I’m very, very sorry - you’re in my thoughts.
Thank you for the kind words, everyone. I plan to write a little more but I’m working 8 hours a day 7 days a week so I’m a little tired. I’ll try to get something coherent together soon, but I really appreciate everyone’s support. Thank you all.
“Friends show their love in times of trouble, not happiness.” - Euripides
It sounds like you did the best you could, Niko. You can’t ask for much more.
Your story made me cry right around the point you said you feel like a kid. I think it’s tremendously sad that you didn’t get the mother you so desperately wanted and I agree with those who have said that maybe your pain comes from that, the absolutely loss of possibility, more than the loss of the woman she actually was.
I don’t have a similar experience at all. My parents are great and still alive and so I have nothing to offer you except my opinion, based on really nothing at all, that you’re not a giant douche for not knowing how to feel. I think you’ll figure it out eventually.
I’m so very sad for you.
Thanks again to everyone. It’s been rough. I don’t think there hasn’t been a day that I haven’t cried, even though I still don’t know why I’m crying half the time. It really helps to have everyone voicing their support, I appreciate it so much.
We’re going to bury her ashes on my sister’s grave if possible. If not, we’ll spread them around that area. It’s hard to believe that what’s left of her physically is in that small box.
The rest is again cut for length. [spoiler]
A thousand times this. There’s always been the thought “Mourn? How can I mourn for a mother that never existed?” long before she died. I knew I would have this conflict of feeling when the time came. I thought I had it handled but as others have pointed out, it’s like mourning for two people: The death of a mother I never had and the death of what little of a mother I did have.
Like I mentioned above I watched her slowly kill herself for thirteen years (that’s just counting the years that I realized her drinking was a problem) beer by beer. She went from beautiful -model like!- to a walking skeleton with a bloated stomach and a dried, mummified face. Not once did she ever try to stop drinking or smoking. Even when she wailed “You’re taking my baby away!” when my dad sought custody of my sister and would not let my mom drive her around, she never thought of stopping. Not when she was throwing up blood. Not when family members begged her to stop. Not my anger and refusal to let her into my life. We weren’t enough.
We were her bad guys. Beer was the comforting friend.
I can’t help but to feel a twinge of jealousy when I hear people talk about what she was like before the alcoholism. She sounded chatty, confident, bubbly, kind, and beautiful. I wanted to be raised, nurtured, and comforted by this woman. Not the one that treated us like chores, used us as tools to get what she wanted, one that eventually shirked her motherly responsibilities of three good children just because.
Judging by my mom’s last actions she didn’t think she was as dangerously sick as she was, she didn’t plan on dying or anything. She stopped growing mentally somewhere around the early 90s and growing up it was hard to watch just how oblivious she was to everything, her own sickness one of the things.
I try to search for happy memories of her but I don’t have many. She didn’t have a sense of humor. She didn’t willingly attend any of my events. We didn’t have much in common and she didn’t really know me.
There was always a flipside with her. A good memory followed by a bad.
-Well, she did surprise me with those random kickass boots that one time out of the blue…but expected payment for them later.
-Well, she did take care of grandma for all those years…while stealing $11k+ from her bank account behind her back while acting like a martyr the entire time.
-Well, she did pick me up that time from the train station late at night…Completely wasted at 2 a.m. and I made it a note for it to be the last time I ever ask for a favor (March 08).
It just sucks because nobody wants to admit that their parent was a shitty person. She’s 50% of me! I’m no newbie to alcoholism. Both grandfathers, both parents, my brother, and six aunts/uncles. I’m so fucking tired of alcoholism.
I have those bitter memories. I have her long brown hair that luckily won’t grey for another few decades. I have her ring of hazel around the irises of my otherwise blue eyes. I have her cooking abilities and her appreciation for flowers.
The whole situation has made me feel like a powerless kid. Despite my best attempts, there was always that childlike hope that she was going to have a massive realization, get clean, and we could build that mother-daughter relationship as we stroll off into the sunset a la Disney movie style.
The night I saw her in the hospital, refusing therapy (“They only want to take your money” she spat at me, a future speech therapist) was the moment I knew it was only downhill from there. That last particle of hope, that tiny 1% was finally extinguished and it was the most painful feeling I’ve ever experienced in my life.
