I feel if I am living my mother’s life physically. Like her I have high blood pressure at a relatively young age, secondary infertility, excess weight gain and a quickness to anger that scares me sometimes.
The only bad physical condition of hers that I’ve managed to avoid catching is pet allergies and Type II diabetes. I have cats who’ve never caused me so much as a sneeze.
Even better emotionally, financially and careerwise we have nothing in common. My marriage is much happier than hers. I adore my husband in the way she’s never adored my father. I completed my B.A. in my twenties while she didn’t get hers until her late 40’s. I have a part-time job that allows me great satisfaction and freedom as well as budding career as a writer. She had a job she greatly disliked until her last year before retirement. My husband and I are savers while she is a complete spendthrift.
So I would say that I am sadly living her life physically I am luckily not living her life in any other way. She serves as an object lesson that I need to be profoundly grateful because my life is so much easier than her own.