Loss of a difficult mother..

My mother had me when she was married for the second time at the age of 39. She already had two children from her first marriage. During her pregnancy with me she smoked heavily and once I was born she did not breast feed me. She immediately gave me to her parents which lived about 100 km from my parents.

My mother visited on the weekends and as a child it was more like my grandparents were my parents and my mother was an aunt who visited occasionally.

So when I was 6 or maybe 7, my mother left my father and took an apartment together with me. My grandfather had died a year prior. It was a beautiful place at a beautiful village close to my grandmother and I had my nicest time there. (In later years she also said that was her best time.) I had many friends, I spent a lot of time with her. It was beautiful.

Then, for some reason she decided to get back together with my abusive father. And once he returned, he began to hit me for small things and she changed and started to hit me too. I don’t know why she did that, but it broke me. I lost so much trust in her. My home felt no longer safe. Then, my father decided to move to another city, and open a shop there. My mother agreed to sell everything she worked so hard for just to make that happen. Then we moved. I lost everything. My safe home ,my friends…and my grandmother lost us too. Once we lived in the new city my grandmother died and I was not even able to say her a proper goodbye, something I regretted for a long time even though I was just 11.

At the school in the new city I got bullied. It made me feel so insecure. That added to the beatings of my father and mother and loss of my grandmother made things worse for me. I still wonder how I kept surviving. There were so many terrible things happening at school. They threw stuff at me and they wrote “whore” onto my forehead and laughed about it. And I had no one to talk to about it. I remember when I wanted to hug my mother once, she pushed me away and she also told me that she wished she aborted me. My parents also left me alone during the day with nothing to warm up to eat, and I was never taught how to cook. I was hungry all day and lost weight.

One day then, my father hit us so hard we really thought he would kill us. We were both bleeding. The next day, we decided to run away to a woman’s shelter.

We had to built our life a new. We spent about 6 months in the shelter, then we found an apartment, first one in a very poor area and later one in a better area. Our life was peaceful then, we had minor difficulties but there were no beatings anymore.

But the things that happened in the past broke something inside of me. I kept asking her why she beat me, her answer simply was that her parents beat her too.

We fought at times, at times we were good with each other. It was normal for the most part. But she always started to talk to my father again, allowing him visits. It scared me. It broke my trust in her again. I did not understand why she did that but today I believe she only knew this kind of relationship and thus why she accepted it - her previous husband also beat her. Maybe it was something akin to trauma bonding.

When I was in my early twenties, I moved to Greece for a few years and I actually learned what love meant there - what proper families looked like. I got accepted for who I was there - whereas my parents often told me I was not good enough, stupid etc. I looked at other families and was so moved by how they treated each other. And instead of being jealous I learned how to treat others the proper way - with kindness.

Then, I came back to my mother’s place. In Greece I also found what made me happy and it was helping stray cats. During my stay there I adopted about 10 strays whom I all took to my mother’s place. I saw them as I was in the past - lonely and abandoned and they were a big part of why even with my history I did not become a bully , but someone with a lot of love to give. At first, my mother was fine with them, but then one day she threw me and the cats out, saying that she does not want the cats and that they make her sick.

I was so sad - I felt betrayed and left alone again - unwanted with no one in the world to rely to. I found myself an apartment and a job and I started life on my own. I kept my distance from my mother because I was unable to forgive her. I cried so many nights…

5 years after that I decided to go back to Greece because I really enjoyed life there. While I got everything ready my mother had a heart surgery and was in hospital for a few months. I visited her often, I sat with her and I laughed with her. Back in my youth I often thought that proper punishment for my mother would be suffering at old age for everything she did to me but when I saw her in hospital - I felt sorry for her.

She got released then and I started my life again in Greece. We kept in touch - we fought one time over money but from then on we chatted occasionally and friendly. I was always happy to hear from her or to see her put stickers under my Facebook posts.

Everything was normal, she was weak and still recovering and my older half brother helped her with that - but there were no major or serious problems.

Then she had to go back to hospital, I kept in touch with her and there was nothing major happening. I was more glad to hear she was in hospital than being in a weak state at home.

Then one day my half brother messaged me… she was on the way back from the cafeteria of the hospital, she collapsed and immediately had no pulse. They tried to reanimate her but to no avail. She died.

I was so devastated. It’s a kind of pain I’ve never felt in my life before. I’ve lost my grandparents and I’ve lost my pets - but now I’ve lost the one last person in my life that was there for me that I was connected with through unconditional love even though we had it difficult. I keep wondering if I should have been nicer to her? If I should have been more forgiving? Was I really a bad child? Why was she always in such a bad mood and complaining? Why did she always say I was a bad child? Was she right? I only know that I love her and I forgive her.

If only we could have been given more years, I could have forgiven her and lived with her. On her hospital bed she even said that she wants to live with me together in Greece. There is so many things I want to tell her - I wish we could have fixed our relationship properly before she died. I do hope I showed her by showing up at the hospital that I cared - her oldest daughter never showed up. Neither did her two brothers - people who broke off all contact with her for smaller things done to them by her than done to me. And yet she always seemed to have some kind of dislike for me.

It hurts in every way, not just the loss, but the uncertainty, the regret and guilt. Missing what we had, especially the good times, never being able to return to these times. It is all eating up at me. I never thought it would hurt so much.

Zu