I've Been Grieving Her For Years
She's still alive. The loss was never about her death.
I think about what it will feel like when my mother's gone and I'm horrified by the first thing that comes: relief.
Just relief. Not the grief everyone talks about. Not the hole in the world where a person used to be. The exhale I've been holding for years. The lightness that comes from knowing I won't have to manage her anymore. The weight, lifted.
And then immediately, the guilt. What kind of person feels relief at the thought of losing their mother?
Because I do love her. That's the part that makes this complicated. This isn't about hating her and waiting for her to die. This is about me loving someone and knowing that their absence will make my life easier. I know that I'll breathe better when she’s gone.
My shoulders drop. I didn't even know they were up near my ears until they weren't. My jaw unclenches. There's this physical response that happens when I think about her death, before my brain catches up.
My body already knows this will be easier. No more 3am calls. No more dropping everything because she's in a dark place and I'm the only one who can talk her through it. Is today the day she actually does it?
It's not her fault. Or it is, but not in any way she could control. She didn't choose to need this much. She didn't choose to be someone whose life requires constant vigilance from her daughter. But the responsibility is real regardless of fault. The weight is there whether she put it on me or I picked it up myself.
I imagine sleeping through the night without my phone on full volume when she’s gone. Making plans without the background anxiety that I'll have to cancel them. Existing in my own life without having to manage hers.
I feel like a monster. What daughter thinks these things about her mother?
The Inheritance I Didn't Ask For
I was eight the first time she told me I was the only reason she hadn't killed herself. I didn't understand exactly what that meant, but I understood it was my job to keep her here. That if she died, it would be because I wasn't enough.
I was a kid. I didn't know that wasn't normal. I didn't know other kids didn't tiptoe around their mothers' moods, didn't learn to gauge how bad it was by how long she stayed in bed, didn't feel responsible for making her want to live. I was spending my evenings talking my mother down from ledges.
By the time I was old enough to understand what had happened, the pattern was set. I was the one who handled things. I was the one she called. I was the one responsible for keeping her alive.
I was the one who handled things. I was the one she called. I was the one responsible for keeping her alive.
And you can't just stop being that person. Even when you move out. Even when you build your own life. Even when you know, intellectually, that you're not actually responsible for another adult's survival. The role is already cast.
So I'm 25 and I still answer every call. Braced every time I see her name on my screen. Dropping everything when she needs me, which is always, which is exhausting, which makes me feel like a terrible daughter for even thinking that word — exhausting.
The Two Things Happening at Once
I imagine the phone call. The one where someone tells me she's gone. Immediate and undeniable relief fills me. The phone can be off. The crisis management can end. I can make plans without the asterisk of "unless my mom needs me." I can travel without the guilt that something could happen while I'm gone. I can sleep.
Then comes the kind of grief that will hollow me out. Because she's my mother. I love her. There will never be another person in the world who knew me from the very beginning. Despite everything, despite the weight and the exhaustion and the resentment, she's still the person I call when something good happens. She's still the voice I hear in my head. She's still my mother.
And I don't know which one is more true. Or if they're both equally true. Can one feeling cancel out the other? I'm supposed to feel guilty about the relief, which makes the grief more complicated, which makes the relief feel more necessary, which makes the guilt worse.
They'll happen at the same time. In the same moment. In the same breath. And I'll have to hold both.
I think about her funeral. I'll be expected to cry. To speak. To say something about who she was, what she meant to me. And what will I say? That I loved her? True. That I'll miss her? Also true. That I'm relieved? Can't say that. That her death means I finally get to live my own life? Definitely can't say that.
So I'll say the things you're supposed to say. And I'll mean them. And I'll also mean the things I don't say. And I don't know how to reconcile those two truths.
You're supposed to love your mother without conditions. You're supposed to be there for her. You're supposed to feel grateful for everything she sacrificed. You're supposed to mourn deeply and purely when she dies.
The social script doesn't account for this. For loving your mother and being exhausted by her. For wanting her to live and also wanting to be free of her.
I'm afraid the relief will be bigger than the grief. I'm afraid that when she dies, my first real feeling will be freedom, and the grief will come later, smaller, quieter, more obligatory than genuine. And what does that say about me?
Maybe when she dies, the grief will overpower everything else and I'll be devastated in ways I can't imagine right now. Perhaps the relief will seem insignificant next to the loss. Maybe I won't feel relieved at all. Maybe I'll only feel her absence and it will be unbearable, and I'll realize too late that I wanted her here despite everything.
I don't know which would be worse. Feeling relief and confirming that I'm a terrible daughter. Or not feeling relief and realizing I wasted years resenting someone I actually needed.
The Grief Is Already Here
I've been grieving for years. Not her death, but her life. The version of her that could have existed if things were different. The mother she might have been if she wasn't drowning and I wasn't the one trying to keep her afloat.
I'm grieving the mother I needed and never had. The one who could have held my problems instead of me always holding hers. The conversations we could have had if every conversation wasn't crisis management. The relationship where I got to be the daughter instead of the parent.
So when I think about her dying and feel relief, perhaps what I'm actually feeling is that finally, I can stop grieving the mother she isn't. Finally, there's permission to let go of the fantasy that she'll change, that things will get better, that one day I'll have the mother I needed.
But that means accepting that I never will. That whatever I didn't get from her, I'll never get. And that hurts in a different way than the relief feels good.
When she dies, and she will die, everyone does, I'll carry all of it. The love and the resentment. The grief and the relief. The guilt about feeling relief. The sadness about losing her. The lightness about being free.
I'll carry the knowledge that I loved her and I was tired of her, and both of those things were real.
Perhaps relief and grief will just become the new normal. Two weights I carry instead of one. Maybe that's what happens when you lose someone you loved and resented in equal measure. You don't get resolution. You just get more complexity.
All I know is she's still here. I still love her. But I think about it. I think about my mother dying. I feel my shoulders drop and then I feel my throat close and I don't know which feeling is more true. I hate myself for needing to know and I can't make it stop and I don't know what that means about who I am as a daughter, as a person, as someone who loves imperfectly and is tired and doesn't know how to reconcile those things. I just know it's all true. Every contradictory piece of it.