Borderline Mother has passed away

[patricia20]

I'm a first time poster here and really am looking for comfort and even advice at this point.

For context - my mum was emotionally neglectful and avoidant my of me since I started highschool, or maybe a little bit before. She was not interested in my wellbeing or me as an individual and would only actively engage with me in front of other people to maintain her facade of being a mother, and later a mother with a difficult daughter. She was diagnosed later in life with an unstable/borderline personality disorder.

I kept a good distance but when I had cancer in my late 20s everything was cemented when she wouldn't visit me and wrote me a 7 page letter about how I was a bully as I asked her to stay at my flat and put my clothes in the wash whilst I was stuck in hospital (new city, new relationship, I was vunerable and felt despite everything, if she was really who she thought she was, she could step up and help). Since then I have not bothered at all. She even tried to make out she had cancer herself when she did not.

Additional things she has done to cause harm were not looking after my unwell Dad or visiting him whilst having heart surgery, demanding my step sister to be put into care when she was made homeless as a young teenager and when my Dad passed away she did not want him to have any nice things for his funeral and when it was clear she would not be the center of attention she admitted herself into hospital by self harming. She never came back out as her physical health started to decline shortly after this.

After spending time in care with complex health problems, my mother died very recently and I am overwhelmed with mixed emotions and have spent the last two days having to interact with her "second life" (these are friendships and acquaintances that my mum has collected over the years, most of which have been told what a horrible daughter I am for not wanting any contact with her). I'm finding it very triggering feeling like the scapegoat again, but now through the eyes of 50 + women. All mothers, all of which could never imagine a mother being unloving and cruel and therefore the relationship breakdown must still fall on me.

I am now thinking I might not go to the funeral but worried this will inadvertently make the funeral about me. But equally I don't want people to approach me and talk to me about my perceived 'loss' or have to hear about what a wonderful funny amazing woman she was, as she certaintly wasn't to me.

Has anyone else been in this situation? How was it not attending the funeral? Or if you did go, what boundaries did you put in place to be left alone?

Thanks xx

[losthero]

I'm not sure what your religion or cultural practice is but if its not a financial burden on you I would have a short, simple funeral and have a close friend or family member who knows how she really treated you stay with you and help have your back. No speeches.  No slides of things that trigger you.  The shortest funeral you can bet away with. No after service bet together with her friends.  You take care of you and try to be surrounded by people who support you.  Our relationships with our BPD mothers are complicated and so is our grief.  Take care. 

[Methuen]

Patricia - you have my condolences.  I am so sorry…

For context, my ubpd mother will soon be 89.  

Can I ask, who is planning this funeral?  Is it you, or a sibling, or  ?

I understand the double bind.  Go, and be traumatized by things said by people who knew her, or dont go, and they will get the impression that all the lies she told about you were true.

One of the things I struggle with is to stop protecting the abuser, and letting some of my own truth be known.

I have never met anyone in person who shares the experience of having a dsordered mother.  And my mother was not disordered in her other relationships to my knowledge, only her intimate and close family relationships. So I believe these bpd mothers felt insulated and safe that they could control situations.  They managed to manipulate us in ways that we kept these problems secret from others.

My T has advised H and I to stop protecting my mom’s image.  Not by spilling our guts but just by saying the little things like “mom is/was a complicated person, and can be extraordinarily difficult.”  

Your truth is your truth.  You can say as much or as little as you need to.  It probably doesn’t feel right to tell dark truths at someone’s funeral, but sometimes humour or little bits of our truth can be let out.

Do you have any involvement or input into the planning of this?  Or is that process also fraught?  Do you have to travel to get there?

I think your guide about what to do has to be whatever is best for your own well being.  

These things are complicated.  I sometimes think our real grief is over never having had a nurturing loving mother.  Not over losing the one we had.

[GaGrl]

I agree with Methuen...we grieve the mother we never had. Much of my therapy was focused on two generations of BPD traits in my mother's family. Fortunately, my mother had only a few BPD traits that were rarely triggered. However, her stepmother, who had raised my mother from a small child, was full-fledged BPD/NPD and was a mean-spirited and jealous and controlling person.

