Another Milestone In Sight

[Footloose]

Oh dear KG!  I am so impressed by your actions in doing the very best thing for everyone, including YOU.  You HAVE paid your dues and it is your right to avoid future hurt or health issues caused by others who lack your sensibility and wisdom.

Just look at how you are with others here on this site?  You bring warmth and love and share so deeply.  In spite of your humble beginnings, you became you, all by yourself!

I am sorry for your loss and it will not be easy to say your final goodbyes but you can do this anywhere on earth because it comes from within you.  The funerals ARE or the living and that includes you.  So the funeral in essence IS for you to grieve and share memories.  With the event plan itself being so stressful just to imagine, you have made the ONLY choice available. 

I think our mom's could be related as mine is exactly how you describe. I am careful to protect myself from getting sucked in and sucked up too. I learned a long time ago that she is sick and limited in her behavior control that always is jealousy related and involves her limitless wants, entitlements and unrealistic expectations.  Then to deal with sisters who put the burden elsewhere and are downright hateful to our mom just puts the cream on the cake doesn't it? All they can do is spew their "greatest hits" on my mom's past behavior and blame her for their shortcomings in life.  Now when the music starts, I ask to change the subject and always have the option of removing myself from the discussion. I just don't want to hear it anymore.  I can't play the blame game, never could.  All excuses from blame do is create barriers to progress by putting the responsibility for action on another.  Yes, it was horrible and inexcusable but it happened and now it's over.  We must move on!

I often remind them that the person who is the burden is suffering so much more than those she offends.  How sad is it to be unsatisfied and alone?  We did not create these monsters, we only loved them.

What gets me through her dreadful drama is my memories of her on the infrequent good days from my childhood.  I often put myself in her shoes and respect how hard is was for my parents who did not graduate HS but managed to raise 6 kids in 10 years on blue collar salaries.  I forgave her a very long time ago and now just look forward to those elusive good days with her.  I still stand by her and will be sure she is well cared for.  She already knows that I will not ever allow her to live with me because I told her I would end up in jail after the brutal murder.  i know what i can handle and she is not within my reach!

I also credit her and my elders for making me who I am today.  Good and bad, it ALL influenced me and effected how I parented and who I am today.  Yup I swung that parenting pendulum so  far away from their patterns that it backfired!  I raised that lovely snowflake who ignores his people and only sees the man in the mirror and family who lives under his roof.

While I await the birth of my 4th GC  and my 1st granddaughter (due any day and may be here now) and still believe I too will get the dreaded signal: No notification.  Then, I too will even cut out the limited notification calls, i.e. someone's in the hospital, died, married, etc....

I also do not want him or the DIL to know if anything happens to me.  Good or Bad. None of their business.

I am planning on creating a journal in time, using some of my responses here on his site.  I may leave it to him, plus one dollar/ Euro (hope not!)

We plan to die BROKE!

[Footloose]

.....he gave me a present. It was (is) a triangular piece of crystal with a teardrop suspended in it.  The note said - "nothing will ever touch my love for you".  It reminds me love gone wrong started out as love going right. I hope for that kind of peace for your heart.

Elise!  Beautiful<3
Sometimes, as we so sadly know, love is NOT enough....

[lancaster lady]

I am still waiting for my DD to grow up , she's 29 and single , and living with me until she transfers to her new job .
We get on fine from a distance , but living together takes nerves of steel .
Is it two women in the same house ?
I let most things go over my head as I hate arguments , I drive her mad she says ....well likewise sister ! lol
Yes we do love each other ......but from far  away ....lol

Maybe not suitable for this thread , just another view of mothers and daughters .

[Keys Girl]

Everyone, thank you so much for all of the posts, they warm my heart.

I think that it is right to be aware that some people can't deal with death or the mourning process, or even speak about it, I have to keep my expectations down to 0 for them and everyone and be grateful for the people in my life who have been thoughtful, especially the WW here.

I think one of the biggest aspects of the whole mourning process for me is that I am mourning the woman that mother could have been, (IMHO) not the bitter, hostile and proud to hold a grudge for decades person that she became who brought a lot of pain to her children.  I think she could have been so much more than that, but that's not the route she chose, but she lived her life the way she wanted to.

She didn't have a good relationship with her own mother, so I'm watching the heavens with a sense of trepidation.  My grandmother died 50 years ago and I'm wondering if a few dozen tornadoes or so will be touching down when my mother gets to wherever she's going and my grandmother and her get together for the first time.

