Thank you…
Do you still feel that way? Do you feel like your mother ever felt like she could have both life and love?
That's a good question… I'm not sure to what extent my own mother had to choose between the two. When it comes to the emotional incest syndrome, there was definitely some of that between her and her own mother (my grandmother) who used to tell her things like "What would you rather do today? Do you want to go to school to be with those mean old teachers or would you rather stay home with me?" when my mother was little… To my grandmother's credit, she herself was homeschooled as a child and ended up a genius with a Ph.D in medicine plus an M.S. in math (and yes, she was unusual for women in those days)… but it never occurred to her to home school my mother. In her teens, when my mother had her first ever crush on a boy, my grandmother simply prevented her from seeing him.
My mother never had a chance to rebel though because my grandmother passed away suddenly when my mother was 16. My mother was the Chosen Child and her mother's death completely destroyed her and she literally never recovered. After my mother passed away, one of our neighbors (who was also at the funeral) was shaken and told me that a week before her death, my mother had passed her by and they talked for a few minutes and at one point my mother said "I wish I were dead, ever since my mother died I've had no reason to live". I informed my neighbor that my mother used to say that kind of thing all the time and pretty much her whole life, though usually not in public.
I used to resent my grandmother when I was younger without understanding why because my mother always described her as a complete saint (on top of being unequivocally beautiful, kind, funny, generous and brilliant). Eventually I realized it was because I was supposed to replace her (well, her and other people as well but she was the main one). My mother used to rate everything about me on a scale of 1 to my grandmother. At my very best I was "almost as beautiful as my grandmother", "almost as smart as my grandmother" and "almost as funny as my grandmother". To give you an idea… even though my eyes are medium blue my mother once literally suggested I get light blue colored contacts so that they could be closer to the shade my grandmother had. She also kept asking me for medical advice and would ask me to "just have a look" at different parts of her body that were causing her problems, rather than ask her doctor. I kept refusing and telling her to go ask her doctor about it and she'd complain that she used to be able to turn to her mother for advice and why couldn't I just study medicine and do the same for her… She would sometimes get me to cave and have a look by telling me that she refused to have it examined by her doctor without me having a look and giving her my opinion first. Other times I would refuse and tell her that if she didn't want to get herself checked that was her problem… and then she wouldn’t get herself checked… :-/
I was relieved, mostly on my mother's behalf, that in the last few years of her life she finally started coming around to the idea that her mother wasn't a complete saint and that her father wasn't the complete epitome of evil… Obviously it didn't relieve her of all her pain when it came to her mother's death, but it seemed to have brought her some relative peace and it felt good to see that in her. This is one of the reasons why I've made it a kind of goal to establish a non-idealized, non-devaluated image of her in my own mind. It's just that it's not always easy because of the way my own mind is set up and also because of the intensity of the emotions surrounding her. So sometimes when the negative emotions start to flare up, I start to freak out over the idea that I might "lose her" (so to speak) in my own mind… if that makes any sense.
At the risk of sounding like I'm shifting blame here; I suppose my mother didn't see anything wrong with her own parenting (like telling me that I don't have to bother going to school if I don't want to) because it was similar to her own mother's and in her eyes her mother could do no wrong… except that she and her mother never talked much and so when she told me far, far too much about her own life it was "the kind of thing she wished she had had with her own mother". On a subconscious and subliminal level it did serve her own needs granted… but consciously I know she did try her best… And sorry if this has turned into yet another long, scrambled thing and it's OK if nobody's even read this far it was just nice to get it out.
