This Is What It’s Like To Lose A Parent You Weren’t Close With

By

“Your mother’s condition is very serious”. The only words I remember that play over and over in my head.

This past week, I lost my mother. I keep going over it in my head that in just eight short days, I lost my mother. I watched the stage four cancer engulf her and swallow her without any remorse.

I watched the nurses and doctors try to help her, to make her comfortable; their eyes filled with sympathy every time they’d tell us results from her tests that day.

The universe was cruel, it gave no warning, and didn’t care that I will never be able to make up for lost time.

I never had a good relationship with her, but it still doesn’t make the loss hurt any less. She was never actually there for me as much as she wanted to be when she drank endlessly in my teenage years-but it doesn’t mean there were never any good times my brain won’t stop replaying now that she’s gone. Our relationship was anything but solid or stable, but it doesn’t mean my heart didn’t break in half this past week watching her deteriorate in that hospital bed, unable to help at all.

At the end of the day, she was still my mom. She was still the woman who gave me life, but I can’t forgive myself for hating her for so long because of her decision to choose the bottle over her kids.

And that makes me so angry, that I suddenly am beating myself up for her choices. The choices that made the inevitable come quicker than it should’ve.

And I all I can think to myself now is “How unfair”. And now I’m grieving for someone that tried so hard once I got older. She tried to make up for everything she did as most parents like that usually do once they realize what they’ve done. But I, always holding a grudge and refusing to let go of that, pushed her away as much as I possibly could.

So before anyone dares to bring up how many things I’d said about her, and how angry I was…I already know-no need to remind me, it’s all I can think about. And she was still my mother. Please let that run through your mind, that no matter how angry you can be at a parent, the loss will hurt more than anything they did to you when they were alive. I can guarantee that.

I am allowed to grieve, and I am allowed to recount the times that were good, because she was still my mother, and nobody is prepared for that kind of loss.