the good sense to send me the other two when their older sister decided to divvy up the charms back to who gifted them. Otherwise, she'd have sold those too.
Back in my teens, I/we spent a lot of time at Shea Stadium. In 1986, I got to go to a lot of the Mets home games. I was there the night they clinched the pennant race. OMG it was amazing and crazy. Earlier in the season I got one of their foul balls and then started having the players sign it. If memory serves me right, I had the entire team on that ball. If you know baseball, you know then that was the year the Mets won the World Series. For some reason after I got married and moved out, I left the ball behind and in her possession. I don't know if I forgot or just never got to go back and get it. Well, she must have sold it too because it's now where to be found.
She chose gambling over family, over friends. In the end, she had burned so many bridges and hurt so many people that no one except her youngest sister spoke to her.
I did my grieving years ago when she decided I wasn't worth having in her life anymore. I was of no value to her. Sometimes I often wonder if she tried to get rid of me the way family members say she "lost" what would have been my younger sibling. Or if she would have given me away like she did my older half sister. Too many people would have stepped in I think to stop her from doing that though, or at least my father's mother would have.
She never let me forget growing up how I was an accident, that I wasn't supposed to be here. That she and my dad weren't even sleeping in the same bed. Which sometimes made me wonder if he was my biological father. She would never let me forget how I "owed" her for raising me, feeding me, clothing me. When I started working and making a decent income but still lived at home, even though I was about 17 she told me one day...You owe me now for all those years I put clothes on your back and food in you stomach. I took care of you now you HAVE TO take care me. Simply put that meant support her gambling habit.
I don't know if I will ever shed a tear over her death. In someways, it feels more like I lost my mother years ago instead of two weeks ago. Or perhaps one day I will grieve for the mother I didn't have. But if I think about that, I've probably done that too years ago.
But this anger that I feel...I have to find away to let it go. It's building and it's starting to affect me. It's messing with my stomach and I don't like that. I just don't know how to let it go.
Gambling is an addiction just as alcohol and drugs. No excuse, but your mom was caught in the throes of something much more powerful than her. I am sorry you were hurt so, but remember, to an addiction, the drug is more powerful than anything else. Take time to work through your feelings. It may take years for you to resolve them. My dad was an alcoholic and my mom had a boyfriend and spent all her time with him. I was pretty much alone and I grew up so angry with them. It took me many years to forgive.
ReplyDeleteMary
Your anger and guilt are both totally natural feelings, and I hope no one tells you different. Death and family estrangement bring up a LOT of emotions, and there's no rules about how you should feel.
ReplyDelete*Hugs*