My ex-husband's mother died last week after a long battle with lung cancer.
I found out about her death when my daughter posted a bit about it on her Facebook page.
It is an odd place to be for me, because I surely do not mourn the passing of this woman. She was mean and domineering and did horrific damage to the psychological health of the eight children that she bore. They were neglected and abused, and their mother was most often too drunk to notice or care. The oldest struggled throughout their childhoods to care for those who were younger, and there isn't a one of them who isn't just flat "weird" in one way or another.
However, she is "grandma" to my two children, and I do want to respect whatever they might be feeling about her passing, and I worry how their father might react -- and how that will impact them.
I called them both last night, when I heard the news, and they seem mostly... confused. They were not close to her. We made sure that they knew their grandparents when they were young children, but their paternal grandfather died when they were still pre-teens. Then, as they grew into adolescence the difficulties that they encountered growing up seemed to create distance that their grandmother simply would not reach across. As she moved away from them, she seemed to carry with her the entirety of the extended family on that side, so aunts, uncles, and cousins "vanished" from their lives too. I think my "kids" want to acknowledge the relationship, and they seem to feel that there is some appropriate grief that they should feel in this instance, but mostly, they just seem "empty." It is sad.
I do not want to be "disrespectful" here, but I cannot join in the chorus of well wishes and hopes for her "eternal rest." I have no idea where she might be headed -- not at all sure that she is "headed" anywhere. I feel bad about feeling this way, but the fact is that if there is some "everlasting reward," I'd argue that Joan doesn't have any REWARD coming to her. Not, mind you that anyone really cares about how I feel in this case. I'm sorry she suffered at the end of her life. I'm sorry that her children and her grandchildren must now mourn this loss. I hope that their pain can heal quickly and leave only the faintest of scars. I want this to pass through their lives as gently as it can.
For myself, I think the world is well done with the woman.
swan
ya know what swan?? sometimes the world is "well done with the woman"...
ReplyDeletei remember a time.. a few months after my dad had died.. and i was in therapy trying to deal....... and i was damn angry..... foot stamping angry at the man i called "dad"...
my therapist suggested i go visit his grave.. or write a letter or something.. and tell him how i felt..
personally i thought the therapist was nuts.. but when i could find no other release from the pain.. i did go to the grave.. i started talking quietly to him... and then - well - it built .. and i was crying and yelling at him.... sounds weird eh??
BUT ... i came away from his grave feeling much better.. and on the road to healing...
not every person that graces this earth does so with grace and love.. that is just a fact of life.. and sometimes yeah.. the world is well done with someone when they die.. no matter how cold that sounds.
morningstar (owned by Warren)
Your ex-MIL sounds a lot like MY ex-MIL.
ReplyDeleteI'd known my ex-MIL since I was 14 years old and she was a mean bitch who got drunk nightly (I mean falling down drunk and a MEAN drunk, too) and knowingly allowed her children to be sexually abused by her second husband. Allowed her daughter's children to be abused by him too, as I only found out last year from my niece and nephew (thank god he left my kids alone, I can only hope it's because he knew on some level I would have killed him for it deader than dead).
Like you, when she died a year or so after I'd left, I found it hard to feel appropriately sad. She had said/done many hateful things in her life and damaged her children irreversibly.
I'm sorry she suffered, I'm sorry she was so miserable, I do not doubt that she probably had a horrendous childhood herself and had her own emotional baggage as a result, still; I don't accept that as an excuse. I know too many people who have risen above their own past and not repeated the abuse they had heaped upon them to believe people "cannot help it".
They can and do. She chose not to, well, I chose not to attend her funeral or care all that much when she died.
So I feel ya on this one, Swan. :)
I've never understood the "don't talk ill of the dead" thing or somehow building a myth out of someone who in life had little to no redeeming traits.
ReplyDeleteLike you, while I think it healthy and positive to not revel in any pain she might have suffered, BUT I also don't see the point in being a hyprocrite and pretending grief for someone for whom you have no respect or liking.
and I would say that to the kids.
Blood doesn't a relationship make - and is vastly overrated I think.
I could have written this same thing about my maternal grandmother. It's hard to know how to grieve for someone I just wasn't that close to and who wasn't very pleasant to me the last few times I saw her.
ReplyDeleteShe died when I was still a teen and I just felt mostly confused about what I *should* be feeling. I have a few good memories of her from early in my life that I try to think about instead of the negative parts.
Don't know what to say except that I hope your kids are okay, better soon. Perhaps now the pain can come to an end.
ReplyDelete