MY MOTHER WAS DEAD

John and I were coping, but struggling and struggling to make things better without having any idea what was going on for us individually or as a family. Worse than that, we had no idea what might make things healthier.  It was a treadmill of anxiety, frustration and terrible unawareness and naiveté. 

At a friend’s house I got a call from John asking me to call him. My mother was dead.

I had been to see her the previous Sunday. John and Marnie went down with me to my parent’s three-.bedroom apartment just outside Washington, DC. Their house had been too much for my mother and they sold it, dislodging the remainder of my siblings, David, Kathy, Mike, Janey and John. Tom had left home to marry and have two little boys in quick succession. My two youngest siblings, Mary and Bridget would continue to live with my parents.

When we got down to their place, my mother was resting on the sofa in their little sitting room looking very tired and bedraggled. I took her by wheelchair into the kitchen where we could be alone and told her how much I loved her.

She said I thought you hated me. I said no, I loved you too much.  I don’t know how all of this works but I had been suffering for weeks as my mother was nearing death with absolutely no awareness of her suffering or my own.

I now believe that her death was simply too big of a loss for me to bear so somehow I kept her terrible illness and suffering away from my consciousness, as I endured horrible anxiety that I projected onto my job, my marriage my schoolwork etc.