Taking care…

A few months back I sat within a circle of women, sharing my journey as a daughter. Some of you are aware that my mother is mentally ill and our years together have been rocky, at best. It has been a journey of various forms of abuse and abandonment, along with many unhealthy scales of unbalanced responsibilities, overcompensation and every other unhealthy thing one can fit in the mix. Currently, my mother lives in a home suffering with dementia. While many of her behaviors are classic to such an illness, so many of them were present, due to her damage and mental health, long before such a label. Sitting among those women and sharing was a painful leg to my journey because it had been eleven months since I had seen my mother because she had deemed me as dead to her. This had involved an ugly court experience and many, many hateful things.

Being my mother’s daughter has always left me heartbroken, in every instance. This is something I have never surrendered to, as a victim, though I can honestly say I have also never come close to perfecting my role as daughter either. I am flawed, but have at least always tried to be there for her to fall into.

Around the time, of this day mentioned above, my mother had sent word that she wanted to see me and heal our relationship. This idea was an overwhelming one, for me. My husband was adamant that he did not support this reunion and that if I chose to follow it through, he wanted no part of it. He had been there and seen the damage she had caused. No one but myself had been there to see the dark spans of time where I sat in the bathtub, razor in hand, willing me to end it all because I could no longer take that woman confirming in me the black wickedness of of the unworthy human being I was.

I expressed my heart, again, post the meeting, to my husband. He relented to go with me, uncomfortably, because he loved me. He admitted he felt hatred to her and was worried about me.

I went.

Three months later I continue to go. It is nurturing and about her, not me, as our relationship has always been. For the first time, however, that is appropriate. I love my mother and I still fall asleep, most nights, praying for her to find some peace and happiness. Since I have done this for as long as I have memories back, I am not sure if I do this because of habit or something else.

Today is National Caretake Day, and I am so utterly grateful for these people who care for my mother. Of course it is a flawed home and things happen that frustrate her, and me, but at the end of the day these are people who deal with what I could not, every single day. I can’t reward them as much as I would like to, but I can at least acknowledge their efforts and my gratitude. While I am there, today, I can hug my mom extra tight. Not because she has done just the right thing, or always been there, but because she is my mother and I am not responsible for what she has or has not ever done- I am responsible for me.