It was pure anguish, a feeling of helplessness knowing that there is absolutely nothing you could do to divert the destructive path. I felt like a child, unable to do anything. My hands felt small, chubby and useless. I felt three inches tall, knowing that there was nothing within my power. I’ve never been so overwhelmed by a feeling such as that anguish, that pure pain that felt so primitive and indescribable. I just sat behind her so she couldn’t see me, head in my hands, my body wracked with silent, choking sobs.
“What are you thinking about, homework?” She didn’t have a clue.
“Yeah, sure.” I choked out.
Our family never talked about emotions. I wonder if I had told her what I felt if it would have made any difference in the outcome. There will always be the coulda, shoulda, wouldas.
I think that a lot of the emotions come from sadness in not having a good mother. I will admit that I am angry at her in that…I don’t feel like she knew how much she fucked me up. I feel like that went unpunished or at least unacknowledged. I know that life isn’t fair and yadda yadda but damn…Even an apology or the acknowledgement that she kinda fucked some people over would have been better than just messing us up and then bailing out.
I’ll never know if she realized all that she did to us. It was pointless to try to explain or even yell at her. Her viewpoint was so skewed, I don’t think she could think about anyone but herself. I was always angry at her but eventually that anger would just change to pity whenever I was in her presence and I saw how childlike she was mentally.
The main lesson I took from her was in order to be happy and be a good person, I had to do the complete opposite of everything she did. And I have, and it’s worked out well so far.
It does sound shitty, but I think you’re right fisha. I think the hardest part will be accepting it but I know it can only go up from here. The silver lining is knowing that there can’t be any new pain (hopefully.)
It just hurts a lot, knowing she chose alcohol over us until the day she died. I’d like to imagine that in some of the infinite alternate universes she got healthy and we started to rebuild our relationship. Or hell, maybe in another she never started and instead focused on her job and is now the head nurse at some hospital. In another she’s still a housewife but healthy, vibrant, and sweet and never treated her kids like they were an inconvenience.
I just wish I could have been in one of those universes instead of the one with the shitty outcome. :([/spoiler]
I’m so sorry.
Some time ago someone on the dope gave a really good tip, I can’t remember who it was. They had put up a picture of their mother when she was young, and smiling and happy. That was the mother they wanted, and the mother that they did love. It sounds, from what you said about other people describing the “old” her, that she did one time exist as a good, happy person. Perhaps you could have an old picture of her, and allow yourself to love and honour and grieve that part of her, while acknowledging the reality of your experience with her?
I’m so sorry to hear of your loss. give yourself plenty of time to mourn who she was and who she couldn’t be. 
This I learned from my own similar experience (and it’s very hard to accept, for some reason, but please do anyways) :
It’s not your fault.
With my mom, it’s wine. I’m 50, been consciously dealing with it for at least 30 years.
The gifts with payment expected… wow, I thought that was only my mother. Is this a common symptom? Anyone can answer.
That woman you wish you knew? Probably still a facade. My mother’s sociopathic ways go back to her own childhood, according to family friends. She was just better at fooling people in the past, getting away with it, people excusing her behavior. So, no, you wouldn’t have enjoyed your mom before imho, as there likely was no real before.
Tho my mother is an alcoholic, she is such because she chose that. She is not selfish because she is an alcoholic, she is alcoholic as merely one more symptom of her selfishness.
I look at friends with “normal” families and wonder what it would’ve been like. I don’t even really “get” certain TV shows and commercials!
The pain doesn’t seem to completely go away. But it can get manageable. Therapy, real friends, support from someone who truly cares, have all helped me. Am I normal? Who can know? Am I happy? Most days I am! Is my life filed with guilt, worry, and wishes concerning my mother? I can honestly say: “Not any more.”
I’m sorry for your losses. Not just this recent one. The entire package.
One more thing … (am I Columbo?)
Since my Mom uses wine, she feels superior to my alcoholic drug addict sister because my sister is so gauche for using hard liquor.
I’m so sorry, nikonikosuru. You deserved a good mother but life didn’t work out that way. I’m offering prayers as you recover from both her loss and damage she inflicted. Take care.
