Down the rabbit hole....

So this blog has been rambling around in my head for a while now...I have been having trouble putting it down...not sure how much of myself I should share with the blogsphere. At this point I figure maybe if I write it the ramblings in my head will stop and that will be a good thing...blog therapy so to speak.

My grandmother, my mother's mother, died a year ago this week. My grandmothers, both of them were the only people I really relied on in my life. I didn't take it well...I knew she was sick...I wanted to go to KY to see her but right when we were headed to vacation she seemed to get better...I talked to her everyday...she knew her time was near...she was at peace...I was still not ready. Her death made me essentially an orphan...I was really not ready for that...but the thing I was most unprepared for was the fact that I would have to occupy the same space as my mother again.

See I use the term orphan because in my mind my mother died almost 13 years ago when she chose her husband over me...when she chose to cut me off...maybe I cut her off...but it is her job as a mother not to allow that to happen. While the death of my grandmother was painful the idea of being five feet away from my mother and her not even trying to speak to me was heart wrenching.

My stepfather was not a good man...my mother knew this and was/is too weak to do anything about it. When I went to college my mother knew how cruel he had been to me and stayed while I left. I was 18...all I had left in the world were my two grandmothers...I think they hoped one day she would wise up and step up...in the meantime they took her place. For the next 12 years I spoke to my mother on three occasions...never very pleasant...formalities really. She has never met her grandchildren...she doesn't deserve to.

I sat in a funeral home for hours upon hours for my grandmother's funeral...my mother on one side, me on the other...the rest of the family trying to figure out what the hell to do. She was crying not because of her mother, whom she also all but cut ties with, but because she saw her grandchildren for the first time ever and she could not touch or speak to them. Truth be told I felt a little bit of vindication at that...it also torn me apart. It torn me apart even more to watch my children watch her...they were naturally curious...and more painful yet was having to explain to my oldest why speaking to her or the bad man with her was not an option. I went a little crazy for those couple of days...probably close to certifiable crazy...I was not at my best to say the least.

I hate my mother, but I also love my mother....that is so hard to understand...I am not ready to offer up all the details of my life to the world wide web...but I will say that the choices she made were inconceivable to most people. She truly does not deserve a place in my life much less my heart...but there she is...I just can't seem to turn that off.

We did not talk the entire time we were there...it was SO awkward..so surreal...SO painful. I am an only child and I realize one day I am going to have to in some way care for my mother...even if it is seeing to her getting in a nursing home that will not abuse her, although some days I think maybe I shouldn't care. I just can't turn off the part of me that wants her to love me, wants her to know and except she was wrong....I am also not naive enough to think those things will ever happen....it is so disheartening. I am not sure how that is supposed to make me feel.

I have a wonderful family and wonderful in laws...but it is not the same. So now I am thinking it has been a year since I have seen her...I sent her a sympathy card...I stupidly keep reaching...she never acknowledged it. I think I set myself up again, I hoped that she would want to open some line of communication...not that I know how I would even react to that. Here we are a year later and nothing...I thought this was going to get easier as time passed...in reality it is so much worse...I realize time is limited...realize that there is a chance that I may never speak to her again...I am not even sure what to do with that.