I accompanied my mother to her step-mother's funeral. By that point, she had disinherited my mother, an only child, and my mother, an only child, had stepped away from any care or involvement. Her estate went to a friend with a bequest to her doctor.

We had no involvement with funeral arrangements. We sat behind her relatives. We did not attend the after-service gathering.

The minister gave the eulogy, and I leaned over to my mother and whispered, "Someone should check on who is in that casket, because it doesn't sound like Dorothy."

My mother never felt fully free of her step-mother's abuse and control until her SM died. I saw a lightness in my mother that she never had before.

When my mother died, I (only surviving child) wrote the obituary. I made a very conscious decision to not even mention my step-grandmother in the obituary -- just my biological grandmother who died when my mother was four years old.

I hope you can find a way to move through these days around your mother's death and funeral in a way that honors what and how you have lived. It's okay to have a phrase to use such as, "She was a complicated person" or "We had a complicated relationship."

[zachira]

My heartfelt condolences on the loss of never having the mother every child deserves. My mother with BPD has passed away. I did go to her funeral. My siblings and other people speaking at mom's funeral talked about things she did like graduating from college and never mentioned anything about knowing how to connect with others, having empathy. My mother did do many nice things for me and she was also cruel. I was left abandoned in the crib all day as a baby which resulted in chronic disassociation which I had EMDR therapy for. My mother also told me I was an unwanted child because I was too close in age to my older sibling. Grieving the loss of my mother has been extremely complicated. She did do some kind generous things for me like cooking my favorite foods when I was home. Now that she is gone, I am able to remember the good things while grieving the life time losses and all that I have suffered from never having a mother who knew how to love her children. It sounds like for you there isn't much positive to remember. A work colleague of mine lost her mother who was a horrible person. The work colleague made it clear to the whole staff that she did not want any condolence cards. Since my mother passed away, I have found that people who superficially knew my mother, like contractors, really liked her. I have also found that people who were close to mom in their level of emotional maturity, also liked mom and fell for her superficial personality that she presented, not the person she was when alone with her children. They are also people, mainly loving parents to their own children, who did not like mom and felt sad for her children. Going to mom's funeral was difficult. I was angry and actually unloaded to some people I sat with at the luncheon about how I felt about her. I regret doing that now. Funerals are not for the deceased, they are for the living who wish to be there. Do what feels right for you to go or not to go; also feel free to arrive as late as possible and leave early.

[Nickerdoodle]

Patricia,

I could have asked this myself.    You wrote I am now thinking I might not go to the funeral but worried this will inadvertently make the funeral about me. But equally I don't want people to approach me and talk to me about my perceived 'loss' or have to hear about what a wonderful funny amazing woman she was, as she certaintly wasn't to me.

Has anyone else been in this situation? How was it not attending the funeral? Or if you did go, what boundaries did you put in place to be left alone?

How watchful of you to be concerned about making the funeral about you but I say so what?  Maybe it is time for a heck of a lot more in life to be about you. You don't deserve that kind of scrutiny.  Didn't you have enough of that all your life from her?  The funeral or grieving is about those left behind if they so choose to even grieve at all.  What kind of a relationship do you have with the people you are concerned with approaching you and talking about the loss?  If someone did that to me I think I would gag as my mother was a monster that had many convinced she was Mary Tyler Moore.  Who can turn the world on with her smile?  Remember that little ditty?  Will you ever see these people again?  You might learn a lot if you go to the funeral.  It just might shed some light into corners you once dared not look in. 

My mother died two years ago.  She was cremated and the ashes are still not spread.  There was no memorial service although her friends Rhoda and Phyllis loved her.  I thought Visa and Mastercard might want their hats back. No one even talks about her.  Some of those people at the funeral might surprise you but just think ahead at what you might encounter and decide if it is worth it to YOU.  I can tell you right now some may not notice your absence, some may understand more than you know, and those that chew on it and savoring it might not be good for you.

I don't know if my bitterness this morning helps or not.  Oooh, Mr. Grant.