At the end of the last full month that she spent alive, my mother wound up contracting a severe case of opportunistic pneumonia. We thought that she had begun to spit out the apple juice that I had been feeding her, come to find out that the liquid in question was actually coming from her lungs — I knew enough from various biology and nursing courses that I had taken, getting my associate’s degree in it, to be able to keep her airway clear so that my dad could get everything ready to take her to the emergency room (knowing the back roads in this city well enough to be able to get her there quicker than an ambulance would, and knowing that I could keep her from aspirating on her own fluid as I had begun to demonstrate this for him).

In what would become our last meaningful conversation prior to this, I actually had to tell my mother that she was no longer allowed to have conversations with me that did not center around caregiving needs or requests because I was tired of her weaponizing these conversations — her way of getting around not letting Bub know how she felt about him was to let me know how she felt about him, and the straw that broke the camel’s back again was her asking me “when I would (give up and) institutionalize the sub-human piece of shit”. So I told her that under no circumstances would we have conversations beyond that point unless they had to do with caregiving, and that was it. She then tried to have a civil conversation with me, because I guess I wasn’t a sub-human piece of shit. I reminded her that I had laid down the boundary of absolutely no conversations unless they were centered around caregiving. She didn’t make another attempt.

She also knew that based on the hateful things that she had continued to say about Bub in the months that had elapsed until I laid down the boundary that she was no longer permitted to have conversations with me that did not center around caregiving that I would not miss her when she did pass, and that it was a direct result of the things that she continued to say about my child, singling him out and insisting that I know her opinions on him, while I did provide care to her. She did not appear to be bothered by this at all. Not one bit.

It was though it did not bother her that it would not bother me when she did pass, and the reason that it would not bother me when she did pass was completely because of her treatment of one of my children…

And we had to get to this point, and the reason that we had to get to this point was because of her.

At any rate, I was helping her keep her airways clear, both of my children happened to come in the room.

I told her that she would fight for them, because they did not need to be traumatized by seeing something happen to her. It was about them at this point. (She could die in the hospital, but she wasn’t going to die in front of them in a manner that would scar them. I was determined to see that through.) She looked at me as though waiting for me to add myself on, to ask her to fight for me as well. And she continued to look at me. I did not add myself on. The look on her face made it clear that she realized the subtext. She had not yet apologized to Bub even though she had, then, months where she had many lucid periods and could have…

I was not asking her to fight for me. I was not going to ask her to fight for me. We were sadly past that point.

Bub did not interact with my mother for the rest of her life. He didn’t make it known that he wanted to, and I was not going to push him to interact with her (or facilitate it at that point). As far as I was concerned, the person that I continued to provide care for was not my mother unless she apologized to me for her treatment of my child. I was not going to bring it up to her or mention it to her. She had many more periods of lucidity until her death, and she took advantage of absolutely none of them. I did not take back what I said about her no longer being my mother, because in the ways that mattered, aside from genetics, her behavior had escalated to the point that she was no longer my mother in any of the ways that mattered. Coming to that decision — more like realization — was not an easy one for me to make at all, because she had been my mother for the past thirty-three years. It was literally not something that I wanted to do, and I would have given practically anything for her to convey in some way that she was actually sorry so that we could walk over this bridge, Bub and her could begin to work through things in the limited amount of time that she had left, and it was not “something that I did to be dramatic”. She took herself away from me in all of the ways that mattered through her cruel treatment of my child and persistent refusal to apologize, let alone show remorse, for any of it. I had to choose my child over her. I had to protect my child from her in eliminating all subsequent interactions they might otherwise have had. (Remember, she treated my other child quite well.)

As the months that she had left drew on, and I could honestly see with my own two eyes that she was truly not repentant for any of it, that she was “not sorry”, I did the rest of what ultimately became emotionally distancing myself from her. For months after her death, I was blamed for “not being sad enough (that she died) because she was my own mother”. I should have been “more mindful” that she’d had a brain tumor removed, that she’d been going through cancer treatment for a year at that point. Then, finally, I should have “gotten over it” (even though, of those who have said this to me, “wanting to live the rest of my life never having to think about her again” was apparently not the correct answer). I became jealous of friends of mine who had positive experiences spending months with their loved ones making memories before they died.

I knew that I wouldn’t get any of that, and that I would spend years of my life having to forget all of this.

She would live like this for several months with periods of lucidity, being taken care of by my father and myself, not being allowed to talk to my youngest child but making sure that I knew how she felt about him in random conversations that she would have with me (that I would ignore as much of as I possibly could).

