Amy MaybeI set my phone so it plays sad trombone when my mom texts me. š
Don't be the kind of parent whose adult child sets their phone to play sad trombone when you text.
When my mom gets a text, her phone plays a recording of "I'm Donald Trump, and I approved this message," so ...
Steve GisselbrechtOh man.
I have never said this to you even though I thought it really hard because you didn't necessarily seem ready to hear it, and I didn't feel like I had standing. But you seem ready, and I hope I don't offend you, when I tell you that you can just ā¦ not.
It hurts like hell to lose your parents, no matter how it happens. It hurts to stop loving them. It hurts when you're the one saying, Don't call me any more. ASK ME HOW I KNOW.
But it can still hurt less than the alternative.
And ending a bad relationship is painful and lossy but then you get to start getting over it.
You don't have to keep hurting yourself in an effort to spare someone else from pain they're doing nothing to avoid or ameliorate. That's not fair to you.
@stevegis_ssg I get it, and I've considered it, but it would just cause too much drama given that she and my brother and his family live in the same city and I want to maintain good relationships with them.
Maintaining a perfunctory relationship is just easier.
I'm sorry. And I really hope I didn't make it any worse. I'll shut up now but just know that you have ALL my sympathy.
@stevegis_ssg You absolutely did not! and thank you. š
Hoarse e-Books@APBBlue @stevegis_ssg Oh, man.
Dealing with my mom was and is so hard. When I was in college & for a decade after, I hated that her visits entailed spending every single minute with her. I hated that there was always drama over something (not being willing to order anything off the menu in a Greek restaurant; the time she threw a screaming, crying fit when I bought a real Xmas tree & brought it back to her house because NEEDLES ON THE CARPET!!!!!). Her politics were awful but sheād usually /1
@APBBlue @stevegis_ssg /2
stop if one of us told her to drop it. And I really, really hated the endless monologue phone calls during which sheād talk forever about dumb, trivial things & people I didnāt know or care about (front guard at her gated community, for example).
But up until ~17 years ago dealt with it because it seemed ungrateful not to. She had an acrimonious divorce from my dad, who was a bullying, physically abusive drunk, and raised two kids by herself while working full time.
When the kids were growing up, she visited regularly & we always managed to muddle through, although our visits to her red-state home grew less & less frequent.
And then ~17 years ago I injured my back ā painful slipped disc ā and was laid up for days & days. When I called her to tell her, she literally talked for an hour without once asking how I was doing or even allowing a conversational opening. (I tried interjecting a couple times & she rolled right over me.)
@stevegis_ssg @APBBlue Back is good, thanks. Opted for a few steroid injections in lieu of surgery & the pain gradually abated, or maybe my brain just got good at tuning it out.
I shovel heavy snow MUCH more carefully now.
That was the turning point where, like you, I settled on a perfunctory relationship: send flowers for Motherās Day & her b-day, respond selectively to the less passive-aggressive emails, and make occasional *brief* visits, usually for HS reunions &c.
About a decade ago my sister used the term ānarcissismā & it all clicked. Iād been so close to the problem that I couldnāt objectively assess it until that moment. As @Holberg says in a parallel reply, the narcissism was
@APBBlue @stevegis_ssg @Holberg /5
too damn exhausting to deal with.
Starting about 18 months ago, my mom started showing signs of advancing dementia. For reasons I wonāt go into, there is no prospect of moving her here (where sis & I both live) so weāve been making regular trips to check in, buy groceries, talk to the retirement home staff, and so on. My mom is still VERY oriented-to-self only, but much easier to deal with apart from the recurring paranoid delusionsš.
Ironically, our
@APBBlue @stevegis_ssg @Holberg /6
relationship is better now than it has been in decades & she even occasionally coughs up unsolicited thank-yous for the stuff I do (which runs the gamut from fixing her phone & cable TV, to handling all her finances/bills/tax filings, which had gotten into a pretty bad state as in she simply didnāt file for 2023).
So itās not great in that we have little to talk about because she remembers almost nothing, even from the day before. And it aināt coequal.
@APBBlue @stevegis_ssg @Holberg I hope itās clear Iām saying all this in sympathy with your situation & that of all the like-minded people chiming in here with their own stories.
And anyway, as famously smart-but-messed-up dude Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, āThat which does not kill me makes me stronger.ā Also weirder, no doubt, but whereās the fun in actually being a normie instead of just portraying one from time to time?
@APBBlue @stevegis_ssg @Holberg /7-end
But Iād be lying if I said this our relationship hasnāt been its best in decades. So when she asks open-ended Qs like āHow are things in DC?ā, I offer vague platitudes that donāt upset her or me & that works.
A former colleague of mine used to say that she (the colleague) was herself āraised by wolvesā & I start to think I might have been, too. No, not sharing any of this for sympathy bc boy, others have had it worse & weāre ALL a little fucked up.
FIN
@20002ist @stevegis_ssg Yeah. This is how my mom responded to my very scary need for a breast biopsy in October: "People survive breast cancer now." TOTAL disregard for my experience.