Go find a photo of your Mom from the still smiling, happy, loving times. (It matters not that it was before your time!) Get it matted and framed, hang it where you’ll see it everyday. It’s okay for you to love this mother, (and really that’s a lot of what makes such dysfunctional mother/child relationships so very hard. How can that child express the love they feel without feeling as though they are condoning the parents most horrid behaviour? Part of what these children long for and desperately need is to express the love that every child feels for even the most wicked parent.)
For me the photos became a receptical for the love I felt and had no place to express. My love became fully detached from their actions, in some way, I think. The need to judge, slipped slowly away. And it felt healthier. Most importantly those photos became an object lesson for me. I could not deny what was right before my eyes, that I was just what they were, in those photos, what we all really are - raw material!
This whole photo therapy thing really helped me to turn a corner, and helped me to reach a place where I understood that they were doing their best, though it be twisted or wicked.
Just feel what you feel and don’t judge, just observe. I am confident that you’re going to be fine, in time. In truth, there is no way or time when losing our parents isn’t traumatic! Suddenly, with no time to say goodbye?, after watching them suffer a long illness?, lengthy decline? Slowly losing their grasp on reality? There is no ‘good’ time, place or circumstance, for losing our parents, I believe.
I wish you good luck for this journey, you will remain in my thoughts in the weeks ahead!
You’re grieving the mother you never had, and it’s OK. When my abusive mother died, it hurt a great deal more than I had expected, and it was because the last bit of hope that maybe we could salvage something out of this mess was gone. I’d never have a normal mother and while I am all grown up now and tough and don’t need one, that little girl inside me still yearns for one.
It’s ok to mourn the loss of a relationship.
Ah, it must’ve been elbows who I remembered saying it! 
I’ve lost grandparents, both parents and siblings - and each loss is different. Remember - there’s no right way to mourn - just your way. However you feel is perfectly valid, perfectly right.
For me, the greatest therapy has been having children of my own. As they grow, I take great comfort in providing them with the childhood that I never knew. I don’t know if you have kids, but if you ever do - I’m sure you’ll take solace in this opportunity as well.
Peace.
Ma.
Mom.
Ma?
Mo-oooom.
Mom.
MOM!
I try the various forms on my mouth. Upward intonation, downward intonation. The words feel foreign, knowing I’ll never use them like this ever again. They might as well be Chinese to me.
I thought I’d give a brief update, the last one for this ending story.
We’re going to spread her ashes on my sister’s grave this weekend. Her sisters are here (brother lives in Germany) and today we sat in the back discussing the memorial arrangements but not really discussing her. Personally I don’t want to have a memorial bbq as planned, but nobody asked me for my input so I’m just trying to go with the flow I guess.
It still feels strange. Maybe it will take a long time to get used to her being gone. I wish I could remember more of how she looked during my childhood. I look at pictures and god, she was beautiful. Like a model. Was that young woman really my mom? She aged so terribly due to the alcohol and smoking. I wish I could have good memories of her. But I come up empty. I feel like my memory is missing and that my childhood memories have been erased, a blank tape and black screen. It’s extremely frustrating.
I’ve been juggling a social life, my 40hr/wk internship, working 16hrs on the weekend, and an online class that eats up about 10 hours a week as well. I’m drained emotionally, mentally and financially but I just keep on keeping on.
Thank you again to everyone who gave input in this thread. You have no idea how it helps to hear that I’m not crazy for thinking the way I do or mourning the way I mourn. I’m sorry for all others who have had to go through similar experiences. I know it hurts so much.
I have a little blurb that I posted on my facebook, which is the last biographical post I’ll make about her. I think it’s time to let it rest and try to move on with life the best I can.
Next Saturday we will spread mom’s ashes upon my little sister’s grave as she wanted.
I wasn’t close to her over the years. All of the bad memories and seeing her as she was just hurt too much. I tried to see her as little as possible- twice a year was my goal.
It was just too hard to face her deteriorating. Suicide by choice. A long, expensive suicide that cost her money, trust, and the opportunity to live as a typical person.
The last time I saw her alive was at the hospital. The only time I’ve ever seen her sober, albeit not by her own volition. She looked so frail, so sick, so helpless. It was my turn to beg her to get help.
