So I called my grandma for her birthday on Sunday. She's a great lady and I really look up to her given that she's lived through so much and still has a great outlook on life. When I talked to her she told me two things.
1) My cousin Trevor's mother died about a month ago. She had had some kind of illness that was exaserbated by drinking alcohol. Of course I feel terrible for my cousin who is only a senior in college and has no lost both of his parents (My Uncle died while I was a senior in college from a severe heart attack). He's having to settle all the legal issues of her estate given that he's the only adult next of kin. I couldn't imagine going through that at any age but let alone before I'd even walked across the graduation stage into the real world.
2) My mother has quit drinking. She had gotten a DUI about a year and a few months ago and the punishment from the court included losing her driver's license and having to do some community service (all of which I think she should have done given that she could have killed someone!). She got involved at a church to perform her community service (scrubbing bathrooms and doing other things that if you knew my mother would be particularly painful). I suppose that the community service had some influence over her and she had been going to AA meetings.
All of this is good and I hope it does signify that she really is going to change and not drink again, but now the question comes up do I contact her now that I hear she's not drinking. I quit speaking to her over 2 years ago becuase of her behavior and the damage that it was causing to me and to other relationships in my life. On one hand I want to have the relationship with my mom mended, however, I'm not so excited about putting myself out there again with her. I had to go through a lot to resign myself to the fact that I may not talk to her again because she was hurting me.
Can someone really change? How do I know that she's changed for sure? Why wouldn't she contact me if she truly had changed?
These are just a few of the questions on my mind. I'm praying right now for wisdom to know what to do.
Showing posts with label Mom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mom. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Missing pieces?
My Dad is headed out on his fall back packing trip with his buddies tomorrow. The guys he's going with are friends he's had since his first job nearly 40 years ago. We always try and get together for dinner before they head out because generally it's the only time the wives and kids get to see each other.
These guys have known my Dad through everything in the last 30-40 years. Through the births of their kids, grandkids (not my Dad obviously), divorces, loss of jobs, etc. These guys all knew my mother before my folks got divorced and even before she started drinking heavily.
I accepted a long time ago, that because of choices she's made along the way I lose little pieces of her all the time as if she were dying over and over. I keep thinking that this will hurt less over time but so far that's not been the case. Tonight at dinner they were talking about memories where my mother was obviously there but trying to exclude her from the story. I know it wasn't purposeful, but I am sad because most people get to hear about memories from their parents. I really don't know much about her before the alcoholism started and I lose more and more of the parts I did (with memory of my own fading) all the time.
I pray some day that she'll come around and we can repair the relationship we had (and possibly build something better). I'm still hopeful, but not blind.
Not a long thought but something I just had to get down, before the thought passed me up.
These guys have known my Dad through everything in the last 30-40 years. Through the births of their kids, grandkids (not my Dad obviously), divorces, loss of jobs, etc. These guys all knew my mother before my folks got divorced and even before she started drinking heavily.
I accepted a long time ago, that because of choices she's made along the way I lose little pieces of her all the time as if she were dying over and over. I keep thinking that this will hurt less over time but so far that's not been the case. Tonight at dinner they were talking about memories where my mother was obviously there but trying to exclude her from the story. I know it wasn't purposeful, but I am sad because most people get to hear about memories from their parents. I really don't know much about her before the alcoholism started and I lose more and more of the parts I did (with memory of my own fading) all the time.
I pray some day that she'll come around and we can repair the relationship we had (and possibly build something better). I'm still hopeful, but not blind.
Not a long thought but something I just had to get down, before the thought passed me up.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Missing Mom
Family has often been a tough subject for me. I've been missing having contact with my mother a lot this week. So I thought I'd write a little about what happened there (OK so it's a lot....long post just to warn you).
My family was fine until about 1985. Both of my parents were petroleum geologists and the oil market took a dump at that point. We ended up having to move from the mountains to a house in Green Mountain (in Lakewood, CO- suburb of Denver CO). We moved in August of 2006 and by October of 2006 my Mom was packing up to move out of the house. I can remember her packing her things as she was fighting with my Dad. My parents thought I was asleep but who could sleep through that? Anyway that year was tough because I had to start in a new school and all the sudden my life was incredibly different then it had been. I learned much later that my mother had left my father to be with a man that she'd met in her PhD program at Mines. I don't know that I've ever forgiven her walking out on us.
During the rest of 1986 my mother moved to Evergreen to live with this guy and I visited her on weekends. There was no real place for me to sleep so I felt like an incredible inconvenience to her. In the early part of 1987 she moved to a townhouse in Lakewood (about 3 miles from my Dad's house). I sort of had my own bedroom there but slept on an air mattress for most of the first year. This is when I first realized that my mother drank a lot. I would continue my weekend visits but had to work hard to wake my mother up to take me home on Sundays. She did a lot of really strange stuff during this time. She made a huge deal about me leaving things at her house and at one point threatened to send me back to Dad's dressed in a trash bag because she wanted the clothes that she bought for me to stay there. I remember this part of my life with my mom very vividly. Looking back on it now it was only about 2 years of time but it seemed like a lot longer than that.
