Letter from beyond the grave from my NC toxic mother. Nastiest thing I’ve ever read.

[TToxicDeadMother]

Me and my brother have been NC with her for 6 years. Long story but she was very nasty and abusive. Emotionally all our lives and physically when we were kids.

She carried on being nasty and Critical all the time. Said nasty things about my appearance to my Dd and then denied saying it and called Dd a psycho. She was divorced from my dad by then after she had an affair and he caught her out. He died before we went NC and she was vile then. Insisted on coming to the funeral even though my dad had remarried, threw a tantrum because she couldn’t read the eulogy.....this was a woman who stabbed him the night she threw him out the house!

So she died 10 days ago. I’d been told she was dying and spent days sat with her in the hospital, she was too far gone to know I was there.

Today I got a letter via the solicitor. Pages and pages of abuse and ranting. Obviously I’m disinherited. Fine. Lies upon lies about how she never had an affair (she forgot she printed off the very explicit emails between her and the bloke involved and gave them to me for safe keeping). Lies about how I only went NC with her because I’m selfish and she had no use to me once Dd was older as I’d used her for babysitting.....she babysat occasionally. Like twice a year on request, other times were when she asked to have Dd.

She says she hopes the guilt kills me. She hopes my Dd are as wicked to me as I’ve been to her. Lots of insults. Says she never insulted me to Dd but then says....but you are the size of a house. I was a size 16!

What sort of fucking twisted bitch of a mother writes such a letter? She obviously wanted to be cruel and have the last word when she knows I can’t respond. I’m so fucking angry. I’m angry I visited her at the hospital. A little part of me thought the letter might express regret, how bloody wrong.

Don't think badly about sitting with her in hospital. You did it because you felt it was the right thing to do at the time. There's no reason to be upset about a decision you made because you are a kind and caring person. I don't think we really ever go wrong when we give in to our better nature even if we don't get the response we wanted.

As far as the letter, that was a nasty and ugly thing for her to do. But be secure in the knowledge that try as she might she did not turn you into a copy of herself, the way her mother seems to have done with her. You are a kind and compassionate person who loves and is loved. That's your true 'revenge', if you feel you need it.

I can only imagine your hurt and anger OP

Might it help you to write a reply you don't send, but burn/tear up? It might go some way to helping you deal with it just to put your thoughts and feelings on paper.

@TToxicDeadMother I'm so sorry that this has happened. What a cruel cruel thing to do to your children.

Would it help you to go to the funeral and prepare a reading so that in fact, you have the last word?

@Kiki275

My dad would do this. He's not dead yet but it's definitely the kind of thing he'd do. He sent me a horrendous message when he found out I was pregnant in Feb, I lost my boys in March. I will never forgive him. As others have said, live your life to the fullest. I'm determined this apple is falling far away from that particular tree x

I’m so sorry your dad did that to you.

My mum was furious when I was pregnant because I wasn’t married. I got a 7 page letter telling me how it was a sin, etc. God would punish me for my sin and the child would probably be disabled and I should just have an abortion.

Ironic that for all her religious shit she was having an affair with the married Dean of the cathedral.

I hope you’ve gone NC and I’m so sorry for your loss.

What a wicked thing to do to you and your brother. She didn’t deserve to be a parent. I can only imagine she was extremely miserable to hold so much anger and bitterness inside her.

Your life ahead will be so much calmer and happier. Hope you and your brother both get some counselling to help you heal and that you are able to move on from all of this.

I’m so sorry. That was just awful

I wished you’d asked someone else to read it.

Have you got someone to talk this through with.

Have you ever found your way to the stately homes thread

[quote MahMahMahMahCorona]@TToxicDeadMother I'm so sorry that this has happened. What a cruel cruel thing to do to your children.

Would it help you to go to the funeral and prepare a reading so that in fact, you have the last word?[/quote]
I’m not sure her neighbour would let me do a reading.

I agree with burning the letter. Get a nice glass of whatever and burn the letter in the garden. It’s a shame she’s not being cremated as you could’ve let her fry with them.

Forgive her and assume something in her past made her toxic as she was and set yourself free. She gave you life at least to reflect on her ills and the misery and bitterness it musty have caused her. The act of forgiveness takes place in your own mind. It really has nothing to do with the other person. So sorry for the grief she has caused you.

OP
I agree with @AcrossthePond55
Sorry you are going through this

Been nc with my mother after an abusive childhood for many years, the only involvement she has is calling social services a couple of times a year to report me for various crap that she has made up.

That reminded me, yep also had the being reported to social services for neglect shit after I went NC. I only know because she told me in one of the emails.....she was furious that SS werent interested.

Dd told me only a few months ago that when she was little and went to stay the night my mum would make her write letters to me saying how I was a bad mother because I didn’t play with her enough and that I neglected her. Dd said she didn’t want to write them but was made to and that mum told her to give me the letters but she would hide them and rip them up.

My dad could be/was like this. Anyway I dreaded that letter too. I didn’t get it and in the country I came from you cannot disinherit your children, they are entitled to a portion of your assets (which I think it is a fairer way anyway) but my dad went NC with is and sent similar lettera to us when alive.