They want me to go to therapy to take more of my money, she spat. She told this to me, a therapist in training. With one fell swoop she not only dismissed the last two years of my schooling but also finally killed what childlike glimmer of hope of her ever getting better had remained.
It was the most painful experience of my life.
I watch her drift in and out of consciousness from the medicine as she tries to detangle her hair with an emaciated hand. She falls asleep, hand hanging in her hair. I’m at a loss for words at my new realization that there’s nothing I can do. I feel small and useless. I feel like a toddler, unable to communicate.
I felt pure, unadulterated anguish.
My body was wracked with sobs as I tried to cry as quietly as possible. I sat behind her so she couldn’t see me lose my composure.
“What are you thinking about? Homework?” She asked.
“Yeah. Sure.” I choked out.
I slowly sift through her hoarded house. I see unopened Christmas presents we gave her. I see the unused Christmas gift I gave her the year before last. I’m supposed to look for some heirloom I’ve never seen before and missing money. I don’t care about those. Instead I want anything that could give me answers. I find nothing substantial. It’s all just a mystery and questions without answers, as she was in life. Among the endless amount of clothes and stationary I find some jewelry, maybe a half-used gift card.
I would’ve given it all to see her healthy and sober for a day. An hour. A minute.
I had always thought the best gift she had given me was her shirking the responsibilities of motherhood, so that when she did die it wouldn’t hurt as badly. I was wrong. It was more like a double punch: I mourn for the mother I never had and I mourn for the loss of what mother I did have.
I hear her voice in my head- “Hi [niko], it’s your mother…” the phone messages I couldn’t bring myself to answer. I yell at her and cry from her in my dreams. In the mirror I see the same brown hair, the same teeth, a ring of her hazel around my irises.
I see my dad in my line at the hardware store, whispering to me. “We have to go. She’s gone. Your mom’s gone.” He had to repeat it; the words just didn’t make sense to me the first time. I knew it was going to end like this eventually but I didn’t think it would be such a quick decline. I didn’t think that hospital visit would be the last time I would ever see her alive. It was very surreal. I felt like I had just jumped from a swing, was falling in midair, and waiting for the painful impact.
I don’t want the memorial lunch Saturday. I want to hide in my room by myself. I don’t want to be reminded of the pain. I don’t want to hear everyone tell stories about her. I’m jealous of those who actually have memories of her as a beautiful, graceful woman.
I would think that after fifteen years this would get easier. I can joke with people -haha yeah, my mom’s the crazy one, let me tell you another crazy story- but it’s when I’m by myself that I mourn.
I’m lucky to have a great dad and an aunt who has stepped in to help me for so many years. I have great friends, a good family, and even my workplace and school have been so understanding. I feel very fortunate.
Her death and the internship have helped me to appreciate life so much more and to be thankful for what I have. Even on the worst days I’m still grateful to be alive. I won’t waste it in wanting. I will live it by being. That, above all, is what I have learned from her death.
Savor the notes of your favorite song as well as the spaces in between. Hold your loved one for just a little bit longer than normal. Try to feel each individual raindrop that hits your hand. Any moment that you appreciate is a moment of your life that wasn’t wasted.
Beautiful.
Peace.
Niko, I am very sorry for your loss.
You asked, is it possible to forgive your mother and to be at peace?
For me, it is. My mother is still alive, but in many very real ways she is already gone. She is suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s. we started noticing odd behavioral issues when she was in her late 50’s. She just turned 65. Who she was is gone. She has forgotten that my dad died, she only vaguely remembers her children, and has no memory of her grandchildren. Most of the time she still knows who I am. I visit her twice a week and take her out on Sunday. The continuity helps to keep that established, but in recent months she has started to fade in that regard as well. During our last visit she thought I was a caretaker for most of the time. She said my name when I told her goodbye.
She was a horrible mother. I am the only child who still has any contact with her, even now, as she is greviously ill. I won’t go into the specifics, but suffice to say that had I not stepped in when her dementia became too bad for her to live independently, she would be mouldering away in whatever state-funded nursing home could take her. With no visitors. I moved her from Illinois to Minnesota and she lived with me for two years while we had her wait listed at a memory care facility. This is no kudos to me. I kept her safe. I was not kind to her. The stress was too much for my husband and I to be much more than brusquely neutral. I would have been within my right, as my siblings were, to relegate her to that nursing home.
