TER General Board
it's mothers' day, and for those with a poor relationship with mom
how's that make you feel?
angry? sad? frustrated? matricidal? something else entirely?
or has the fullness of time allowed you to attain some detachment from the whole thing?
me, it's the case of a lifetime of mutual disappointment between me and the maternal unit. for decades i felt angry and sad about it, as i [felt?] i was denied one of life's most basic emotional relationships.
enough time has finally passed where i can feel detached enough to realixze that this was one of theose things that just couldn't be helped and probably was meant to be.
what's unfortunate, it's same damn story on fathers' day. i crapped out twice here with the parental units.
apologies if the shadow of my situation has bummed you out on what is for most a happy occassion.
say, if I get Mom a really nice gift, is it OK if I sell her to work in the salt mines the other 364 days of the year?
Does that work on chix w/r/t Valentine's Day? Or do I have to remember b-days too?
This day is when a poor relationship with Mom pays off!
When I was a baby my mother breast fed me through a straw. She told me she just wanted to be friends.
Not preaching but just relating a situation I had with my family. My mom passed away about two months ago. I have a brother that stayed away from my parents for 28 years. I can't speak for my brother's feeling but I can see by his actions he is regretting that he just accepted the status quo and did nothing to try to repair the relationship.
He is now showing up to see my father and I saw him for the first time in over 20 years last week. I thought I might be angry that he let my mom die with a broken heart but I wasn't when I saw him. I felt sorry that he didn't get to enjoy his parents when he grew up and could appreciate them as he couldn't while he was younger.
One of my mom's last request to my father was for him to pardon my brother and accept him back. The thing is that long term hostilility without dialogue is just stupid.
My parents never felt anger towards my brother but neither side would swallow their pride and offer an apology.
I can't speak for your situation as every relationship is different. There are people with legitimate reasons to be angry. However, if you haven't tried in a long time you never know what might happen. If you can make an effort, you might avoid a major guilt trip that occurs when it's too late to try to fix things.
My sister is like that... she recently came back into the fold and everybody's waiting to see if she's going to do something fucked up again (ie stealing Mom's car a few years ago and stuff like that- no she's not on drugs, but she may need them!)
It's getting a bit easier as I think she's getting how to behave like a normal human being again, but she's never apologized, just tried to bully you into ignoring it. As her sister, I always try to help her, but I think sometimes, will I be lobbying for her to come back into the family at 60 after she's fucked us over countless times again? I hope she stays normal this time...
Katie
I didn't really want to bum anybody out but wanted to play the role of the "ghost of Mothers Day future"(to steal a thought from Dickens) and show people how it could be if things don't change.
My mom had a long and happy life despite not having one of her son's in it. My brother seems to be financially happy but seems to regret some earlier decisions.
My take from this is that it is better to try and fail, in this case repairing a relationship, than not try and regret the fact that you didn't.
When we went through some photo albums together and went to visit the house we grew up in, I could see and feel his disappointment.
In ancient times, my sisters were pretty down on my father about my parents' divorce - despite the universal family consensus that it was entirely her fault, not his. It's the usual cultural thing that whatever happens, the man's to blame.
But all of them but one (3 of 4) got over it sooner or later, except the oldest. She refused to speak to him until she got the word that he was in surgery. By the time she called me asking for his phone #, I had to tell her it was too late, he was dead.
And the moral of THAT story is, actions have consequences. Life ain't a game, it's no dress rehearsal.
and Peg & Al Bundy lies the reality of my parental units. No way dysfunctional; but surely not perfect.
As for the annual obligatory homage shoved down our throats by and for commercial profit; all I can say is the march of time and the cycle of life have now left me immune from Madison Avenue's sub conscious efforts at guilt.
Now if a WMD could be dropped on Santa's workshop, and St. Valentine could be impaled multiple times with cupid's arrows; all 365 days could be free from manufactured for profit guilt.
To make sure that the flowers on my Dad's and grandmothers graves are there in celebration of spring and Mother's Day. This is huge to my mom, and since I am the only child here this week-end, the responsibility for this falls on me. Afterward, we will enjoy lunch at one of NJ's better reataurants...Starr Tavern. Not to worry in the end...I will be seeing my ATF this evening, perhaps including dinner. The ladies in our lives...be they wives, moms, sisters, daughters, nieces, beloved providers...all must be taken care of...how can you say that you are a man if don't take care of the ladies in life that mean something to you?
Laurie Anderson put is most eloquently in her song, Oh Superman, thusly:
(I apologize in advance for typing this out from memory but I'm just too lazy to look up the exact lyrics.)
When love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's alway force.
And when force is gone, there's always mom. (Hi mom!)
I can't listen to that line without my eyes welling up.
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