I know I'm technically still my Mother's son. It just feels like that doesn't mean the same thing now. Not that I had completely figured out what being her son meant when she was alive. It's complicated, and probably more than a little boring for someone to read about. Not that boring you is going to stop me, but it's not exactly what I'm trying to think about here. What I'm trying to think about is how does her death change me. Is it just in how people view me, or is it also about how I view myself. And is this a permanent change or something that I'm going through and will come out the other side of, at some point.
Certainly, I'm feeling and thinking about things differently since her death. And I'm not my sunshiney-best right now, that is for sure. But I feel like that is the superficial stuff. That stuff will change as I get used to the idea of her not being around. Of her being dead.
Oh, I'm beating around the bush, I think. There's a thought here that I'm not quite expressing, mostly because I don't know how. So, I'm just gonna type and we'll see if I get there. My mother died almost four months ago. I've muddled through, all the while hoping that I would either be a different person or be the same person, and never knowing which, if either, is happening. On the one hand, I watched my mother die. It should be really traumatic, and it was. But, I don't have any idea what that means about me. I don't know if that's a natural thing I saw happen. I don't know if I am scarred by it, or if I find it comforting that I got to be there for here at the last. I feel both, which is okay. So, yeah. I'm conflicted. Okay. That's progress. Progress is good.
I wish I weren't conflicted, which only adds to the conflict, but that's me. That's always been me. So, that's good. I'm still me.
But at the same time, seeing that was traumatic. There is scarring. And that's the kind of scarring that changes a person. Have I changed? Probably. But it's hard to tell for sure. It's only been four months. So, yeah, who knows, I guess. Not a terribly comforting way to leave things. But the comforting thing is it's still so new* that I can hopefully help shape the way this changes me. I don't want to be someone who faces disappointment and loss by simply enduring the hardship. I want to continue to learn from loss. I want to find bright spots. I want to find a way to live positively.
How to do that, is the hard thing. My Mother's last few years were not, by my estimation, happy years. Her husband of over 30 years divorced her, leaving her for another woman. She never quite recovered from that loss. She was still angry about it the last time I saw her, which was over six years after it happened. She had every right to be angry. I was not, and am not, happy about it either. But, she let that loss determine too much about who she was, and how she thought people saw her. Other losses, prior to the loss of her husband, also seemed to have this effect. My Mom loved to smile and laugh, but it grew harder and harder to see that smile in her last years. She seemed just to endure life. There was little joy in her life, it seemed to me. Some of this, no doubt, was depression or some related mental illness. And that complicates how I look at things, because it means that in a lot of ways, her actions were not the ones she would have chosen if she had not been suffering from those illnesses. But, if I am able to choose how to approach life (and I think I am at this point at least)**, I do not want to simply endure. I want to make sure I find joy no matter what loss comes to me.
My Father's last few years, on the other hand, have been outwardly happy. He is living with his woman-friend. They are not technically married, from what I understand, for financial reasons. But other than having the legal paper, they are married. He lives near his family, and gets to visit them. He seems to frequently visit his woman-friend's family. He calls their children his grandkids, and seems very happy. But I like his path less than my Mother's. My relationship with him is reduced to pretending everything is okay and not discussing anything that might be uncomfortable. My Father does not endure, he only enjoys. And if he does not enjoy something, he ignores it. I don't want to do that. I want to be able to face my challenges.
So, as I have done so many times before, I look at my parents as cautionary warnings. I think I am much more susceptible to going my Mother's way, mistaking silence for strength, and not getting help when it probably would be better, healthier. Being aware of that is probably helpful. Hopefully it means I am on my way to doing things differently. Doing things my own way. I think that's part of the reason I share my thoughts on this blog. I don't know that anyone reading this gains much by it, but I gain a lot by having a place I write down my thoughts and share them. It's therapeutic. And I think it keeps me thinking about who I want to be, and how I can get there.
*Note 1. Four months isn't that long a time to be dealing with this, I think, especially since some of my dealing with it has been trying to not deal with it.
**Note 2. I do not mean to make light of my Mother's possible mental issues, or to brush them aside. They were a big part of why she acted the way she did in her last years. I don't mean to imply she could have acted differently if only she had made the choice. I only mean that I think I can act differently because I do not suffer from depression right now.
