My mother died last Sunday the 28th of June. I don’t know how to feel. I don’t know what to feel. I am sad. I am sorry I did not ever get to a point where I could talk to her without either blaming or falling back into the dependent child that just wants to be taken care of. I chose to walk away from my mother and brother five years ago today. I did not do it to punish anyone. I knew it would hurt us all, but the hurt we were in was also never ending. I am not going to spill any deep dark secrets here. It is not my place to put into the universe what happened in our family. No one but my mother and I know the life we led together. I lived with my mother and my brother in the same home environment and yet I don’t know the life he led with my mother either. It is all about perspective. What looked like one thing from where I sat looked like something else from where my brother sat. I am paying for my decision to separate myself from my mother by being excluded from her memorial. I have been paying for the decision in the loss of relationships of friends and family for five years. I have paid in the pain I see in my nephew because he values love and cannot understand how I could love my mother on one level and absolutely need no contact with her on another. I didn’t have a huge family to begin with. I have been alone in some very real ways since leaving the cocoon, and also very supported and not alone in some other important ways. I sit here now and I don’t know how to feel. I grieve the mother I had in front of other people. I grieve the mother that put me through school, and gave me a place to land every time I failed at life in the outside world. I do not grieve the mother I had in private. For the last five years I have lived in fear of the rage my brother can show. I have not known if he would still rage at me. I have not known if he still cares where I can be found. I am sure the fear is much bigger in my mind than in his. He will never forgive my departure. He will never forgive the pain I caused our mother. I am more afraid today than I was before. Do I have any right to grieve, to hurt for the mom that was? I had 49 years of live with her. Life wasn’t all bad. The bad was not all her fault. I was not blameless. I used her guilt to manipulate. Someone accused me of making it all about me. I really don’t understand how claiming my grief and trying to understand it is making it all about me. It isn’t like I took something away from the others who grieve. Their grief is still their own. I am told she never stopped hurting. It was implied she still hurts now. I don’t know what that person believes, but I know I believe we leave our pain in this world. Pain and heartache do not follow us to the beyond. I cried for two days and today I feel numb. My nephew hasn’t spoken to me since Sunday night. I know his father, his wife, and his children surround him. I know he is supported. My oldest niece has her partner and their kids and his family. My youngest niece has her girlfriend. She has her mother. I have my program family and my Disney family. I have my friends. My nephew has been a very important part of my heart always and of my life for the last couple of years. I feel the absence of his voice on my phone or answers to my texts. I do not have the family I thought I would have at this stage of life. I thought my partner and I were going to be together forever. I thought I would have my daughter and my partner to surround me when my mother died. I never thought I would be this alone. I’m still sitting here wondering if I have any right to hurt when I walked away. I hurt her, so wasn’t that me giving up my right to care and to hurt? I keep thinking I am doing it wrong because I am not crying all over the place. I have cried and I will cry more. I have shed many tears over the last five years over the decision I made. Today I have had no tears. Today I have gone through the motions of getting showered and dressed and showing up where I am supposed to be. Today I sat down and tried to write. I feel blank numbness inside me the way I feel when the depression hits. Now is not the time for me to slide into the darkness. What am I supposed to be feeling? Is this where my crazy really manifests it’s self? Am I lacking normal human emotion? Is there a set of emotions I am supposed to express at the loss of my mother? Does that set change if we were estranged? I don’t know.

I have lived a lifetime in the few short years I have been away from my blog. If you read me, or still read me, I will be back with more posts soon. I need to be writing. I have missed this. See you soon friends. Maureen, Moe, and Mau.