I dreaded his death would leave me angry and guilty etc but in fact, like aomeone upthread, it took away a stone of pain. He xould not hurt me anymore. That’s it. No more playing cat and mouse, no more accusations, no more great times and bad times. I grieved and missed the bita of him that could be missed. But It was like leaving a toxic husband. It’s calm. It’s even. And, best of all, no guilt. I knew then, with the whole of myself not justmy brain, that I had done nothing wrong. It was his problem, is narcisism, him mental health whatever. I was free!

I hope you get this too OP. You and your beother. You deserve it. That is going to be your last word.

I’ve been on the stately homes thread on and off in the past, I probably should come back for a bit.

I am sorry you went and are going through this.

You have clearly done an amazing job with your dd.

You need to give yourself a lot of credit there, it is so hard to have decent boundries, let alone pass those boundries onto your kids, when you have had an abusive childhood.

You are everything your mother wasn't

What sort of fucking twisted bitch of a mother writes such a letter?

Mine would. She wrote them while alive, so when she's dead I know what's coming, and I will be burning it and not reading it. There will never be an apology. They have nothing to apologise in their minds.

She hopes my Dd are as wicked to me as I’ve been to her.

I was told that too.

It's very hard to erase something like that. Write a letter back. She's dead, she won't see it, but you'll feel better. If you like, you could go to her grave and read it to her. May be some sort of therapy.

Sorry OP. Some mums are just shits. You broke the cycle though

@TToxicDeadMother I’m not sure her neighbour would let me do a reading

If you could, would you? I am pretty sure the funeral director would allow the daughter of the deceased five minutes to say something... perhaps your brother might want to accompany you?

While it’s nice that there’s people here who understand this because of their own experience I’m sorry so many have gone through similar.

IRL I always feel judged when having to explain I’m NC with her.

I had a good relationship with my dad but he died a few years ago. I remember I told him about the social services referral and he laughed and said I was the best mum ever. She had no grounds for that referral at all.

Take some comfort in knowing she can’t do any further damage to you and your family. She will fade away like a bad dream

I’d fantasise about recreating the end of the film Cruel Intentions (photocopy the letter and hand it out like a flyer at the end of the funeral. But that’s just sinking to her level.

It was all her, imagine living in her head for even a day, what a sad dark little place. But she’s dead. Gone. She gets not one more second in this world to inflict misery on others.

You sound absolutely nothing like her OP, frankly you sound really lovely. And you’ve plenty of life left to live, and to do it unlike her.

@RosesforMama

It doesn't feel like it, but in a way it's a gift. You never need feel guilty that you had to cut her from your lives. It wasn't a misunderstanding, she really was a vindictive person.

For some reason it makes me think of all those messages from the twin towers left for people's families: not one message of hatred for the attackers or cause of their imminent deaths; just a desperate need to affirm and confirm their love. What a desperately sad thing that your mother had so much time and chose vindictiveness and blame. It really, really does not reflect on you; it reflects on her.

Excellent post.

@SinisterBumFacedCat

I’d fantasise about recreating the end of the film Cruel Intentions (photocopy the letter and hand it out like a flyer at the end of the funeral. But that’s just sinking to her level.

It was all her, imagine living in her head for even a day, what a sad dark little place. But she’s dead. Gone. She gets not one more second in this world to inflict misery on others.

You sound absolutely nothing like her OP, frankly you sound really lovely. And you’ve plenty of life left to live, and to do it unlike her.

Ha ha, I could photocopy all the sexually explicit emails she sent and received from the cathedral bloke. That would make for interesting reading!

It's awful, OP. We always imagine that there'll be some kind of reconciliation when they're alive, and then they do stuff like this in death.

After my father died, having alienated all of his friends, I flew ten hours to my childhood country, organised his funeral and started clearing his house. After his cremation, we drove three hours to scatter his ashes in a park that he loved.

Then I found that, not only had he been cheating on his new partner, but he had a load of awful videos of himself with prostitutes on his laptop (including at all the beauty spots he'd taken us to as kids), he'd kept a log of when he'd cheated on my mother forty years previously with literally hundreds of women, he'd beaten my stepmother (yes, another wife), he'd cruelly and horribly disowned my lovely stepsister, and he'd deliberately asset-stripped himself in the last year of his life and sent all the cash abroad which ended up losing my mother the house she'd lived in for 35 years since they divorced. Yes, it was still in his name - big mistake.

I wish we'd flushed him down the loo.

I have a little experience with a toxic parent. For me counselling has helped a little although I still have been left with crippling self doubt. It took a good few months, the first few sessions I couldn't even make eye contact and was virtually silent, I hadn't realised how bad my lack of eye contact had actually become. Think it was 8 months of counselling in the end until I was "functional"
I wouldn't go to the funeral but I would take some time and let yourself grieve for (I don't know how to word this and don't mean it the wrong way) but for the mother you wanted to have. If that makes any sense

Sounds like she spent her whole life being bitter and nasty. She fell out with so many people and yours wasn’t the only nasty letter she wrote - look at all the wasted time she spent on trying to hurt people!

Don’t you spend anymore of your time thinking of her, she doesn’t deserve your headspace.