Toxic Mother Death

She sounds awful @WorriedDaughter12

I think you should expend your emotional energy in supporting your Dad and also in self care. When the inevitable happens, don't feel guilty if you don't feel upset. It doesn't make you a bad person. She has basically been emotionally bullying you and your Dad for many years.

My MIL is an awful person too. My husband has confided in me that he doesn't think he will feel sad when she dies. Very conflicting for him and his siblings who feel the same way. Society puts pressure on us to feel a certain way when a parent dies but it's ok to not feel this way.

@WorriedDaughter12 as my name suggests, I had a shitty mothering experience. My mother died earlier this year. I felt nothing except relief and I went home and opened the champagne, literally. She also had dementia at the end. Even when one of the nurses had pointed out that I had been every day to sit with her, she was still wanging on to them about how marvellous my sibling was (who was miles away and hadn’t bothered to come). It was fitting that the child she had given the shittiest childhood to was the only child who bothered to be there at the end. That was my closure and frankly my last laugh. I am and have always tried to be, a decent person. Anyone who knows me knows this. Anyone deployed by my mother to parrot her narrative was/is irrelevant and their opinions don’t matter to me - and I know they had been specially chosen to not question her or ask difficult questions in general.

You will never get a narcissist to admit they were wrong or to apologise so concentrate on yourself. You really don’t owe her anything. As a pp said, celebrate your ability to mother in an entirely different way. My DD has had the childhood I should’ve had and I’ve broken the cycle of repeated shitty mothering in this family. Give yourself and your energy to your own family - trust me, when the going gets tough your mother and siblings will have you running around. For your own sanity, walk away.

@SiouxsieSiouxStiletto my mother was also an ex nurse….

That's so seagull. It much have really had an affect on your DM to see her screaming like that and what an awful way to go.

My "D"M is a retired Nurse so understands perfectly what Cancer can be like. I'm sure she was upset with the sudden news that her DH was dying but still, it wasn't easy for any of us and I wanted to make sure he had the best death he could achieve.

Sorry - that was in reply to @SiouxsieSiouxStiletto

This reminds me of a story my mum told me.
Her aunt had breast cancer back in the ‘30s.
The doctors gave her morphine for her pain.
My Nan would take Mum with her to visit, but Mum said her auntie would scream and scream and scream from the pain - auntie’s sisters didn’t believe in medication, so they didn’t give her the morphine - they let her suffer.
I just…

I’m shocked by how not upset I am. I was always worried I would feel regret after she’d died and ran myself ragged looking after her when she was ill even though she had been a completely negligent and often cruel mother. I had a feeling she would do something nasty right at the end (once she thought she had no more use for me) and was surprised/relieved when she didn’t but I found out a few days after she died that she had indeed done something - I was shocked, my husband even more so…
I confided with a senior nurse at the hospital before she died (an occupational therapist wanted me to move in with my mother so she could be discharged but had no idea about the sort of mother she had been and was being very judgy). This nurse told me she had had a terrible mother and that I wouldn’t grieve because I had been grieving all my life for what I’d never had. It’s sad but it turned out she was right.
I don’t know what your mother is like so it might be different for you but for me as time goes on I just feel anger.

I felt an overwhelming sense of freedom and that I could finally start living my life.
Went to the funeral and have visited the grave twice since, tidying it up etc. Look after yourself if you do this, I thought I had made my peace and was ok with it but my last visit triggered lots of unpleasant feelings and I don’t see myself returning for quite a while.

Yes just to add i haven't grieved my dad really. Just a sense of relief both that I never again have to feel the stress of wondering what he will do next, plus the unexpected good moments when I experience something he would have enjoyed.

Like pp, I had no reconciliation or dramatic closure, just a vague sense of relief when mine died...and an empty sort of - nothingness. It's been 2 years, I never grieved (I think I didn't need to as I'd done my grieving while she was living when I accepted how awful she was and would never change). I mainly feel a deep sort of sadness when I think about her, that I wasn't the sort of daughter she wanted.

But in all honesty, I found her death a whole lot easier than I'd feared, which was a relief. Don't be afraid to feel whatever you need to feel - none of those feelings are 'wrong' and you don't need to feel guilty for them.

My dad was a very difficult man and in his last year he was pretty much intolerable.

In the last few days of his life, and for a while after his death I did grieve for him, my grief surprised me, but I was grieving for the relationship we never had and now would never have. It was a deep grief Some nights were very bad. But it really didn’t last that long and I got on with things.

Now, although I remember him as being a very difficult and damaged man, there are times when something happens that I knew my dad would have found humorous (he could be very funny at times - people are complex) and I have a moment when I miss him.

Your siblings are not being fair to you - but if you can, try not to hold too much against them. It’s an enormous thing caring for a dying person. they are also dealing with a difficult & punitive &confused mother and, and probably do feel very burdened and a bit resentful. We can feel, and act, resentful even when we know it is unfair to do so as we can hold two conflicting emotions at the same time, in my experience.

DF died, he'd been an alcoholic - like a heavy, grey cloud lifting from my shoulders. Took me by surprise as I was 'old' then myself.

From my experience there was no lovely reconciliation or closure. But there was a sense of relief. I had had a lot of counselling so I had already grieved for the mother I wished I had.

This sounds like a horrible situation all round, terribly stressful, and you and your siblings set against each other.

But you don't have to love her just because she is your mother. She drove you away by the sound of it. You need to grieve what you didn't get, but you don't need to feel guilty if you realise that you don't love her.

It sounds as if the relationships between all if you are strained and that's very hard. It does make things worse when some are at hand doing the caring and some are elsewhere but if relationships are good then people manage.

I'd think carefully. Could you visit now? Would you visit if you knew for sure she was dying? What would you hope to achieve by doing that?

If you think either that your mum would like to see you, you would like to see her, or you would like to see your father or siblings, definitely go. But I'd keep your expectations at floor level. Stay somewhere neutral if you can afford to and set a couple of goals - a chat with your dad and listen to how he is, that kind of thing.

I think you need to separate the illness from your ideas though, she’s dealing with the worst thing and her going to your sisters is just how she needs to deal with it, I don’t think you need to assume it’s another way of hurting you, in particular if she has any form of dementia it’s just what her mind decided to do. So it’s not you iykwim? I also think you should be ready to not find the closure you’re looking for, as someone said above, the odds are stacked against her being able to give it. Talk to someone irl about it. What do your sisters think?

Haven seen my dm for 11 years. A short attempt at a relationship but 10 years of nc before that. She created a new persona in which she had no dc. I will show at the funeral if i can. Those people should know the truth. She wasn't nice. They were deceived badly.

Also, what does your father expect from you?

So the issue is that she refuses to talk to me or my father about her illnesses.

She has vascular dementia. That will mean she will have trouble understanding what is going on, and so the reluctance to tell you may be that she's not actually sure/doesn't believe/hasn't understood the situation she is in. Vascular dementia is basically brain damage - so really you need to either make sure someone is attending appointments with her, does your father not do this?

Had your DM got any kind of pain relief? We were given Morphine to administer to DF near the end but DM didn't want to give it to him, God knows why.

Luckily she didn't want to sit with him either so I was giving it to him regularly.

I think you need to remind yourself that life is not a Disney movie. I grieved very heavily for the mother I never had, but reminded myself of the mother I am and the mother she could never be. She absolutely missed out. I would recommend grief counselling starting as soon as possible. Be realistic too. She has dementia. She CAN’T be who you need her to be.