My dad died when I was only four years old. In my head sometimes I think of incoherent images of how he gave me a Christmas tree on New Year’s, how he inflated balloons for my birthday, a huge mushroom that we found with him in the woods…
Six months after his death, my mother began to actively arrange her personal life. So active, that sometimes I was brought home from kindergarten by the teacher on duty. Mom was not at all embarrassed by this, and history repeated itself until the headmistress threatened to deprive her of parental rights.
Then my mother took me to my grandmother and disappeared altogether. My grandmother took me to first grade, helped me do my homework, worked as a manipulative nurse, managed to run around the apartments in the evenings, administering IVs and injections to make ends meet.
I was already in seventh grade when my mother showed up again. She had never found “the man of her life,” as she once put it, she looked worn out by life itself, and, on top of that, she was also very addicted to alcohol.
I still remember with horror the three years before I went to college. Mom gave me and my grandmother daily scandals, demanded money for booze, and the only positive thing was that she was no longer in demand from men …
I went to college to go to another city, I was sorry to leave my grandmother, but to stay close to my mother did not want. Perhaps the fact that I left, and influenced the sudden death of my grandmother. Her heart gave out. I had to arrange the funeral. With difficulty, but I got a credit card from the bank, and then, when I was in college, I spent two more years paying back the money spent on my grandmother’s funeral, moonlighting as a dishwasher.
After graduation, I managed to get a job at a large firm, I set myself the goal to make a career, and in five years I succeeded in this well, becoming deputy chief of department. I communicated with my mother only over the phone, I even did not give her my address, so she did not come with a “friendly visit” and the demand to “borrow” money.
A new employee who came to our department tried to establish personal relations with me, in addition to his official duties. I liked him too, and six months later we got married. We didn’t have a big wedding, and I simply put my mother before the fact that now I had a family and something to spend the money on, limited her to a certain amount of money transfer, and asked her not to beg for “extras”.
When my mother called and said that she was seriously ill, I did not believe her at first, she regularly blackmailed me with her “illnesses” by extorting money, but this time it turned out to be really serious. She needed constant care, and she asked me to either take her in or move in with her.
And I, listening to her, realized how distant we were, remembered all the spoiled years of my childhood and youth, and had absolutely no desire to stay at home with her and change her diapers…
In the end I made the decision to pay for a nurse for my mother and to finance her treatment. At first my husband talked me into moving my mom, not understanding why I didn’t want to do it, until then I hadn’t told him the details of our relationship with my mother. When he found out, he said he would accept any choice I made. I had already made my choice. I can’t get over myself, though sometimes I want to…
