My mum killed herself this week. It was a heroin overdose, but a messy one. I was able to speak with someone who has had several heroin overdoses and has been able to reassure me she would have had no knowledge of this part. That she'd have just felt it move through her, over her brain, then felt nothing again.
She had been an addict nearly all my life, but had actually given up everything, even methadone, to try and be well enough for an operation. This was an amazing achievement after 44 years of addiction, but actually made me very angry. I thought she just couldn't do it, but it turned out she just couldn't do it for us... I was born addicted to heroin. She was not a good parent at all. She was neglectful and actively abusive at times, but there were reasons for why she was who she was. They were her business and not relevent now, but that woman suffered unbelievable abuse, some of the worst I have ever heard and started her addiction against he will. She was a shit mum, but she gave me away to my grandparents who loved me when she knew she had failed and taught me how to have a proper life. She did her best, it just wasn't enough. We had a very close relationship in my teens - not a safe one, or one most people would understand, but one which kept me alive at the time. I'd gone off the rails in all the ways you'd expect from my upbringing.
As an adult, when I had my babies, it was only then I saw her parenting for what it had been. Despite it all, I hadn't really noticed until then. We had a distant relationship after that, but still a firm one. I protected my children from her, but I loved her. I knew more about her than anyone else in the world. She considered me her friend more than family and she was a unique, challenging and interesting mind. She was much calmer as she aged and led a sensible, sedated life with an important job and huge love of gardening, just a background addiction. She was very different to in my childhood. She was fiercely intelligent and didn't fight fire with fire - she fought it with a nuclear explosion. She was immensely flawed, but genuinely one of the most interesting people I have ever known. I have never met anyone remotely like her. She was a fearsome and powerful person.
She had been very ill, increasingly so, for a long time. She had chronic sepsis, osteomyelitis, heart disease, a failing liver, emphysema and mobility issues. She was on permanent oxygen. She'd had heart attacks and pulmonary embolisms in the past year or so. I didn't have that long left with her clearly, whatever happened.
She chose to end her life on her terms, with her greatest relationship before she had to truly fail. She was still living independently, working 60+ hours a week. She would have never tolerated a nasty decline and she had said this throughout her life.
She lived boldly and fearlessly and died the same way. She always did what other people said, but wouldn't really do. I accept her death and I celebrate it as a positive choice for her, if not for me.
But I am bereft. I never was enough. I wasn't this time either. I had no right to keep her, but I wish she had wanted to stay. My mum is dead. She was a shit mum, but she was mine. I miss her immensely, despite only seeing her 3 times a year for the last decade or so. She was mine and I loved her.