Periodically, some people like to ask me if I’ve “forgiven my mom yet”, as though somehow I will… for lack of a better way to put it, be more amenable to doing so, want to come around to the idea of it as more time passes since her death. These tend to be some of the shorter conversations that I have about the matter, as they start and end with the word “no”, and the philosophy that has lent me the most inner peace is that I have not wanted to bring her up when I am not describing to a new audience… what happened (since actually writing about what took place, and the fact that I will never again have positive feelings toward her, as I do not and will never again have any sort of feelings even remotely resembling those you might expect one to have toward a biological parent that did raise them and was a part of their life until, well, said death).

As sad as it is for me to have to say this, I look forward to the coming months and years because the time period between her death (and “when I saw her last”) will progressively grow longer, spanning decades, until I too eventually pass. I will simply forget. Everything. And I am at peace with that. I will forget what it is like for her to have been a staple in this house, what she looked like — especially with hair, as they had to shave all of that to remove the brain tumor that would otherwise have killed her, and then it never really could grow back once she began cancer treatment — as well as what she sounded like, they will become distant memories, and then they will become no memories at all because she will eventually become someone that I just do not think about. I intend for the active “do not think about her at all” phase to begin at the one-year anniversary of her death, which will be this May. And coinciding with this, even though I have my own personal feelings on the… matters, I also feel that it is not (or should not) be “my” decision to forgive her. It should not rest solely, or even exclusively, at my feet. Bub, for lack of a better way to put it, is doing just fine and doesn’t seem to be indicating in any meaningful way that he thinks about her. (But I’ve also had it brought up by friends that even if he did one day convey to me that he had forgiven her, that I have the right to choose not to make that same decision myself if I do not want to, and I mean… my friends are right.)

For the people who have insisted that I “get over it”, this is precisely how I intend on doing so.

For months, I felt bad that the predominant feeling that I felt upon realization that my mother had passed was… relief. I didn’t have to worry about keeping Bub away from her any more, or what she would say next. All of that was gone. After awhile, I didn’t have to pretend to be sad that she was gone, because the people that were concerned about “why I wasn’t sad (enough) that she had passed” eventually stopped asking why I… wasn’t sad “enough” that she had passed. Some people say that when someone close to you dies, it leaves a hole in your heart that “can’t be filled”, but in a really peculiar twist, it was like her behavior toward my child caused there to be a hole in my heart that her passing completely ameliorated, because I literally did not have to worry what was waiting for me around the corner next, what she was going to say about my child to me next as I was performing whatever act of caregiving that she needed, all of that was just gone. And for months, I felt bad about it. I felt like something was wrong with me because I was relieved that I didn’t have to worry about any of this any more. It was finally when friends of mine began to repeatedly tell me that my emotions regarding this complex situation were completely normal and that I was not a “bad person”, that there “wasn’t something mentally wrong with me” that it finally… eventually began to sink in.

And then, months later, I began to feel bad again. Googling various… coping mechanisms regarding the death of someone that you were supposed to be close to, all of the websites out there talked about how you were supposed to forgive someone before — or even after — their death, even if they had done something really bad. I didn’t find any that talked about not being able to forgive that person. Finally being able to admit to myself that I would just never be able to have any positive feelings about her again, and having friends of mine tell me that was okay, brought me immeasurable peace. It was like finally being able to say that in spaces with my friends, and being validated by them as that being an acceptable response given the circumstances, finally allowed me to begin to do some healing that I had put off for… wait for it, months, heh.

At the behest of certain people, I did go to her viewing before she was cremated.

But it wasn’t for me.

I was “given time to mourn”, at which point I literally realized that there was a complete disconnect between me and this person laying before me, and that all that connected us were genetics. I used Pokémon GO to make sure that I spent “enough time in there” (yes, given the circumstances, I actually did that), and my last words to her for what she did to my child were actually “fuck you, bitch” before I left the room. Bub’s reaction to her, upon sight of her, was actually to scream at her and try to hit her, which got written off as “oh, he’s severely autistic,” but I knew better. He’s had meltdowns before, and many have been severe, but I mean… he’s never screamed at my face at the top of his lungs and come at my face with his hands, so… whatever.

Ironically, it seemed almost cathartic for him to do that. He did better once he got that out of his system, although he was escorted from the room after that point. I didn’t want him to become significantly stressed.

But she literally chose to die not apologizing to my child at all for how she chose to treat him. Just him.

It was a complete accident that I happened to be the last person that saw my mother awake and alive, and that I was the last person that she saw. (Although I said in a previous post that I wouldn’t have changed how I handled anything, if I could have managed to avoid being the last person that she saw, or being the last person to see her alive, I might have changed this, because I didn’t intend it, and it forced me to make one more decision with regard to her. As mentioned in previous posts, I didn’t want to have to be in this situation in the first place. None of it. But I was… so I had to make decisions based on the circumstances.)

The morning of my mother’s death — although, at this point, I’m referring to her as my mother rather than getting belligerent or trying to be dramatic and calling her “the one who gave birth to me” or something, because that would be belligerent and dramatic, and that has never been what I’ve been going for with this at all — I happened to see her awake as I was chasing her dog down, making sure that she had been let back in the house and that she wasn’t up to anything that she wasn’t supposed to be up to. After being released from the hospital one city over, she had been put on Hospice, and they had loaned us a bed… and the only place that we could put it was in the living room, so this involved me coming into the living room to find her dog, make sure that she was in the house, and get her settled down (again) for the evening. Or, shall I say, very early morning at this time. We had been told by the Hospice nurse that had come out to our house that my mother was beginning to enter the active stage of dying and that she did not have much longer left to live. Bub was actively avoiding going anywhere near her hospital bed, although it was peculiar to notice that before she had been transported back to the house by ambulance and loaded into the bed, he was just fine playing in the bed and was certainly curious about it… when she herself was not in it. But I digress…

At any rate, she saw me, and I saw her actually look over to me.

She said nothing.

I said nothing.

And then I saw Bub’s bewildered, hurt face in my mind as she screamed at him that he was a broken, retarded piece of shit. Her actually sitting up in bed after I had fed her, verbalizing “no” as she refused to apologize to him for what she had done to him. Remembering her asking me when I would “give up and institutionalize the sub-human piece of shit”. Realizing that my child, to that day, was not even worth an apology to her at any point. Realizing that everyone else in that house, more or less, was “fine” to her…

Except maybe me. I had told her that she was no longer my mother for what she had said and done.

Imagine telling the person that had raised you for thirty-three years that she was no longer your mother.

Then imagine literally turning your back on that person without a word and walking back to your bedroom, getting back in bed for the night, and going to sleep knowing that you will not see that person awake or alive again. There was no relationship left to repair. There never would be. I woke up once more to check on her dog because I’d heard her making some more noise, and in the process had to walk around my mother’s Hospice bed. By that point, she had begun to go into what I would later learn were agonal respirations. Once I’d settled her dog down (again), I would do the same thing — get back into bed, go back to sleep until dawn.

My mother died that morning, and for all intents and purposes, she died without a child.

I could have stood vigil beside her until she died, but her relentless disgust of my child made that impossible.

I turned my back on her because I walked toward my child, whom I would always, unquestionably choose.

To this day, I wish that it never had to actually be that way, but it did, and I wish that it did not have to be.