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It may have been this pitiful remark that helped me through the years to cleanse and heal the unfeeling I had for her for getting rid of me, and giving me to someone else who couldn,t support or afford to keep me in the way that young sons and daughters are supposed to be reared.
Many years later on seeing "mother" on her death bed, surprisingly looking better than I,ve ever seen her in the past. Cheeks rosy and hair brushed back, I thought about the miserably short life that she had lead and the loveless marriage that she must have had to end up alone on a hospital bed with no family all around, holding hands, grieving, mourning the mother she should have been.
I think the most endearing words that I heard at the funeral was, "thank God shes,s gone."
Nobody is supposed to love you like your mum and dad. The love of a partner can fade with time, often it does; But the love of a parent --- or at least of a good parent --- is with you forever. You can,t lose it no matter how selfish or stupid you sometimes might be. And when a parent dies, it is like the brightest light in your life has just gone out, snuffed out at a pinch.
Anyone losing a parent to cancer or Alzeimers knows that it,s cruelty is boundless. In the end these diseases narrow life down to pain, suffering and humiliation.
To see someone you love go through that breaks your heart. When death finally comes, at least you know that the person you loved is free from suffering.
But why is it still so very hard to say goodbye, in an intensive care ward, to a mother that never was?
written in 1980 after the Christmas death of my mother.
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