We had a quiet but very nice Christmas at home with just my husband and I and my two daughters. Our neighbors popped over to visit for a few hours, a tradition for a number of years. Everyone received very thoughtful gifts and overall it was a good time together.

But this was our first Christmas without my MIL who died last January 12th after having lived with us for the previous five years. It was hard facing Christmas without her. The grief came back in a way it hasn't in a while, so we kind of took turns occasionally falling apart in between doing all our Christmas stuff.

About a year and a half ago, April of '07, I started digging deep enough in therapy and trying to process some feelings that essentially made it uncomfortable for me to be around my mom. I was already a little angry with her. She had lived in NH for a number of years about a 5-6 hour drive from my home. She decided to move to FL (1200 miles away) but planned the whole thing with my sister that lives in Fl (my mom was actually moving into a small place on her land) but didn't tell either me or my sister who lived near her in NH and had been taking care of her for several years. The sister she was moving near and I have not been very close (bit of an understatement) for a number of years. Well, my mother chose to tell me she was moving to FL by having the sister I barely talk to tell me over the phone when I called at Thanksgiving. After being on the phone with me.

She moved to FL (and don't get me wrong, I understood her moving. She's 73 and the weather is certainly easier, my sister lives much closer and she's getting to that age where she needs someone close by and that sister is the one she has probably always been closest to. So I got her moving to FL but I hated the way she told me. It also bothered me a little that she was moving so far away from my kids, although I'm not sure why. It's not she ever came to visit even when she lived in NH.)

Anyway, there I was trying to deal with all that, when I started to dig deep in therapy and deal with a lot of long buried emotions. Some of which were to do with my mom. It started feeling very uncomfortable to be around her.

I had told my mom about the abuse around 10 years ago, and when she talked she said alot of the right stuff and said she believed me, then later turned around and told my sister that she believed that I believed it, but she didn't think it had really happened. It was actually a fairly creative solution that allowed her to continue a relationship with me without having to accept that it happened which she couldn't have dealt with. I've never pushed it. She has known I've been in and out of therapy, but I never go into detail. Anyway, from April of '07 until around Thanksgiving, I really hadn't contacted her (which was an usually long gap, I usually talked to her at least once a month if not more often) and I realized it really wasn't fair to her. So I called her on Thanksgiving, explained that I was hitting some difficult material in therapy and I needed to keep my distance for a little while but that I loved her and I would be back. She was very understanding (she always is when she talk to you, it's the wondering about what she's going to say later to a sibling that kills you) and I told her I would talk to her at Christmas.

I called Christmas day (07) and we chatted for around 45 minutes and caught up. My MIL went into the hospital on January 7th for what was for her fairly routine treatment. She had pulmonary hypertension and it was in turn causing congestive heart failure, so fluids would build up so badly she would have to be hospitalized and treated with lasics to get the water out of her system. This had happened a number of times in the past two years but was becoming more common and more frequent. She was doing fine, and actually on Friday we thought she was coming home. But then they did a blood test and her potassium level was too high so they decided to keep her one more night. Then at 3:00 that afternoon, my husband got a call from the hospital that he needed to get there right away he didn't have much time to live. My husband went to the hospital straight from work (which is an hour drive) and I ran down to school and picked up my daughters and we met up at the hospital. Both of my BIL's came in from out of town and we went through a two day death watch until she died on Sunday. We all had a chance to say goodbye and I am very grateful that the last thing mom and I said to each other was "I love you." It was a difficult loss for me because in many ways mom was the mother I had always longed for. We loved each other very deeply, had always been close, but living together had brought us even closer. While this was going on, I ended up having to handle a lot of the communications because my husband and his two brothers, all of whom were very close to their mom, were not in good shape. So I was having to call everyone out of town and let them know that mom was dying and keep everyone informed while being strong for my husband and my two daughters. Everyone once and awhile I would just sneak off to a corner,call a good friend, fall apart for ten minutes, get myself back together and go back into the room. During this time, I called the sister who I am close to, who actually had a great relationship with my MIL also, and told her what was going on. The second time I talked to her she told me that she had let my mom know what was going on and I was like, thank heaven, one less phone call I have to make. Then mom died and I spent the next week planning a funeral, a funeral luncheon, getting an obit published, and going to a wake and a funeral.

I can't begin to tell you how much support we received from our friends. My sister actually came out for the funeral and stayed for a few days to help me get through it. And we were really touched and overwhelmed by the everyone's response. They realized how close we had all been and what a difficult loss it was for our family.

My mother never called. She never sent flowers. She never even sent a card. Nothing, no contact. I'm sure in her mind that since I hadn't called her, she used the excuse that she shouldn't contact me. Of course, my mom NEVER makes the first move, NEVER. I was handling it ok and even making excuses for her in my mind when I realized that she wasn't only ignoring me, she was ignoring a son-in-law of 22 years who had always been good to her and her two grandaughters who were devastated. I was furious. But I know my mother well enough to know that I would never get any satisfaction. She would never acknowledge she had done anything wrong, she would never apologize. As a matter of fact, I was pretty certain I would get to hear about how horrible I had been. So I didn't contact her. For a whole year. I just didn't know what to do. I didn't feel like I could let it go, but I also knew saying something wouldn't make any difference so I let it go. But Christmas was rolling around and I realized that if I didn't make a move, I was going to be estranged from my mother for the rest of her life. She's 73. So on Thanksgiving I actually sent cards to her and my sister with my older daughter's senior picture and the news that she had been accepted to a great school. I got Christmas cards from both my sister and mom which, reading between the lines, was there way of reaching back out.

I HATE the way we never actually talk about things, everyone just knows the unspoken rules.

So on Christmas day, yesterday, I bit the bullet and called. It was exactly as I expected. My mother answered the phone, and was bright and enthusiastic and acted like absolutely nothing had ever happened. My MIL eventually came up in conversation when my mother asked what we were doing with her in-law apartment (its part of our home.) The conversation was bright and surfacy and took little effort on my part. Everyone just behaved like we were this lovely family catching up on Christmas. I have still never received any condolences from my mother on the loss of my MIL. I felt horrible when I got off the phone, I still do.

I am sickened with myself for not saying anything although I realize that Christmas day isn't exactly the right time to bring it up but I still feel like the world's biggest wuss. And then I realized that part of the pain is that I have to endure the loss of my MIL while my mother, whom I'm not sure I would ever have anything to do with again if she were not my mother is still here. I'm angry about that. I feel ashamed of feeling that way, but I do. I want mom back, I want her here and I can't have that. But I have to deal with my mother from whom I will never get anything even close to what I would want.

I almost emailed my T but I just couldn't bring myself to do so on Christmas day. I see him next Tuesday and I think I'm feeling stable enough to wait until then. But I needed to be able to say how I'm feeling so I came here. I almost hate to hit the Post Now button because I know this is going to be obscenely long. Thanks for listening.

AG