Tomorrow is the first-year anniversary of my son’s death. My mother has never referred to him with his name or called him her grandson. Every time I tried talking about Eric to her, she told me to “turn over this leaf,” “forget about it and move on,” and “concentrate on having another baby.”
All week long she has been insistently recommending that N and I watch a certain movie that would distract us and help us have a good time. Last night we started watching the movie. The protagonist, a woman who has the same name as me, and her husband had a baby who died right after being born. The grieving parents realized that their life has no meaning and started going nuts, trying to slaughter each other. The moral of the story is that, in spite of being professionally successful and living in a big, beautiful house, these people have a thwarted meaningless existence because their baby died.
I didn’t know how to explain to N what possessed me to put on this movie at this particular point in time. We spent half the night crying.
The reason why I’m writing these posts is that if I don’t share these stories, they will keep poisoning me from the inside. I wanted to spend today and tomorrow thinking about my son and the great love he brought to our lives. Instead, I’m crying because of my mother’s wanton cruelty towards me. This cruelty has been life-long and has accompanied me throughout my life.
Clarissa's Blog 
Keep your head up Clarissa. You are a wonderful person and have been blessed in other ways.
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Hope you don’t mind me saying so, but your mother is terrible 😦
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Mothers can be terrible like that, can’t they? It is tragic to watch someone expunge their own insecurities and hatreds onto another person. My own mother is quite a piece of work, but realizing that it is her poor mental hygiene and not me has been transformative.
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I am reminded of Claude Steiner’s injunctions against the three major life scripts, in particular the one about “No Mind” …
What your mother doesn’t want to be found out is that she’s a crazy, vengeful bitch, and the entire episode with “don’t tell your father” was about that.
She’s afraid that one day, you might decide that crazy needs to be put in a Crazy Locker and dealt with by professionals.
Americans seem to be sentimental about their elders — they seem to believe that no matter how awful they are, they deserve to be allowed to continue their efforts in home-wrecking and psychological terrorism because of “family unity”.
This is often a fiction created so these kinds of people have more people available from which they can extract “narcissistic source”.
Look at it this way: at least you haven’t had to join forces with the Crown Prosecution Service so far in order to deal with this kind of craziness …
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These past two posts were so sad. I’m impressed that you have managed to find a joyful adult life. Many people with difficult mothers proceed to have troubled lives. But you have flourished and I think that’s beautiful and admirable. Hang in there though this difficult week.
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I’m glad you have this blog as a place to safely deposit such toxic materials. I am terribly sorry that your mother is incapable of being a source of comfort to you.
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I can’t imagine being in this situation, can’t imagine how hard it is. The silver lining is that now you feel free to share those things with your therapist, readers and your father, in addition to becoming a person your grandmother would’ve been proud of.
Hope I don’t take too many liberties, but since you shared the story, I decided to express the following. The painful thing that immediately jumped at me from this post was that you continue hoping for a kind of relationship your mother can’t give, and it only brings more and more pain into your and N’s lives. Till you learn to let it go, stop watching any of her movies, stop expecting her to emphasize with you and sharing your intimate thoughts with her, your family (N including) will be hurt because of your mother’s unresolved problems. If you can’t do it for yourself, may be you could do it for N.
I have the kind of aggressive temperament that I would’ve told her everything I think and brought the father to support you too. The goal would’ve been to make her see it all or, at least, become ashamed and afraid to do more passive-aggressive things to you. When abusive people are afraid enough, ‘suddenly’ they begin to see why recommending movie Y is a bad idea.
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\\ I have the kind of aggressive temperament that I would’ve told her everything I think and brought the father to support you too.
Most likely, that’s a bad idea. I would’ve done it, yes, but that’s because of my own character. Learning to let it go inside oneself and redefining this relationship is the only effective way.
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I disagree that it’s necessarily a bad idea. Often, abusive people are cowards for whom might means right. A strong response (especially one that introduces accountability) is often the only way to stop these people. In my own case, the only thing that put a stop to my abuser’s behavior was police intervention and the threat of arrest. In Clarissa’s case, the threat of family disapproval for her mother’s unacceptable behavior may help to curb the behavior.
I do get the sense, Clarissa, that to date you have been protecting your mother from the consequences of her actions. You don’t owe her protection. Protect yourself instead.
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Too much engagement just exacerbates the problem. You have to detach, on the el model. This is what I was doing, and it was working, until psychotherapy insisted I confront. Especially if you are one person against two that is a losing battle. You are much better off just saying no to bad behavior as it comes up, not expecting the kind of relationship you would want, and appreciating the glimmers of it that come up when they can *without* fantasizing that they are harbingers of a real change for the better.
However, I would not have recommended protecting her from the consequences of the jewelry story. It is so amazingly hostile. Yes, your father knowing would damage his marriage. But it is not you who did the damage, it is your mother. What would “hurt” him is what she did TO YOU, TO HIM, AND TO YOUR GRANDMOTHER, and that is why she wanted it hidden. Your revealing it is not the actual harm.
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Please keep writing. Journaling, as you apparently know, is healing. Nothing will remove this loss from your heart. As time goes on, the pain will seem more distant at times, but it will always be there. Nobody will ever fully understand because nobody has gone through the exact same experience as you have. Other people who have lost children can somewhat understand, but not really.
Something that may help would be writing a note to him each year and putting the note into a balloon and then releasing the balloon. I know that sounds so “cliche,” so maybe you could create your own way to honor his memory.
I am sure you do something to honor his memory and please understand that the pain you feel on the first anniversary of his death is almost the same pain you felt when he did die.
I will pray for you.
Kari
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