I think this was actually the last time that Bub came up to my mother while she was alive.

I gave her several chances (more likely nearly actually pled with her, if not outright did so) to apologize to my son for her treatment of him, and she refused to do so each and every time. I know that it had to have been more than ten. But the one that burned me up the most was the last time that he happened to be near her, after I had fed her one of her meals. I asked her to apologize to him for her treatment of him while he was sitting right there, hoping that him being in close proximity to her might encourage — or even incentivize — her to do so. And I made sure never to word any of my requests in a manner that “placed blame” on her, not wanting to push her further away from doing this than simply making the request might, actually wanting her to apologize to him at some point while she was still alive, figuring that we were at the point that she might not have that much longer left if she needed help to get to the bathroom from the bed and back, in and out of the car, and someone to help her eat puréed foods because she could not swallow anything thicker than that (and she was starting to have difficulties with those, which meant feeding her took time).

But no. She blows all of that up by verbalizing the word “no”, right in front of him, as he is sitting there.

Even though Bub has severe communicative delays, I presume competence. I don’t assume that he can not or does not understand something unless that has been conveyed to me. So it was at this point that I decide to stop asking her to apologize to Bub for what she has done to, and said about, him, because she has made it abundantly clear that she is never going to — I feel as though it is a waste of time on my part to continue to ask, and if she ever suddenly changes her mind, she can make that clear to me on her own time. But at this point, I’m put in a position. I have to choose between my child and my mother. Something’s got to give.

I’m put in the screwed up position of having to choose between the person that gave birth to me and the person that I gave birth to, because one of them is forcing my hand and through her own deliberate actions continually making this the situation that it has become. And as much as it would not have been a decision that I would have wanted to make in the first place, I do not falter. To this day, I know that I would have made the same exact decision, and I would have done things the same exact way if given another chance.

I tell my mother that she is no longer my mother and that she will remain this way until she apologizes to my child. I am her caregiver, and I will remain her caregiver until she passes away. But I am no longer her child.

If her opinion of my child is so low that he is not worth apologizing to, I am not worth having as a child.

Based on the look on her face as I said this to her, she understood every word that I said and she didn’t care.

Some of you will understand the subject of this post as I continue to make these posts and you keep reading.

As my mother continued to need more help ambulating, such as getting up from the bed to use the restroom, Bub would occasionally see me assist her. In my eyes, the straw that broke the camel’s back in that it actually got my mother told that she was no longer allowed to talk to that child of mine (for what would become the rest of her life) was him coming into the room and getting up on her bed while I had her in the restroom. I would have asked him to leave the room, or walked away from her long enough to get him to leave the room, if I could have walked away from her long enough to do so, but at that time I could not. She decided to shout at him as I was assisting her, to the point that I could see spit fly out from her mouth and the veins bulge in her neck, that he was — and I’m just going to quote her on this — a “broken, retarded piece of shit”. I could see him react to this, even though his communicative delay meant that he might not have understood the meaning of those words. But there was the intent, and there was the tone. (Some of the people who wonder why I continue to refuse to forgive her to this day speculate that she might have done this “because she had a brain tumor removed”, “because she was undergoing cancer treatment”, or “because she was losing her mind at the end,” quite likely having developed dementia toward the end of it. To me, there was absolutely no excuse at the end of any of it to make it clear that she did not like one child of mine while continuing to treat the other child like nothing at all had changed, and someone should have held her as accountable as she could have been held during periods of lucidity. My job was protecting my child.)

Needless to say, we had an extremely long conversation about this after I had confirmed that she continued to be in a period of lucidity. I was completely civil during this conversation, but I was not polite. She was told that she was no longer allowed to talk to that child of mine, bar one incident that I will later write about. I made sure that she heard, and understood, every word that I had to say. She did not appear to like being held accountable for this, but I made sure that she was, and I made sure that she would be keeping her mouth shut about however she felt about this child of mine whenever he might inadvertently have been around her or within earshot of her from that point forward. And, from that point on, she did exactly that.

It would be the last time that she ever said anything insulting about my child where he could hear it.

I made sure that Bub knew, with the words that came out of my mouth, with my tone, and with my intent, that he was absolutely none of those things. That he would never be any of those things, and that was final.

From that point on, it seemed as though he believed me and trusted me a lot more than he trusted Grandma.

I was glad for this, and I was thankful for this, because it would make the coming months easier to deal with.