My mother died
Hello -- I'm new here. This is bound to be a long post, but I feel like I need to get it off my chest, and am hoping someone in this community has experienced something similar and can offer some insights or even just support.
It has been nearly a year and a half since my mom passed away due to complications from alcoholism. She died alone in her apartment, and nobody knew for five days. She was discovered on the floor in her kitchen by the apartment manager, who suspected something was wrong when she failed to pay rent. Three empty bottles of vodka were in the kitchen sink, her bathroom sink was filled with Alkaseltzer, and--I apologize for this detail--blood was on the floor in her room, as well as on the phone, which was still on the hook.
The hardest thing I've ever had to do was help my grandparents retrieve her things the next week: quilts, yearbooks, pictures. She didn't have much. It surprised me that she subscribed to the newspaper, had a box of stenciling supplies on the table, and still used makeup. Pictures of my sister and I hung on her wall. These things seemed too normal for a person who appeared barely functional, who had stolen my mother from me and replaced her compassionate, charismatic personality with a childish, destructive, and completely unrecognizable new one.
I have been in counseling on and off ever since, and finally recognizing that I was deeply depressed, began taking a mood stablizer. It has helped tremendously. Often, I can look at what happened from a logical perspective; We did all we could to help her but she ultimately didn't want to, or was too far gone to help herself. My grandparents spent tons of money on rehab, saved her from various financial disasters, bailed her out of jail, and payed her rent when she lost another job. I tried pleading with her to get help, yelling at her, and setting limits such as refusing to communicate when she broke sobriety. But other times I feel terrible for what happened, and I don't know that it's necessarily guilt, but imaging what her life was like, and what those last few hours were like, continues to haunt me.
After I went college, my sister--who is five years younger--started to notice things. When she was off work (she was a nurse), she would sit in her room and drink during the day. She stopped caring about her appearance, and she would often fly into angry fits and do mean-spirited things like refuse to give my sister money for lunch, or demand that she buy her own toilet paper. That's when I think her alcoholism really began escalating, but she had obviously been a functional alcoholic for as long as I can remember. When I was younger, I remember finding vodka bottles stashed behind towels in the closets, violent fights between her and my stepfather, and impulsive decisions to move from one place to another, and one man to another (all five of her husbands had drinking problems).
I don't want to give the impression that she was a terrible mother all around, though, or that she was trashy. She could be great. She essentially raised my sister and I by herself, and tried to give us a happy life, but I think immaturity got in the way. She would fly into a rage on minute, then make up for it by doing something nice. I loved spending time with her when I was younger: on trips, she would sing in the car, we'd stop off at our favorite restaurant to get chips and salsa for the drive, and she could be so upbeat and fun. She was also beautiful until alcohol completely took over. She might have been the naturally prettiest woman I've ever seen, with flawless, olive skin, dark hair, athletic frame, and this breathless way of speaking that I've never heard from anyone else. Everybody loved her; my friends were jealous, and people just gravitated her direction.
But when the alcohol took over after my sister left for college (she graduated a semester early in order to move away from her). My mother's assisted living business also failed after her business partner fled, and a married man she had been having an affair with cut things off. She became out of control, bouncing from job to job, from renting a beautiful house to living with my grandparents to living in a trailer house. She took up with a string of raging alcoholic men, who encouraged her habit. She lied constantly, and talked of suicide--once to me, and several times to my grandmother. But sometimes, she would call and she was sober and I had a mom again. It was just for a short time, though. Whenever I was in town and planned to meet her, she would inevitably show up drunk. Every single time she let me down. She told my grandmother after one incident that she thought I was ashamed of her.
The last time I saw her, I brought my boyfriend--who I was planning to move in with--to meet her. She showed up three hours late, drunk at noon. She insisted that we all go to her apartment, and when we did, she embarrassed me by bringing out old pictures of me when I was significantly heavier. She must have sensed that I was unhappy and began baiting me to fight with her. I didn't want her to succeed, so I kept my cool, but I also kept my distance. I hated that my boyfriend only got to see this ugly side of her. He will never know the person she really was.
I'd like to think that I've come to terms with her death, but as I said, it's the details that haunt me. What was she thinking when she died? Why didn't she call someone when she was hurting so bad? Did she make a decision to die and not call for help? Did she think I hated her? Sometimes, I imagine her talking to me when I'm feeling the worst; I think her old self would comfort me in her way, and tell me not to cry and to be happy. She was always the wear-bright-colors-to-my-funeral type. But I don't think 20 years ago she could have imagined that she'd die at 50, alone, in the state she was in.
Plenty of friends, colleagues, and people I didn't even know well reach out to me. My boyfriend has been as great as he possibly could be. But I still feel somewhat alone because nobody can really understand unless they've been through this. It's just not the same when my friend talks about losing her father to cancer.
If anyone who has lived through something similar can offer advice, I'd love to hear it.