To catch you up on the Mama Drama, well to put it succinctly, there is no more. But to get to that point we do have to recount a sad tale.
After continued, and seriously strained relations with my mother; she calling me (or having others call me) when she needed something, ignoring me when she didn't need anything. Occasionally, and out of the blue, inviting us over for a family dinner, kindly declined. She calls on my birthday and I, not being available don't answer the phone. She leaves a message wishing (or wishing to wish) me a Happy Birthday. It was a crazy busy day, and I did not get back to that first message, or the second, or the third. BUSY, all day long. I listen to the messages, each one getting more and more frantic and angry in their tone and message, but it is late, I decided to call her the next day.
The next day comes, and I drop my children off at school and come back home to yet another message. This one accuses me of avoiding her (yes, we are still mostly not talking - but no, I was not specifically avoiding her) and continues to say really not nice things in her message. After several minutes of berating me, she gets to the real reason for her calls, and it has nothing to do with my birthday. She needs me to do something for her. I am hurt, on many levels, and not wanting to yell or cry at her, I still don't return her call. I sit there and cry on my bed.
She calls again, later that day, and I am home, and not particularly mad or sad anymore so I decide to answer and get past this whole debacle. We talk, I calmly (and I am not the calmest person on record, I admit - but this was calm) tell her how much she has again hurt me with her actions and she brings down the hammer on all the things I have done to hurt her - like ask her if she has taken all of her meds. I get angry and tell her I won't help her, she says she will figure something out, we hang up the phone.
About a week later, my sister calls me and tells me that mother has stopped going to dialysis and is getting on home hospice care - which means she will be dying shortly unless she changes her mind. I don't know why she is doing this, but my suspicions is that it is to get back at me - though in her manic/depressive state it could just be that she sees that this is just the best option she has. I don't go to see her - I am hurt, again, by my mother's actions.
I wait for the call, the call to come see her before it is too late. She is reportedly, non-responsive, unable to talk and getting weaker by the moment with all of the toxins building up in her system. Having come to terms with her dying, if not the cause, I go to her side. My sister is there, the nurse is there. My sister announces to my mother that I am there, and much to both of our surprise, my mother almost sits up and says, "she came?!" I am hurt by this because she didn't do this for my sister, stupid perhaps, but if it had been the reverse I would have been hurt that she didn't acknowledge me. I tell her I understand, she nods and slips back into her more distant space. I told her it was okay to go. I believe my statements then, and now, and yet almost a year later I am still hurt by her choices and her possible reasons for doing it. I stated all along that I wanted to her to be happy, healthy and around, but she chose illness over family again and again. Mania over daughters, sisters, brothers, grandchildren. Depression over time spent with the people that tried to love her. Death over taking meds that made her not feel the world as much as she was used to.
My eyes are watering in that "discontent fashion" even now typing this blog.
We never made a public announcement of her passing, her ashes sit next to my sister's dog's ashes. There was no service, we did not come together to cry. We just couldn't bring ourselves to do it. She didn't exactly commit suicide, but she decidedly chose illness and death over us. I don't think any of us now how to respond to that.
My Uncle had to deal with her probate, and get the mountain of medical bills paid, and now we are past the Mama Drama for good. Now I can watch TV shows for all my serious drama needs, Jane the Virgin or Revenge sounds good to me.
