A Mother's Blame

My mother's mother was not a nice person. She lived with us for several years when I was a child and in that time alienated her grandchildren from each other by pitting them against each other for her 'favours'. I didn't see it then but she was a masterful manipulator. She came between my parents many times and pushed her own personal issues between them. My mother once told me that when she became pregnant with me, her second child, her mother accused my father of being a pig and that he was using my mother for sex. I suppose this is a value of the generation she belonged to, one mired in the 'sex is dirty' thinking.

My mother is dying of cancer. I love her as my mother but I don't feel the connection with her I wish I did. My sister has the hardest time with not having been loved and nurtured. My dad was away at sea for much of our childhood and when he finally did come home to be with us, I suppose we had by then found ways of coping within a family where love was never expressed, let alone acknowledged. Being the baby of the family my sister was spoiled by my brother and I and perhaps we did her a disservice by doing that, by not letting her toughen up like we have. She has continued into her 40s to have emotional problems and while we are, I believe as adults, responsible for ourselves and our lives, she is fragile.

My father told me he loved me for the first time in 2000. I'll never forget the moment he said "Fiona, I love you and I hope I've been a good father to you". My mother never has, I tell her I love her and the best she can do is "love you too". It's so different from I...LOVE...YOU. She's never taken an interest in my life or my relationships and when the man I loved died recently, her comment was "You don't have much luck with men do you" and moved on to telling me something about one of her neighbours. I understand that for her she's uncomfortable and unable to express, and I do realise that a lot of this has come from her own upbringing. But each of us can break that chain. Each of us can say I will not be like my mother/father. I've never had the joy of being a mother but I do know, I would not have been like my mother.

Nana, I wish you had given your daughter more love in her life because if you had, maybe she'd have given us more too. Maybe, just maybe, before we lose her forever, my mother will say to my sister and I

" I LOVE YOU "