The forever wound: how could I become a mother when my own mother died so young?
What broke me as a child was my mother’s death from breast cancer. But around that shattering, I became a person – and learned how to parent my son
I try to remember her hands. They were younger than mine are now. I imagine her long fingers and yellow, uneven and unpolished fingernails. Or had her nails fallen out? I am eight, about to turn nine; she will be dead in two weeks. Today is Mother’s Day and I am allowed to stay home alone with her while everyone else goes to church. I am to be her helper, so I carry a basket up from downstairs. I set it on her bed. She is sitting up.
I know this is meant to be our day, our time; it is the first and last time I will be alone with her in this house. But I don’t want to be here. Within weeks, she has transformed from my mother into a ghost, a skeleton; no hair, scarves covering her head. I know I am supposed to want to be with her on this day, but how can I want that? To be with a dying woman, my disappearing mother, whom I resent. It is too much. “What are you doing?”, I want to scream. “What do you expect me to do now, here without you?”
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His daughter whispers, ‘Where are your paychecks?’ in his ear. My stepfather is in a nursing home with dementia. How can my mother and I protect him?
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‘He’s holding all the cards’: My mother, 86, has dementia. Her partner of 30 years is on the deed to her home. How can I gain control of her finances?
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My mother-in-law died. My husband, her executor, did not file a will or open probate. What happens if we sell the house?
“The home was willed to her son with the provision that he paid his sisters a percentage of the home’s value.”MarketWatch - Business
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