Mom

My mother died and I had no idea how I felt about it. We were estranged, and that's putting it mildly. We had a huge falling out when I was a teenager and things were never the same after that.

We'd been butting heads for a long while, and in fact we hadn't spoken for years.
My mother had always been manipulative emotionally and would use my inexperience as a child to take advantage of me and others. She would borrow birthday money from me and never return it or pawn my stuff and claim it was broken. Once, she took my quarter collection and used it up to phone her white trash boyfriend out of town.

When she wasn't manipulative she simply wasn't there. I was more or less a latch-key kid to a parent who didn't even work and just sponged off the system. She was always out drinking with some new-found scumbag friend who hadn't got wise to her shtick yet. When they figured it out, the two usually parted ways. And then it would begin again with someone even scummier than the last.

Once I grew into my teen years I was definitely wary of her and wouldn't take any chances. I would lock my room before I left and carry all my money around just in case. She would try to coax money out of me and I would refuse. This is when she turned nasty and the fights really began.

One day, things exploded and she threw me out of the house, going so far as to take my key away. I went to my father's and it was fine for awhile. I remember being really upset but also really angry. I'm not going to pretend I was blameless but the reprisal was far worse than the argument warranted.

After a couple of weeks, she called me to say she was sorry, and that everyone makes mistakes. I wasn't really sure, but I didn't want to abandon her and was confused my feelings, so I ended up going back to her place. Things were ok for awhile I guess. Nothing had really changed. But there was a tension in the air. Or at least I felt tense most of the time I was at home. She started another fight based on nothing and threw me out again. This time, I wasn't going back. When she finally got around to begging and pleading, I started to relent a little bit. But then I remembered the terrible things she had done and I stood plucked up my courage and stood firm. And that was that.

I didn't see her much after that. She still held a kind of power over me for quite some time, and although I didn't really want to see her, I felt I had an obligation to my mother and I did anyways. Basically, I would choose activities that would allow us to spend as little time talking talking to her as possible. Movies, shows. Whatever. I always made her pay for these, a kind of revenge for earlier money stolen.

Things carried on like this for some time. Then my grandmother died. She had been in and out of hospitals for a year, then suddenly that was it. My mother was understandably distraught and used that mourning period to get me to take care of the details, including calling her aunts and uncles and arranging burial and funeral home. She would come out of grieving to veto or criticize some of the choices I had made, indicating to me she was perfectly capable of arranging details but chose to place the burden on me instead. She cashed her last pension cheque and sold as much of her stuff as she could before declaring officially dead to the government. She plied relatives for money, laying it on pretty thick. Since social services had already paid the whole cost of the funeral, these final despicable acts of disrespect disgusted me.

I didn't speak to her again until almost a year later, when my grandfather died. Remembering the last experience I stayed completely out of it. I went to the viewing, said my goodbyes and that was the end of it. I didn't even go to the funeral after that. I just couldn't take it.

That was the last time I saw my mother. She called a couple of times after that and I tried explaining why I didn't want to be around her for awhile, but she was deliberately obtuse, so I gave up. She called and I just didn't answer. Finally she stopped. That was five years ago.

She died of a heart attack. I knew this was likely, even as a small child. She never exercised and smoked heavily. She ate incredibly fatty foods and downed alcohol and coffee like they were water. To make matters worse she took up pot in her 40's, which wouldn't be that bad, but only compounded everything else.

My dad is the one who told me, very gently. He had always been good to me where she had been bad. He urged me to reconcile with her, I suspect in part because he had never really known his own father and didn't want me to make that mistake. But I never did. When he told me the news I was just quiet. Stunned and blank. I started to cry, but out of sorrow or relief I'm not really sure.

So she's gone. I can't say I miss her. I remember loving her once but the more shit that got piled on to me, the more the more it receded until it was gone. It spite of it all, I can't cay say I hate her. I just don't want to be around her anymore. It's not much, but at least it's something.