When my father died almost 20 years ago, I bought myself a beautiful piece of jewelry with some of the money that was my inheritance.  No one else but me knew that it represented new memories that I created of him and even though it is getting worn, I still wear it today.   I gave my mother many pieces of lovely jewelry over the years and she told me that they were put aside to be returned to me when she died, but who knows where they are now.

Instead what I might do in the next few months is buy a piece of jewelry that is beautiful, not necessarily expensive.  I'll wear it in honor of my mother and the good things she did for me and make some new memories in an effort to push down the ones of the last 3 decades of her life where hostility and malice ruled her kingdom.

Love to all, KG

Footloose, good idea to make a journal for the new baby, you can do video from a camera as well, hang in there.

PS. I watched a portion of the PBS program with Wayne Dyer today and he talked about reviewing everything positive in your life and what you want in it in the last 5 minutes before you fall asleep instead of remembering everything that went wrong........it gives the subconscious mind 8 hours to work on positive stuff. 

[Pooh]

I'm very sorry KG that they have hurt you.  Do you think it's possible, that they are purposefully not saying anything because they know how you felt about your Mother before her passing and are afraid to say anything?  I know that I would still say something to a close friend, but maybe they think they are doing the right thing by not saying anything?

[Keys Girl]

Pooh, I don't know the wherefore and the why, but even if someone knew that my mother's life wasn't exactly a river of joy, it's still just basic manners and courtesy to offer your condolences to someone who has lost her mother.

I'm fortunate that I do have some great people who are giving me a shoulder to lean on and as for the few who haven't given me that courtesy, I'm going to let them spend time with someone else until I'm through the mourning process.  They don't need to spend time with me and I need to spend time with people who are comforting me.

By chance, I received an email from a close friend who had been particularly dismissive and she told that she had gone to a funeral for a very close friend who passed away from a heart attack in her 80's.  I took this opportunity to pass on my condolences to her in my spirit of not following in my mother's path with the "tit for tat" resentment that I'm sure my mother would have done.  I don't think that this means that this person might be someone that I could count on in the future but it's more about what I offered her as opposed to what she didn't offer me.

KG

[Pooh]

I can't imagine not offering my condolences either and I would feel hurt by them too.  Especially to someone I consider a close friend.  I offer that to acquaintances.    I just know that I have several friends now that don't ask me about GD anymore because when they used to, I would get upset and tear up.  I think they saw that and didn't want to make me hurt so now they don't say anything unless I do first.   I actually appreciate it because it truly is still a hard subject for me.

I do agree with you about you offering your condolences too.  That took a big person to do that KG, which I already knew you were.

[Keys Girl]

Just a small update, I had one particular close friend who did everything but ignore my mother's death, but expected me to continue to help her through a difficult patch that she was going through at work.  She didn't reply to phone calls, and made every effort to change any conversation to her life and ongoing changes.  The last straw for me was an email sent about a funeral that she had attended out of town with a long involved explanation of how beloved this person was by so many generations and how moving her funeral was.  Given that I don't know this person I wasn't sure why I needed to know this, but nevertheless sent on a note passing on my condolences, etc.  I later reread her message and thought to myself "Is this a little dig?".......my funeral was joyous, blah, blah, blah but your mother's wasn't. 

I sent a brief note telling her that I was taking some time for myself and would get back to her down the road......sure enough a couple of days later an email arrived with some nonsensical stuff that I can't imagine would be of any use to anyone in any kind of grieving process but an effective way to point out once again that if you want some time to yourself, she's not going to respect that.

I've gone back to Square 1 which says "Watch the actions not the words"..........I wasn't impressed with her inability to convey any kind of condolence but the whole play by play of the joyous funeral followed by a wacky waste my time email has convinced me that I don't know what her problem is but I'm doing much better now that I am focussing on getting myself back into my routine and not spending any more time helping her through her difficulties.

I'm putting this on the board to remind everyone that it's the actions that matter, not the wherefore or the why of how people treat you, but just exactly HOW they treat you that gives you some insight into their character or perhaps lack of it or some other unknown issue.

KG

[Elise]

Once again KG you are spot on. Someone once told me when words and behavior don't match, behavior carries the day and tells the truth. I am sorry you were let down at a time you deserved understanding and support. I have seen this type of behavior in less important areas than where you found it, and I too learned to distance and move that person into a less close circle of intimacy with me - unless I booted them right out period. It's all about them. With people like that I've been tempted to use the line -" Are you deliberately trying to hurt my feelings or are you really that insensitive?"

