By the time you all read this, I’ll be in my hotel room on Long Island, New York, where I’ve traveled for my mother’s funeral. I considered having someone else take over for me this evening but then figured what the hell, I’ll be alone in my hotel room at 8:30 and it will probably be comforting and fun to chat back and forth with you folks.
KTK was going live last Thursday when my brother called with the news that she was gone. We decided not to have a wake as there just aren’t that many in her circle of friends and acquaintances who are still alive. She was a week away from her 95th birthday. We’re planning a mass, burial services at the cemetery, and lunch. The cousins, the grandkids and great-grandkids. Maybe 25 people will show up.
The priest seems to be the most intimately involved in insuring her funeral mass is meaningful. He reached out to me today as I was driving back from the gym. Asked me if I had anything I’d like him to say about my mother in his homily. I said no. He asked if my daughter had any stories about her grandmother. I said she hardly knew her. There is such a huge relief that it is finally over. She was a difficult person to love. And she had a difficult, way too long process moving towards her death.
I’ve written a few posts here at DK about my relationship with my mother, most recently on August 1 when I had just returned from my good-bye visit. She died seven days after this. There was another post “Home” written after a visit in late summer of 2018 when I thought she was near death.
But the most significant one I wrote for Kosability several years ago was about the impact on my life having growing up with a narcissistic mother: Complex Post Traumatic Disorder
My mother's self absorption, her inability to express love, her preventing me from forming any close friendships, her adeptness at triangulation, her severe punishments which often took the form of weeks of being ignored, the continuous lack of consistency between what she said one day and the next, the radical shifts in reality between when one went to bed in the evening and awoke in the morning. The false accusations. It was always me causing the problems, the drama, the family rifts.
As I see it, some of the most damaging episodes of dealing with my my mother in my life happened after I ended my first period of no contact. My daughter was perhaps two. I recall phone conversations when my mother said such horrible things I experienced emotional traumas so intense they manifested as inflicted physical wounds.
The past few visits served their purpose; we made peace. Apparently, she told her caregiver she had regrets about how she had treated me throughout my life. Seeing me before she died was what allowed her to finally let go. I set her free. When I left, she stopped asking for people, stopped eating and drinking. They had just administered her first dose of morphine when she died. No one from the family had gathered around her bedside.
It is sad. Sad but finally over.
So what are you guys doing for dinner tonight? I’m calling room service.
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