The End

My mother passed on Sunday.  It was a terrible end and it was time. I truly would not wish her last days on my worst enemy. Now if I can only survive the family drama.

My aunt has done everything possible to ensure that I have absolutely no control over the arrangements. I had started arrangements when I visited last month and she just undid it all and did what she wanted.  I don't know why I care, but it royally pisses me off.  Mostly because she's trying to run roughshod over my step-father.  He is a traditional Catholic.  My family is not Catholic (although my mother converted when she married her husband), and my aunt basically thinks that if she doesn't agree with all the Catholic rituals they just shouldn't happen. I don't really care what kind of service we have--I'm an atheist after all--but I don't want to see her stomp all over his wishes just because she doesn't agree with his religious choices.

I was asked to write the obit.  And then she bitched and moaned and trashed it. I'm just so angry at her actions, and  I can't get past it.  Once my brother told me they were redoing the obit--the only thing I was allowed the slightest involvement in--I just lost it.

I was at work when all this was going down.  I didn't want to miss another full week and she had already unilaterally decided that the funeral would be next weekend to make sure the rest of her siblings were there, so that they could throw a big, drunken wake. (I was there for a week a month ago, spending every night at hospice when it was touch and go before she rallied while all of her siblings went and partied every night.)

I knew I was getting emotional, so I left for lunch.  My rosacea is flaring, which means the slightest bit of any emotion turns my face bright red. And so I went to my car and lost it.  Anger makes me cry, and once I started I couldn't stop. And then I couldn't stop psycho-analyzing why I was crying.  FFS my mother just died, I'm allowed to cry.  But it's not like we had a normal relationship.  After nearly an hour I was a soggy mess and  gave up all hope of going back to the office.

I don't know why I'm so angry.  I don't really care what they do with the service, but I'm pissed at my aunt's intentional exclusion and my brother's inability to stand up to her. Maybe I'm angry that everyone is pretending that my mother was the wonderful person now that she's dead.  She wasn't a wonderful person and I'm not going to put that she was an amazing, loving mother in her obituary. 

Maybe I'm angry that I didn't have an amazing, loving mother.  She wasn't an addict and we weren't abused or neglected (by her, her second husband is another story).  She just didn't really seem to want to have children.  We were just there--a burden she had to bear. And she told us of all the things she couldn't do because of us. 

Maybe I'm angry that my kids don't have any grandmothers.  The only one who paid them any attention died 5 years ago.  They had virtually no relationship with my mother.

Maybe I'm angry because Mother's Day is being shoved in my face.  I hate Mother's Day in any year for the above reasons, but this year it's just an emotional clusterfuck.  Her funeral will be the day before.

Anyway, I'm angry.  Two glasses of wine has not quashed my anger. And my head hurts.  And my eyes hurt.  And I just want to go to sleep, but when I try the anger just wells up and the adrenaline starts and I can't sleep.

And I'm not being nice to my brother and it's not really his fault.  His wife just had a baby on Friday and she is still having complications. He doesn't need my raging on top of everything else.

This is long and rambling and nonsensical.  But I think you got the gist.  I'm angry.