In 1988 my mother met the man that would eventually become my step father. Doran Greening. He was mostly a cool guy but did nothing to help discourage my mother from her intense drinking habit. I used to think it was OK, but the older I got the more I realized that she had a huge problem. In Aug 1988 my mother ended marrying Doran and I'm told I didn't treat him very well (although I don't remember it).
Meanwhile my father was working through my mother leaving us and he eventually started dating again. He met a lady through a friend at church that he liked and they eventually got married in July of 1989. She had a son and so my family with my Mom and Dad had disintegrated and rebuilt itself in the space of three years. Now I had allot of new people that I was suddenly supposed to love....of course I had difficulty with this.
In the summer of 1990 my mother challenged the custody arrangement to try and get me to come live with her as she was getting ready to move away to Tuscaloosa Alabama. To my Dad's credit he protected me from a lot of the ugliness but my mom did little to keep up the same illusion. I specifically remember one Saturday morning that she took me to go talk with her lawyer (I have course had no clue what was going on). My dad had do a good job of documenting all the crazy stuff my mom had done and I ended up staying in Denver for most of the year and going to Tuscaloosa every other Thanksgiving, every other Christmas (although I always went there for part of Christmas break), every spring break and every summer.
The custody arrangement was good for my folks I guess but didn't do a whole lot to help me bolster a social life at home. I was gone all the time! My mom did things to try and make the summers fun like put me in summer camp and I actually got to ride horses while I lived with her. This was fun but I ended up having to rebuild friendships that most people would continue over the summer. It also made me feel like my time didn't belong to me and I got resentful. I can remember sitting in the airport one Thanksgiving day because it was my mom's turn to have me....Good grief it was like they were so interested in who's turn it was to have custody, that they didn't care if it punished me to have to travel.
This went on all through the rest of Elementary school and into Junior High. My mom moved to California when I started High School, but the visitation schedule stayed the same. After I got to be a junior I really didn't want to go anymore. Most kids my age were getting jobs and starting to be more on their own. I didn't have any friends in California so I stayed home all day and played on the computer while my mom was at work. This is a bad situation for anyone! Also that summer my best friend from high school died in a car accident and I really just wanted to be home.
Fortunately the next summer I didn't have to go because my mom moved back to Colorado and I was able to start working at the local Ace Hardware :) I loved my job and I made really good friends there. My mom kept making demands on my time but I finally put my foot down and told her that I needed to be more on my own. This really pissed her off but her drinking habits and general personality made me want to have nothing to do with her. I just dealt with because I knew I was going off to college the next fall.
All through college it seemed as though my mom and I always fought about money. She always felt like she was paying too much and I worked really hard to budget what she had given me so I didn't understand why I was getting so much grief over it. The same happened after graduation when Jesse asked me to marry him. She would give me money but then continue to tell me that I was grateful enough or that I was being unreasonable about what I wanted. I didn't know how I was ever going to please her. During all this she bounced from job to job all over the country and I visited when I could but I didn't try hard to go see her because it just caused me heart ache to see how far she'd fallen into her alcholism.
In the spring of 2007 she moved back to Denver to work for a consulting firm. She bought a townhouse not to far from where my husband and I were living. I honestly tried to see her and make the relationship work but her drinking was just ridiculous at this point. After a really bad visit with my grandmother and my mom getting let go from the consulting firm (in August). I finally wrote her a letter and dropped off her keys at her house. I told her I couldn't see her anymore or talk to her again until she got help for her alcoholism.
I haven't spoken to her since.
I guess the whole reason behind this post is that Jesse and I are starting to think about a family of our own. (Which is amazing that I would even want to have kids after everything I went through!) I miss having contact with her because there are questions I'd like to ask and things I'd like to know from her about what her pregnancy was like, but I can't call. I have a great relationship with my step mom but I just don't think there's any substitute for your own mother. And so I'm sad.
This isn't a very upbeat post but something I've been wanting to write for a while. Hopefully as Jesse and I do have a family I will miss her less....although I doubt it. I pray all the time for her to get her act together with the drinking but I have no control over her. I know that lots of people think that Alcoholism is an illness but I disagree. It's a choice that may be hard to change later but it's still a choice. At this point I'm sad because she continues to choose the alcohol over me.
I miss my Mom!
My family was fine until about 1985. Both of my parents were petroleum geologists and the oil market took a dump at that point. We ended up having to move from the mountains to a house in Green Mountain (in Lakewood, CO- suburb of Denver CO). We moved in August of 2006 and by October of 2006 my Mom was packing up to move out of the house. I can remember her packing her things as she was fighting with my Dad. My parents thought I was asleep but who could sleep through that? Anyway that year was tough because I had to start in a new school and all the sudden my life was incredibly different then it had been. I learned much later that my mother had left my father to be with a man that she'd met in her PhD program at Mines. I don't know that I've ever forgiven her walking out on us.
