There are many moments in estrangement from family that are hard to navigate and one being the death of a family member.
Word reached me last week that my mother is on comfort care for a failing heart. My only comment back was "May she rest in Peace."
I knew the day would come and I wondered how I would feel.
What is in my heart of hearts?
Would I want to reach out etc?
Would I feel regret for the lost years?
How do you reconcile the estrangement at death?
Isn't estrangement death of sorts?
My heart wrenching grief began 19 years ago. My loss happened then. She wasn't the woman I thought she was.
Our Irreconcilable differences were so vast - our relationship broke - and our contact.
The mother and daughter bond was severed.
A death came then.
I was motherless.
I know some will feel it is Sacrilegious to bring up parts of her life - now. But when I see our relationship, all that stands up is why it broke.
Being estranged at death is complicated at best.
Folks don't even know what to say - "You have my sympathies" - seems not to fit.
There are no rules for the Estranged, or protocols we follow. Typically we are out and out.
Persona non grata. I had to look up that definition.
"they become unwelcome or unacceptable because of something they have said or done."
That tracks.
Mostly what I feel is the expanse and emptiness of estrangement. I feel the loss compounded. I feel the aloneness. That is what estrangement feels like - and I don't think death feels that way - when you love someone or have been loved by them.
Estrangement and death then are different.
Love is felt at death.
Lack of love in estrangement.
I don't know what a mother's love feels like.
To be seen and heard and valued as a child - a foreign concept.
I had to be the mother she wasn't, to my self - to heal the wounds she inflicted - along with my father.
There aren't the warm memories of the past - nor the loss of the future.
A void is there - has been there.
Can you grieve a void?
Mostly I guess I am sad.
Sad for what wasn't.
And sad for what I had to lose in order to change the legacy of her life.
Yet the loss has great meaning.
Love lives where it never lived before.
An estranged daughter still feels the lack of love.
Nothing to grieve, nothing to miss, nothing to mourn.
Sadness in missing love of a parent.
Perhaps cheated on the grief in that loss.
Or being proud of the person they were.
There simply isn't a role for a child who is estranged.
Her feelings don't matter.
Her presence not needed.
Love doesn't draw her there.
And love doesn't go where it isn't valued.
The path of love is built on truth.
I want to live a life where love will be mourned.
