On loosing a family member

I’ve lost my mother. No, I can’t tell you how, or when, and certainly not where because she never disappeared. It just happened that one day I noticed the woman who was my mother was gone, replaced by a body completely void of personality and reason. A body content to just sit on the couch and watch TV, showing little interest in anything but her pill bottles and Dr. Phil while the lives of her family passed her by.
The woman I remember as my mother was incredibly dedicated to the well being of my brother and I. Early in my life, she and my dad were going through a rather rough divorce, but, I didn’t know it was so rough until recently. The only memories I have of that time are happy and loving, which is a pretty good indication of how well she hid her own feelings about the situation from my brother and I and made sure we felt that we were loved.
The woman I remember as my mother tried so hard to expose me to opportunity. She was involved in the PTA at my school, she was my Odyssey of the Mind coach, she allowed me to take piano lessons, dance lessons, and she let me be involved in MCT even if I was a little shy. I remember when she was a lunch lady at my school (not the most glamorous of jobs) and for who knows what reason, all my friends thought it was “the shit.” She started the Halloween Treat Festival, an excellent way to keep the kids out of the awful, cold, Montana Halloweens. When I was in the second grade and her sister, my aunt, started working for a cruise line in the Caribbean, my mother helped me turn the situation into an ongoing project for my second grade class called, “The Adventures of Hermy the Hermit Crab.” When my Odyssey of the Mind team finally won state and had the chance to go to the world-wide competition, my mother was totally willing to haul seven girls from Missoula to Ames for a week of competition and pre-teen drama. The woman I remember as my mother was incredible, and I love her so much.
When my mother first started to become a shell, I tried so hard to pretend things weren’t changing, that she was the same person she always was. I tried to keep her involved in my life, but never again did I get the same approval and encouragement she provided in my youth. I started performing poorly in school, expecting some sort of reaction. Expecting anger, at the very least, and help forming a plan for success. Instead my poor grades were received with indifference.
Initially, when I started high school, making new friends and beginning to experience an independence that I never had before, I wanted to share these experiences with her, to retain the close relationship we had before. So, I would tell her of my new friends and what we did, and again she did not appreciate or understand the joy I felt at having flippy frog wars at Finnegan’s. It was at this point that I started to make up a social life that she found interesting. I didn’t do this to hide anything from her, like most teenagers would, but to be able to see for a couple minutes, the woman my mother used to be.
My mother turned into a woman of empty promises. She would promise travel, clothes, gadgets, and experiences that I knew we really could not afford. It was these promises that caused me the most anxiety because I knew that she did not have the resources to make these things happen. I was afraid of the long term consequences that would occur if she actually did take me to San Francisco and Chicago. At the same time, I loved the idea of these promises, of traveling around the country with my mom. I knew these promises were empty before she gave them, but it hurt just as much when none of them were fulfilled.
Ultimately, my mother turned into an emotional wreck. And I began to fight with her at every opportunity. I felt justified because she misunderstood everything I said, and I felt she deserved to feel just as much pain from me as I felt from her. She still tried, on occasion, to be the woman I remember as my mother, but it was only ever halfway there. The love and opportunity she had once provided unconditionally now had strings attached and as I began to find my own way in the world, I discovered that I didn’t need people like that in my life.
I do feel that it is important for my mother to know that I still love her, I just cannot have someone in my life that manipulates my feelings and misunderstands my every word. I am very close to giving up on my mother. But I think there’s still a chance for her to better her life as soon as she realizes she needs a lot more help than is being provided for her now.