During the rest of 1986 my mother moved to Evergreen to live with this guy and I visited her on weekends. There was no real place for me to sleep so I felt like an incredible inconvenience to her. In the early part of 1987 she moved to a townhouse in Lakewood (about 3 miles from my Dad's house). I sort of had my own bedroom there but slept on an air mattress for most of the first year. This is when I first realized that my mother drank a lot. I would continue my weekend visits but had to work hard to wake my mother up to take me home on Sundays. She did a lot of really strange stuff during this time. She made a huge deal about me leaving things at her house and at one point threatened to send me back to Dad's dressed in a trash bag because she wanted the clothes that she bought for me to stay there. I remember this part of my life with my mom very vividly. Looking back on it now it was only about 2 years of time but it seemed like a lot longer than that.
In 1988 my mother met the man that would eventually become my step father. Doran Greening. He was mostly a cool guy but did nothing to help discourage my mother from her intense drinking habit. I used to think it was OK, but the older I got the more I realized that she had a huge problem. In Aug 1988 my mother ended marrying Doran and I'm told I didn't treat him very well (although I don't remember it).
Meanwhile my father was working through my mother leaving us and he eventually started dating again. He met a lady through a friend at church that he liked and they eventually got married in July of 1989. She had a son and so my family with my Mom and Dad had disintegrated and rebuilt itself in the space of three years. Now I had allot of new people that I was suddenly supposed to love....of course I had difficulty with this.
In the summer of 1990 my mother challenged the custody arrangement to try and get me to come live with her as she was getting ready to move away to Tuscaloosa Alabama. To my Dad's credit he protected me from a lot of the ugliness but my mom did little to keep up the same illusion. I specifically remember one Saturday morning that she took me to go talk with her lawyer (I have course had no clue what was going on). My dad had do a good job of documenting all the crazy stuff my mom had done and I ended up staying in Denver for most of the year and going to Tuscaloosa every other Thanksgiving, every other Christmas (although I always went there for part of Christmas break), every spring break and every summer.
The custody arrangement was good for my folks I guess but didn't do a whole lot to help me bolster a social life at home. I was gone all the time! My mom did things to try and make the summers fun like put me in summer camp and I actually got to ride horses while I lived with her. This was fun but I ended up having to rebuild friendships that most people would continue over the summer. It also made me feel like my time didn't belong to me and I got resentful. I can remember sitting in the airport one Thanksgiving day because it was my mom's turn to have me....Good grief it was like they were so interested in who's turn it was to have custody, that they didn't care if it punished me to have to travel.
This went on all through the rest of Elementary school and into Junior High. My mom moved to California when I started High School, but the visitation schedule stayed the same. After I got to be a junior I really didn't want to go anymore. Most kids my age were getting jobs and starting to be more on their own. I didn't have any friends in California so I stayed home all day and played on the computer while my mom was at work. This is a bad situation for anyone! Also that summer my best friend from high school died in a car accident and I really just wanted to be home.
Fortunately the next summer I didn't have to go because my mom moved back to Colorado and I was able to start working at the local Ace Hardware :) I loved my job and I made really good friends there. My mom kept making demands on my time but I finally put my foot down and told her that I needed to be more on my own. This really pissed her off but her drinking habits and general personality made me want to have nothing to do with her. I just dealt with because I knew I was going off to college the next fall.
All through college it seemed as though my mom and I always fought about money. She always felt like she was paying too much and I worked really hard to budget what she had given me so I didn't understand why I was getting so much grief over it. The same happened after graduation when Jesse asked me to marry him. She would give me money but then continue to tell me that I was grateful enough or that I was being unreasonable about what I wanted. I didn't know how I was ever going to please her. During all this she bounced from job to job all over the country and I visited when I could but I didn't try hard to go see her because it just caused me heart ache to see how far she'd fallen into her alcholism.
In the spring of 2007 she moved back to Denver to work for a consulting firm. She bought a townhouse not to far from where my husband and I were living. I honestly tried to see her and make the relationship work but her drinking was just ridiculous at this point. After a really bad visit with my grandmother and my mom getting let go from the consulting firm (in August). I finally wrote her a letter and dropped off her keys at her house. I told her I couldn't see her anymore or talk to her again until she got help for her alcoholism.
I haven't spoken to her since.
I guess the whole reason behind this post is that Jesse and I are starting to think about a family of our own. (Which is amazing that I would even want to have kids after everything I went through!) I miss having contact with her because there are questions I'd like to ask and things I'd like to know from her about what her pregnancy was like, but I can't call. I have a great relationship with my step mom but I just don't think there's any substitute for your own mother. And so I'm sad.
This isn't a very upbeat post but something I've been wanting to write for a while. Hopefully as Jesse and I do have a family I will miss her less....although I doubt it. I pray all the time for her to get her act together with the drinking but I have no control over her. I know that lots of people think that Alcoholism is an illness but I disagree. It's a choice that may be hard to change later but it's still a choice. At this point I'm sad because she continues to choose the alcohol over me.
I miss my Mom!
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