I know we all have issues with our mothers. We'd be inhuman if we didn't.
My mom was the best stay-at-home mom on the planet. I kid you not. She baked like crazy, the house was spotless, and she had a knack for caring for sick people so when the neighborhood kids hurt themselves playing my mom was always there to care for them. But staying at home was not to be. Money was tight and my mom had to return to work as a nurse. I think she hated it, but I was too self-absorbed to really notice how she felt. She was always unhappy. She complained about the fact that she had to clean the house all day and then go to work at night. She'd come home and the house would be trashed again, and the cycle would start all over. Because my sisters were a decade older than me, my earliest memories were of being the brunt of her anger. My sisters were teenagers and had figured out how to be gone all of the time. Now that I am a wife and a mother, I understand her anger and frustration on so many levels. I hate the fact that I'm older than before my time. I hate the fact that I feel I could be attractive again if I wasn't so busy cleaning up after a husband a child, because neither one has the wherewithal to pick up after themselves. It makes me angry and resentful to come downstairs each morning and spent an hour picking up after my husband's mess just so I can get my son ready and off to school. I start each day angry and try desperately not to take it out on my kid. I only know too well now what my mom felt. I just wish I could tell her.
Eventually she moved jobs to a daytime job as the EMS coordinator, which may or may not have been good. She worked 5 days a week, no nights and was home when I was home. It didn't make her any happier. In fact, the job was stressful and she wanted to quit and go back to being a nurse. For some reason, at age 13, I cried and said "No!" I don't know why, but she looked dejected. She went in and quit anyway, only to find out that everyone in the department had quit too, and laughingly they all realized how miserable they were and made the necessary changes to better the department. One of them was making my mom the boss. This may or may not have been a good thing.
Rather than being home each night she now worked 70-ish hours a week. Besides being the department director she still had to work in the classroom training EMTs and Paramedics. She had to travel to outside facilities to make sure they met regulation. She spent much of her time in other cities working on regulation. There were lots of overnight trips. She hated going alone so my dad went with. She was tired all of the time, exhausted. And angry. At home at least. At work everyone loved her. She turned a drowning department into a bustling, moneymaking department that expanded exponentially under her direction. Awards were named after her. People loved her. I'm not kidding. She gave her life to that job and she was good at it, which is great, but she had literally nothing left for home.
The one thing she always wanted was to retire and be a nanny to her grandkids. She would have been the best at it. I can imagine her downstairs right now baking and cleaning my kitchen and playing with my son, working on reading and puzzles, while all of the neighborhood kids started flocking here for unknown reasons, just like it was when I was a kid and she had that short time as a stay-at-home mom. I imagine all of the time we'd have together, that we never got because she was working so much. I know that's what she wanted. To finally make up for lost time. I imagine all of the talking and cleaning and laughing we'd do. Maybe I'd have more than one kid. My dad would probably stop by each day for lunch that she made for all of us. She'd get unlimited time with my son. It's what she wanted.
Obviously she never got that, and I never got that time. My mother developed breast cancer at the age of 60. By that time she'd been obese for years and stress was just part of her life. Her blood pressure was high and so was her cholesterol and she was still miserable and still working and desperately waiting for the day she could retire. By the time she was 65 she retired. On 2 liters of oxygen. Barely able to walk anymore. She'd been through multiple rounds of chemotherapy and radiation and the cancer was in her bones. By 70 she was gone, emaciated to less than 100 pounds, unable to walk or care for herself, all of her activities of daily living including brushing teeth, assisted by someone else. The perpetual caregiver had turned into being cared for 24/7, and she and I never got that time that she so wanted and I so needed.
She told me that she did it to herself. That she took care of everyone else first and never herself and she was watching me do the same thing. I have a special-needs child and a sick husband so it seems like everyone comes first in my life. It's hard. It makes me angry. And at 38 I'm obese. I have high blood pressure and high cholesterol and I'm resentful that I have to take care of everything and everyone else first while I watch myself deteriorate just like my mother.
So I guess it's her fault. It's her fault that I just don't want to live life like this anymore. It's her fault that I want something better than she had. It's her fault that I can't continue to put other's needs before my own health and well being.
But damn is it a struggle. I didn't get here because I know how to take care of myself. Fortunately, God can. I just wish I'd let him.
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