NC very elderly mother - what to do?

[Pleasemrstweedie]

It's my mother's birthday in a couple of weeks. This year she will be 95. I'm not sure I can live with this situation any longer, but I don't know how to change it.

My mother went NC with me 27 years ago, without warning. I was on an ante natal ward, hooked up to a drip and threatening to go into premature labour when I got her letter. I still don't understand why she did it except that in her mind I had ruined her life and shown no remorse.

This does not take into account the verbal and physical abuse I suffered from her until I left home at 18 or her complete inability to accept me as I was. I don't know what she wanted from me.

Because she went NC, my dad did too. She didn't even tell me when he was dying. I only found out after his death that he had been ill for a year. I offered my support after he died, but she wrote back and told me I was being very cruel. I have heard nothing since. That was 22 years ago.

There is only me and her and my children, who she has never met. There is no other family.

Statistically, she will die in the next five years. I still don't want to leave things like this, but there is no-one to intercede for me and I just don't know what to do.

I can rationalise this most of the time, but around Christmas and her birthday I struggle.

Well you could send her a card/family photo just saying happy birthday. If she rejects your olive branch, you're in no worse position than before. If she accepts it, you'll feel like you did your bit. It doesn't sound like you need her in your life but you want to have done what you can to have tried to reconcile things. So do it but maybe don't expect too much in return?

I feel for you.

My head says why on earth do you want to contact someone who has been so nasty. But I understand it must be really hard to not have closure and to know that she will die soonish.

What would you want from her if she did agree to contact? You might not get apologies and explanations. You might just get a few more years of emotional abuse.

how awful for you.

You could give it one more go but to be honest, I would spend my energy thinking of how to accept that you had a bad draw in the lottery of parents and none of this was your fault. her appalling behaviour and cutting you off is her problem not yours.

I doubt very much if you will get any resolution a this point. Someone who is abusive to her child, who can blank her only child for decades, only grandchildren, to the point she doesn't tell you your father is dying, is beyond hope imo.

You've already done more than most would in reaching out to her after your dad died.

Yes, I did worry about that too Viva but I got the impression that OP wants to have tried again to get in touch for her own sake. I guess mrstweedie, you need to prepare yourself to go NC again quickly if that is the case?

Oh, i feel for you. Just because your mum is 95 doesn't mean she has miraculously changed into a lovely human being or that the previous 27 years have been wiped out, far from it.

However, I can totally understand your need to find closure. Why not send a card and offer to meet up?

I so hope you can find out why she has treated you like this all these years. Sending you lots of hugs.

Time does not always mellow such people and they do not fundamentally change.

It is NOT your fault she behaved in the ways she did towards you and you did not cause her to act like that. Her own family of origin likely did that lot of damage to her. If anyone failed here it was your parents. Your late father also enabled her and failed utterly to protect you from his wife's excesses of behaviour as well. Both are really not worthy of the term of parent because they did not parent you.

I would talk this all through with a therapist before you decide to do anything like send her a card because that could unleash a whole new level of pain.

This comment by Canyouforgiveher is one I would certainly agree with:-
"Someone who is abusive to her child, who can blank her only child for decades, only grandchildren, to the point she doesn't tell you your father is dying, is beyond hope imo".

I think you could well be rejected again as she has done to you your whole life. She was cruel and heartless and is likely still the same.

Cutting you out of her life was the ultimate act of abuse. Being horrible to you to your face wasn't enough, it seems. I don't know why some parents take against their children in this way but you would have thought a rational human being could try to batten down their instincts and behave decently. Unfortunately it seems she's one of those who couldn't.

Think about it this way though: is it really doing the old witch lady a favour to get in touch with her? She may be 95 but she still has a right to self-determination. If you really were a ghastly daughter who had ruined her life she would be within her rights not to want to hear from you. I'm not telling you off here as I am quite certain the situation is not your fault, but I bet you've met the odd well-meaning person who pokes their beak in and says it's a shame, she's old, she's your mother, surely you can build bridges. You could point out to them that forcing yourself on an unwilling old woman is likely to cause her distress rather than the movie ending where she finally sees the light and you all cry together over the lost years. That's just a script; this is real life.

It sounds a very sad situation.

IN the circumstances I would be inclined to try again, a short note wishing her well and offering got meet. But you'd also need to prepare yourself for either outcome. If she says she doesnt want to meet or simply doesn't reply, it's going to hurt. If she says she does you're going to have a whole raft of different and difficult emotions. You'll need to think them through.

But yes, she's inevitably not going to be around all that much longer. For your own peace of mind and just maybe to get an explanation, it's worth trying.

Disclaimer: the well-meaning beak-pokers remark was not meant to apply to those posters here who have made reasonable suggestions on how to offer a tentative olive-branch without smacking your mother in the face with it. I don't have an issue with that.

I would send her a note and a photo of your family, saying to let you know if she would like to meet her grandchildren.

Sad for you.

Trust me her being old and dying sometime soon doesn't mean she will have changed at all. You have to weigh up the risk of what her rejection or toxicity will do to you and your kids.

I think that before you do anything, you really need to sit back and think why you want to reach out to someone who verbally and physically abused you through your entire childhood, who never accepted you, who felt you ruined their life, who wrote a horrible letter cutting you off when you were going through a very traumatic time and who I am sure has done a long list of things you haven't even put here.

She has shown you over and over again in as many ways as she can what she feels and how she thinks about you. I seriously hope you wouldn't want her in your children's lives to do to them what she did to you.

Do you really want back in your life this woman? This woman who did all that she did to you? Or is it that you struggle to have never had a mother who cherished you and you have some hope of some sort of apology, explanation or acceptance from her? And it's not her you want but the loving mother you never had? Because if the latter then you probably have to accept that even if you got in touch with her, you'd just get more of the same and it might be better to access counselling to come to terms with your abusive upbringing.

To me, the fact that she's 95 means nothing. She was a 40 yr old who treated you like shit, then a 60 yr old who treated you like shit and now she's a 95 yr old who treated you like shit.

Just be clear with yourself about what your aims and your hopes are and be realistic about what's likely to happen.

I maybe in a similar situation soon as my nc mother is ill.
I have thought about it alot and there will be no happy ending. She will never apologise, change or accept her abusive behaviour so there is no point. It is a very hard situation to be in.