“Family isn’t always blood, it’s the people in your life who want you in theirs: the ones who accept you for who you are, the ones who would do anything to see you smile and who love you no matter what.” -Maya Angelou
I have experienced the worst that a complicated relationship with a family member that could ever happen. My daughter died of a massive heart attack, at 52 years of age. She can never come back and make it right. I never got the chance to have her in my life, as happened through the years, again again and again. Every time I grieved as she turned away from me, from us. I was waiting and waiting. I need not wait any more. My oldest son and my third son both said she is making things right where she is. Now, I wait for a dram of her, where she comes in that way and lets me know she has made it right. Perhaps that would give me some comfort, albeit a dream. If I could ever tell any of you one heartfelt grain of a suggestion…make it right before you cannot.
Every family can experience having someone in the family carry resentment, can have someone in the family carry toxic patterns, can go through frustration, exhausting, relationships with a family member.
We, mothers can blame ourselves, can have a virtual knot in their guts at having to confront one of their children who causes family chaos and turmoil, drama and destruction of the family unit. It is so danged difficult to carry out “tough love” with who was once her darling baby/child. Mental illness can cause unbelievable anguish in a mother’s heart. We never completely shut the door to them. Sometimes we have to turn away and set some really strict boundaries. Our children can hurt us worse than any other individual in our life. They know our weaknesses, our sorrows, our most intimate of life. They can use what they know to manipulate us. The great wound is having them leave this earth before us and not being able to resolve the complicated issues.
Never, in my wildest dreams, did I consider there would never be a “next time” when she came, begging forgiveness and we could talk things out until she knew she was in a safe harbor of her mother’s love that knows no endings. Again, I always thought there would be another reconciliation. Each of her siblings has had issues with her. There was always an uncomfortable awkward reconciliation with them as well. No one knew who she would choose to hate next. Nor for how long she would do so before she focused on someone else in the family to resent in some way. As a mother, I have had to hold in my own grief in order to help them get through theirs.
Of course, I could have done things differently. I could have been commanding and do some intervention of some kind when she was turned against one of her siblings. I coulda, woulda, shoulda. Had |I known what the bizarre change in her was when she was in puberty…if I had the kind of education I got later… I might have had some knowledge as to how to deal with her mental illness. Lots of regrets; some valid, some not. Each reconciliation with her brought about some recompense, some heartfelt discussions, and some closure on so much. There is so much that even family members did not know about. A mother does not tell all.
Again, if you relate to this in any way, seek ways to reconcile. We cannot know when we can never do it again. Save yourself a worse world of hurt, even though you think having a family member act hateful towards you is the worst.. it is not. This place I find myself in is that hardest place. A mother forgives in a New York minute. It is not the ‘apology” I long for. It is feeling her love held away from me. I am hoping the dream comes soon.
©Carol Desjarlais 11.14.23
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