The Widow

My Father was in the nursing home for exactly 1 year, 1 month and 1 day before he passed away. He gave up on life. I gave birth to a beautiful little girl 3 months before and took her to show him, I lay her beside him on the bed and he held her. I was glad they a least met. But after his comment `If you are not going to hold to your Mother then I won`t be able to see you and if that means I don`t see my Grand Son then that is how it will have to be` I was under no illusion that he would ever be any more devoted to his Grand Children than he had been to me, his Daughter. I`m sure he loved them in his own way but I knew without a doubt they would always be second best to her. And with just as much certainty I knew they would always be My number one priority. We spent some time with him in the hours before he passed, he was barely conscious and unable to speak. As I was breast feeding I had to go back to my daughter, leaving Mother by his side, she called from the home to say could we come back, I knew then that he had gone. I asked for a few minutes with him alone at some point. Holding his cooling hand I told him I think we would of been OK had it not been for my Mothers ways and I apologised for any heartache I had caused him.

.....looking back all these years later I recognise I was deep in the, `its always my fault, I was never good enough`, head space. I mentioned the heartache I had bought him, ignoring all the heart ache he bought me and the heartache he could so easily have saved me from. I said it may have been different if not for my Mother, ignoring it could all have been different if not for him, if he had not been such a willing Enabler, if he had not had such a nasty temper with me so often, if he had had an ounce of empathy for me. If I had to sit there again, understanding things as I do now, I would of just said God Bless, I hope you are at peace now. If either one of us needed to apologise, it was surely him to me. And I think that shows I have healed a little.


While he still lay in his death bed my Mother began dividing up his things. Wrinkling up her nose as she surveyed his TV, she told me she didn`t want it and I could have it. I told her there was time to sort those details out but it was not now. We took her home and I offered to come in with her, she was quite composed and said firmly that she wanted to be alone. I watched as she let herself in and closed the door. I really could not imagine how she would be about to grieve or even if she was about to grieve. Would she just call everyone saying she was alone and I had gone already, using it as an opportunity to slander me. Or would she weep for her Husband because she loved him...? It felt doubtful...maybe she may weep because she had lost her most loyal servant or even from a pang of guilt knowing she never really cared about him....or maybe she was just in shock. She was as much of an enigma to me as a widow as she was as a Mother. I really had no idea. Oddly enough she was not too theatrical in the role of grieving widow, she played it from a quiet, `I`m a little lost now` angle. Maybe to encourage my support of her and to secure her place in my own family dynamic. His funeral was a quiet affair, 2 weeks before Christmas. To add to it all my milk began to dry up but my baby still wanted to feed, would not take to the bottle and at 4 months was refusing even a little baby rice. Everyone came back to mine for tea and sandwiches afterwards.

My Husband was quite distant, envisaging Mother fast becoming a big part of our lives. Though polite he really could not bear her. The slow realisation dawned on me I now had to cope with a bereaved, Narcissistic Mother, an emotionally unavailable, borderline alcoholic husband, my dear little baby Daughter who was struggling to get into a feeding routine and my introverted, quiet and gentle Son. I did my very best to supply everyone with everything they needed, the love I shared with my precious children sustaining me and compensating for the lack of connection with my Mother and Husband, with whom most things were very much one way. As a well trained and life long people pleaser I readily stepped up to the plate.