Please note as you read about this incident that my mother has been dead for nearly a full year now and that this incident was handled appropriately. With more and more time passing since her death and the fact that I do not bring her up to either one of my children if they do not bring her up to me or convey that they would like her conversed about, both of my children are doing exceptionally well, but especially Bub. I do not have any regrets about how I handled “the situation” as a whole, especially the… “latter parts” of it, and I refuse to allow people to attempt to make me feel bad for it, or to feel remorse for her loss or sadness for her death given the circumstances. Given what occurred, I feel as though I am coping the best way I know how.

The first incident that happened in the… series of incidents took place on Christmas Eve of 2018, which ultimately wound up being the last Christmas that my mother was alive. For some reason, she insisted on wrapping all of the presents that she got for both of the boys. Being autistic, and being primarily non-speaking, Bub did not understand why he “had” to leave the Christmas tree alone and why he could not touch the Christmas presents until the following morning. Nebulizing my evening doses of maintenance medication, my mother was watching him, which was something that she had done all of the years that I nebulized my medication, which made it easier for me to take the medication — this was just something that she had done for years, something that she wanted to do and made it clear that she did not at all mind doing (especially being tethered to the cord that connected my mouthpiece to the nebulizer limited how far I could move, and if I suddenly needed to get up to do something I would have to turn the nebulizer off and put the mouthpiece back on the machine). I had no reason to think that evening would be any different at all.

It was not until awhile had passed, long after I had nebulized my evening doses of medication and was in the process of placing Bub into his evening clothes that I would discover that he had been spanked for these things (without my consent). The only reason that I even came across this information was by happenstance, as one would say — marks had been left. I would not find out for months that it was actually my mother who had been the one who did it, but she would eventually admit to me that she was the one who had… done this, and exactly why she had done it. Naturally, to “calm me down”, she would reassure me that this would never happen again. To this day, I think she only “reassured me that this would not happen again” because I had found out about it, and not because she felt bad that she had actually done it. And as sad as it may be for me to type this next bit out, the only reason that she probably didn’t attempt to do this again was because she lost the ability to walk without assistance shortly after admitting to me that she was the one responsible for this. After this point, though, I made sure that Bub was never again left alone with her. I made sure that he remained with me when I nebulized anything, whether it was albuterol or my maintenance medications, or that I knew exactly where he was at in the house while I was nebulizing (and that he was not around her while I was doing so, as I could leave my bedroom door open and still hear well enough where in the house he was at). Even though she was no longer ambulatory, it was still what she did.

I also noticed that from this point, spare one incident, Bub did not want to be around my mother any longer.

No surprise.

I may very well be the only person who has actually written about something like this from… this point of view in all of Google (as I actually took the time to look it up there), or one of very few bloggers or writers. But now that I go back and attempt to Google it again, I do honestly think that I am the only person writing from this vantage point — making the decision not to forgive someone for something not only while they are still alive, but after they have died (although, in my case, it would be a bit ironic if not preposterous since I do not believe in the existence of anything supernatural, so to me, there is no way to forgive someone or something that, to me… does not exist, or no longer exists). I have mentioned this in varying ways on other social networking sites that I use, as have I asked for advice about it, and not only have I been met with a generally positive response regarding my decision, but I’ve also been given a lot of great advice that I have for the most part put to good use which I hope to be able to put to good use writing blog posts about this.

The person in question is my mother, and the incidents (or… cascade of them) began six months before her death from what would be metastatic lung cancer. Some might remark that, in a peculiar way, it’s “funny” — what I am actually refusing to forgive her for is her… treatment of one of my children, starting at that six-month mark and leading (I suppose, for lack of a better way to word it) all the way up to her actual death. Of those who seem to care about whether or not I have “forgiven” her, which I have not and never intend to do, it always seems to be about them, or the people who were close to her while she was still alive. Ironically, it has never been about me, or even my child. Realizing that there was nothing “wrong with me” for making the decision not to forgive her at any point (especially since she made it abundantly clear that she was unwilling to apologize, and was unrepentant for this treatment of said child), and that I would never again actually have positive feelings for her, brought me a lot of peace because that was when I realized that I could move on from her death in that way. I did not have to expect forgiveness, or the desire to forgive, to appear, and I did not have to expect positive feelings for her to return when they were clearly not going to.

A lot of people that say that you should “forgive people for (whatever they did)” before they die, or “forgive people for (whatever they did)” after their death are saying that for themselves or the other person, not for you (or whoever the incident, or incidents, might have happened to). And maybe I might actually be the first to say that it is okay, and that it is healthy, if this does not happen. You do not “have something wrong with you” if you can not, or do not, forgive this person, even if you never forgive this person for the rest of your life.

For me, it is a passive thing. The incidents are just things that I can not forgive, and so obviously do not.