The Mind Is A Very Strange Thing

I really don't have much to say today, except a huge thank you to all the generous and kind comments regarding my mother's recent passing. They really mean so very much to me. So, thank you.

I've spent the past few days in Toronto with my gorgeous baby nephew, and if that's not the best way to forget about one's troubles, I don't know what is.

Today's the visitation for my mother. The funeral and burial take place tomorrow morning.

My feelings are all over the place. One minute, I'm so very sad. The next, I'm almost fine.

I didn't know how I would react when the inevitable happened, and now it has, and I still seem very confused. I'm so sad, but it's not the same sadness I felt when my dad passed away three years ago. This time, it's a sadness for the loss of what might have been between my mother and I, the concrete disappearance, perhaps, of that one last chance that things might be good again between us. Although the chances of that happening were slim to none, there's always that hope.

I had recently thought about maybe taking the chance and talking to my mother again, seeing if there was some way to salvage a little something of what we had between us. What did we have, though? Not really anything, when I think about it. Not a mother/daughter love, not even a smidgen of it.

Somehow, though, there was this small, thin thread still connecting me to her. She never asked about me or the kids. Never. I don't know if she cared. And I know some people will say, "Of course she cared. She was your mother, she was their grandmother." But, you see, I honestly don't think she did. And I was okay with it. Because rationally, I knew that she was the one with the problem, not me. She would be the one who would have to deal with not knowing her grandchildren or having me around.

But I cared about her. I still cared. I would regularly ask my brother how she was doing, and I was getting very angry that the doctors could often not figure out what was wrong with her, and would send her back home. So, obviously, there was some care there on my part. After all, she was still my mother, just not in the regular sense of the word.

I am trying not to focus on the negative, because I feel this is not the time or the place. The problem is, however, that I have no positives to think about. Nothing. I remember nothing pleasant in all my years on earth with this woman, my mother. And for that, I feel awful, and guilty, and like somehow this too is my fault, although rationally, I know it isn't.

I know my older brother is going through the same kind of stuff. He's thinking about his relationship with our mother, and he too is trying to make sense of it all.

I think this might be more difficult to get over than I previously thought. I didn't think her death would be a terrible thing to overcome. However, the mind is a funny thing. When we least expect it, the thoughts and feelings start to come, overwhelming us when we least expect it, wrapping us up and forcing us to face them, whether we like it or not.

I'll just let it happen, because I have no other choice. I will let the thoughts and feelings come and take over like ocean waves, and then, maybe very slowly and gradually, I'll begin to make sense of it all. As much sense as anyone can make of it.