[luise.volta]

My take is that when our expectations aren't met, which are still unarguably created by us, I think we need to look closely to see what's below the surface of the issue. For me, when I hit this this kind of wall, I often find I have made up a person who doesn't exist. The person I cared about simply would not have done what the one in question did.

We can make up who we think our children will be as adults...for instance.

I made up a husband who informed me that he'd had an affair of longstanding (3 years) but was getting past it. The man I made up and loved wouldn't have been capable of such deceit and duplicity. I told him that and moved on after 18 good years for me...but only 15 for him, apparently. I forgave him and we are still friends. However, he made a choice that ended what I imagined we had.

In your case, I am guessing, of course...your friend has surfaced as extremely self-absorbed (in my eyes) and superficial. Until this happened, you didn't know that...and possibly made her up to be a much deeper, mature and empathic person. With that knowledge, would you choose her again as a close friend? It seems doubtful. Sending love...

[NewMama]

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was that when someone shows you their true colors (as it seems your friend did), believe them the first time. If an encounter with her leaves you feeling worse after, it's time to re-evaluate the friendship.

One of my coworkers became a close friend, before I had a baby, and she was one of those people who's always caught up in some drama - a lot of it self-inflicted. I lent a sympathetic ear, and I did notice over time that she would bulldoze over other people if she felt wronged in some way, however valid or not. And that she's a bit a of one-upper (ie "my problems are way worse than that"). It was never directed at me, so I never though much about it. Then I had a baby, and could no longer put the energy into dealing with her drama, so I lost my usefulness to her. When I showed up to work one night recently very upset about a fight DH and I had over my MIL (first and so far only time that's happened) I mentioned I was upset and what I got was a story about how her MIL was way worse than mine. Without hesitation, she also screwed a mutual friend over more than once about work stuff.

She had shown me her true colors all along, and I just refused to see it. Because she had moments of being very nice, I overlooked her stab-you-in-the-back-in-a-heartbeat nature. So I'm detaching from what's left of the friendship on my own. I think in a situation such as yours KG, you really see who's a good friend and who's not.

[Doe]

Just catching up on this thread - lots of good advice and insights here and much appreciated.

[Keys Girl]

Thanks again, everyone.

You are right, Luise, I wouldn't choose to have her as a friend, and won't make any effort to see her in the future.

Love to all,
KG

[Keys Girl]

Another milestone, this one I knew was coming, but it still has me upset.

My family doctor is retiring and no one is taking over her practice.  She's been my doctor for 20 years and seen me through some rough patches and given me a lot of common sense advice that has been a tremendous help to me.  She's also the person who has kept me off the blood pressure medication for 7 years and steered me to the safe side when my blood pressure was really high before my son's wedding and advised me not to go and avoid a stroke, etc.

I've known her assistant forever and I always knew that in a pinch, they would squeeze me in to see her that day if I had an emergency (as they did over the years). 

I don't know that I'll be able to get another GP, they are scarcer than hen's eggs where I live and my doctor told me that she expected that I would have to start using walk in clinics as a primary care source. 

While I'm so very grateful to have had such a wonderful doctor for so many years, going from "wonderful" to "who knows what" has got me worried.

It struck me that perhaps the reason that I am so upset over this is that it's another loss for me, this time the loss of a relationship with someone who has helped me tremendously especially in the last 7-8 years when the blood pressure issues started showing up.  I've been getting flashbacks of the days when I used to wait in her waiting room with a ton of people, usually she ran late, 15-10 minutes, but now it's usually 2 hours.  Her patients are all grey and far from youthful, we've aged together sitting in her waiting room, and the last time I went all 3 of us were holding books.  We knew that it would usually be 2 hours before our scheduled appointment before she saw us, but we waited.  She would always take whatever time she needed with you and if it meant keeping people in her waiting room, waiting, well, she did.  On the few days when my appointment to see her ran long because of my problems, it was so comforting to know that she was going to do what ever tests she wanted, no matter how much extra time was needed. 

I'll get on the net tomorrow and see if there are any options for me, but in the meantime I just keep repeating the phrase "Keep Calm and Carry On".

KG

[lancaster lady]

I know how you're feeling , my doctor has been off ill for a year , and she has seen me through lots too . She also gave me Acupuncture for my arthritis , and now the poor lady has the same . I now see other doctors but they dont know me like she did , plus you see a different one each time ... and.now no Acupuncture . I wonder if she.treats herself ? I know its the same drugs I'm getting , but its like filling a shopping list , no feeling of.care . Keeping calm nevertheless .