Relationships and feelings can be complicated.

My mom passed away from leukemia on 11/21, less than 2 months ago. Right before Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I was her primary caregiver since her diagnosis in 2022. It wasn’t easy and at times I felt burned out, frustrated, angry, and I know I wasn’t my best self.

But I also was good to her in many ways and I know I did things to bring her joy and fun.

I also feel a mix of relief, guilt, and sadness now that’s she gone.

TLDR - it’s ok to feel the way you feel. Wishing you all the best.

Every time I drive past the facility where my mom used to live, I get choked up thinking about how we’d bring the kids to visit on the holidays.

Anonymous wrote:My mother died 2 months ago. I I am in my 60’s and for the first time in my life I feel emotionally safe. She was mentally ill and I spent a lifetime tying to get her to like me and I wish I could get that time back. She was an angry person who represented the devils work on earth. She had the maturity of a middle school mean girl. She had 7 kids and one of my sisters has already taken over her role of lying and the dysfunction lives on. This IS how you’re supposed to feel. Seeing the problem helps you stop the cycle of dysfunction. You deserve peace.

This isn’t about you did you bother to read the post? The OP said the mother was kind and decent and the OP was rude and impatient.

You'll live.

My mother died 2 months ago. I I am in my 60’s and for the first time in my life I feel emotionally safe. She was mentally ill and I spent a lifetime tying to get her to like me and I wish I could get that time back. She was an angry person who represented the devils work on earth. She had the maturity of a middle school mean girl. She had 7 kids and one of my sisters has already taken over her role of lying and the dysfunction lives on. This IS how you’re supposed to feel. Seeing the problem helps you stop the cycle of dysfunction. You deserve peace.

I hear you and understood, OP. There is a feeling of relief mixed in with a lot of other emotions. Elderly parents can be a burden as well as a joy.

I'm mixed on this one. My mom had a terrible, wasted life and after my father died, really did nothing to have a few years of late life triumph. Life is complex, and it is not easy to carry difficult relationships with a parent.

OP, I suggest you ignore the previous poster and in addition give yourself a break. Family relationships often are not smooth. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t have some regrets. Life need not be lived perfectly in order to be lived well — and truthfully.

Ultimately you have to be the judge of your relationship with your mother. Discount what anyone else may say. She wasn’t their mother.

Anonymous wrote:No one told me how hard it’d be to lie about missing my mom. Yesterday a neighbor remarked that it’d be the first Christmas without my mom and I got emotional, had to hold back tears. She died six months ago but I am, above all, relieved. This is especially true now, at Christmas. Having her visit — or visiting her — out of obligation was murder. It was dead time, time wasted, and I felt trapped — angry like a caged animal in the wild. Sure, I had trouble connecting with my mom — she was elusive, something of a mystery during my childhood — but she was kind and decent; she meant no harm. As I write this, it occurs to me that for much of her life she too was trapped. In her case, an unsatisfying marriage that she finally had the courage to end when I was in my mid-twenties (I am 55 now). She came alive after the divorce and lived happily and fully then: traveling, dancing, her social calendar was packed. But I was already far away, in the big city, consumed with my own life and career and problems. There was little between us. I tried connecting — to be a good son, that stifling sense of duty! — but conversation was stilted and often I was impatient with her, slightly rude. I’d feel guilty then; the cycle repeats. This is not how I’m supposed to feel — and it (still) saddens me to say this — but: I am free, free at last, thank god almighty I’m free at last! Fire away.

What a selfish jerk you are. At least your mom doesn’t have to deal with you anymore. Also, co-opting a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. about the dream of being free from centuries of racial oppression, including the legacy of slavery, to describe your glee that you don’t have to interact with your kind and decent mother anymore is beyond offensive. There’s not much more I can say that Jeff would allow.

No one told me how hard it’d be to lie about missing my mom. Yesterday a neighbor remarked that it’d be the first Christmas without my mom and I got emotional, had to hold back tears. She died six months ago but I am, above all, relieved. This is especially true now, at Christmas. Having her visit — or visiting her — out of obligation was murder. It was dead time, time wasted, and I felt trapped — angry like a caged animal in the wild. Sure, I had trouble connecting with my mom — she was elusive, something of a mystery during my childhood — but she was kind and decent; she meant no harm. As I write this, it occurs to me that for much of her life she too was trapped. In her case, an unsatisfying marriage that she finally had the courage to end when I was in my mid-twenties (I am 55 now). She came alive after the divorce and lived happily and fully then: traveling, dancing, her social calendar was packed. But I was already far away, in the big city, consumed with my own life and career and problems. There was little between us. I tried connecting — to be a good son, that stifling sense of duty! — but conversation was stilted and often I was impatient with her, slightly rude. I’d feel guilty then; the cycle repeats. This is not how I’m supposed to feel — and it (still) saddens me to say this — but: I am free, free at last, thank god almighty I’m free at last! Fire away.