I Don’t Know How to Mourn
Death can teach you who people really are. In healthy families that care about each other, death often brings people closer together. Members join together to support each other, to share the burden of pain and the warm memories that keep their loved ones alive. At the other end of the spectrum, death brings out the backstabbing, the greed, the selfishness. The scapegoating.
It’s the fifth anniversary of my mom’s death and the first one I’m facing without the weight and fear of a lawsuit hanging over me. I’ve been in overdrive — panicked flight or fight mode for over six years. I’m finally at a point where I can actually mourn her passing, but I don’t seem to know how.
The narcissistic greed of her eldest son cast a shadow not only over his and my relationship, but over my connection with our entire family. I panic and have an almost uncontrollable urge to cry when I think about my mom. And it’s not just the actuality of her death. The psychological torture and the subsequent alienation of my whole extended family have overshadowed everything for the past five years. Rather than shining a warm and loving light over memories of my mom, interactions with the rest of my family have added this darkness instead. More than any other part of what he did, that hurts the most.
All that horror is tied up with my memories and thoughts of my mom. And it breaks my heart.
My mom was not perfect. She was damaged in a lot of ways. But she was kind, and she was loving, and she was brilliant. I’m desperately trying to find a way past the ugliness so I don’t flinch when I think about her. I want to be able to feel the warmth of her love and remember the beauty of her smile.