I did it because I could not let to of the powerful fact that she is my mother, and she brought me into this world. I wanted to know, could I have SOME kind of meaningful relationship with her. Could I let go of our miserable past?
What worked for me is realizing that I was holding myself back emotionally by continuing, in any part, to hold on to my anger and resentment at what should have been. In my situation, which I know differs from yours, the nearly empty shell I visit is not my mother. Alzheimer’s has actually made her docile and compliant and sweet. Pathetically grateful for the attention I give her. A stranger who became an acquaintance and who is now a sweet older lady whom I am very fond of.
Your mother was a person distinctly separate from the alcoholism that robbed her and her family of healthy relationships. She was as much a victim to the disease that ultimately killed her as you were it’s hostage. You will never know who she could have been, had she been able to find somewhere the courage to stop. Perhaps that is what you grieve for the most. What could have been.
You can forgive her, with effort and perhaps professional help. You are right to grieve the loss of “mother” even as she was not who you needed her to be.
You are young to lose a parent. My youngest sister was 26 when my dad died. I was 36. What hurt me more than my own loss was seeing her raw, overwhelming pain. We are never prepared to lose a parent. But it is particularly hard on the young.
My deepest condolences for your loss.
My mother died when I was 27 and she was 49, as well.
She was a Jekyl and Hyde mother. In my childhood and early teens she was the cool mom who did everything: hand-made my Halloween costumes, taught me how to cook and bake, was room mother, Girl Scout badge mother, etc. Then when I finished school and was ready to venture out on my own, she became viciously cruel. Hateful, mean, judgmental. Nothing I ever did was good enough. I didn’t have the right job, I didn’t decorate my apartment the right way, I didn’t make enough money, I didn’t go on the right vacations.
I won’t go on and on about some of the more horrible things she said and did, but suffice it to say I had similar mixed feelings when she finally died (breast cancer).
I came to terms with it a long, long time ago (I’m 52 now), and I know this is going to sound terrible, but while there have been times when I wanted to pick up the phone to call her and share some news, there’ve been even more times when I’ve actually been glad she’s dead.
Her death completely unburdened me to live the life I wanted to live without her constant criticism. I know for a fact that I am infinitely happier today without her having anything to say about what I’ve done with my life for the past 25 years. I’ve traveled all over the world, lived in another country (Mexico — she’d have had a cow), and married the greatest man on earth (whom she’d probably have disowned me for marrying had she been alive, since he isn’t Jewish — seriously). I live in California 3 blocks from the ocean (my family’s from St. Louis — I’d have heard all the terrible things about L.A., you can bank on that), and work for myself from home as a freelance copy editor (which would have killed her because she wouldn’t be able to tell her friends I worked for one of the Big However-Many-There-Are-Now Accounting firms).
I’ve long since forgiven her for not knowing how to let go. I’ve come to understand that she was probably scared and sad about “losing” her first born and didn’t know what to do with that. But that was her problem, not mine. And I’ll be damned if I’ll allow her … stuff, for lack of a better word … to spill over into my life. It’s hers. I’m not responsible for one bit of it.
And your mother’s alcoholism (likely due to clinical depression) isn’t yours. Eventually you will get past all the stages of grieving (and you will go through every single one of them, trust me), and you’ll come to realize that she couldn’t help it because she was sick, and you will forgive her for her failings, too. But at some point I hope you’ll let yourself become unburdened to live your life exactly as you’ve always wanted without any guilt or remorse. You deserve it.
Strength to you.
Dear Niko & all who’ve posted:
I’m crying as I write this.
I am sorry for your loss (es).
I have (& will continue to; mom is still alive despite some of her best efforts) endure so many similar addicted parent moments.
My "give a gift but then expect repayment"example: Mom liked to brag to everyone how she helped put me through college, when she didn’t contribute a dime and also CHARGED ME RENT DURING MY SUMMERS LIVING AT HOME.
Yes, I know I’m still quite bitter…weekly therapy in progress 
Take Care.