[SeamsLikeStitches]

Hi all,

I've just recently started posting here. I found this site by accident. I am a member of the Neuropathy group. My mom committed suicide three years ago. I'm going back to my home town to visit my friends in two weeks for the first time since her funeral three years ago.

I've pretty much finished mourning her death, I don't cry every day, I can talk about her death without breaking down, and all the "confusion" is gone. I understand it more now. Why, because she was sick. She needed help and her husband was too "uneducated" to understand what she was going through. Although, if she was determined, it may not have mattered how educated he was, she would have found a way.

My point is, I went there after her death, I went there three months later to go through the family pictures, etc. with my step father, (which I still talk to once a month just to stay close to him), but it's been three years since I've been in the house, he said it's changed. I'm worried when I go in that I won't "feel" her there any more. I've lived across the country from my mom for thirty years, so I'm used to not being near her, but I'm used to when I go home every five years or so, going into her home and being near "her".

I'm just sad that this is the first time I'm going home to an empty house. I know that those of you who have lost someone you live with have to do that on a daily basis have to do that every day, and I'm so sorry for you. I don't know how you do it. I guess that's why I'm here. How do I do it? How do I walk into her house without her there? Without her things there? Without her smell? Her hugs to greet me?

Just writing this has brought back all the tears! I thought I was done with them. I thought I had cried all the tears I could cry. I'll never stop crying for my mom. No one ever stops needing their mother!

Thank you all for being there.

(Oh, and if any of you are mothers, and have serious depression issues, and consider suicide, please read this again and again! ) I am 47 years old. My mother would be 63 years old. I am a grandmother myself. We lived 3000 miles apart. We spoke on the phone AT LEAST once a week, usually more than that. I was her ONLY daughter. She had three boys also. She used to beat me with sticks, belts, brushes, wooden spoons, metal cooking utensils, anything she could pick up when she was angry, she would nail my door shut, she would get drunk and pull my hair out, she would climb in bed with me when her husband would beat her, and lie next to me and cry while I comforted her, she would call me across the country when she was drunk to yell at me after I left home because she didn't have me there to hit any more. Finally I wouldn't speak to her if she had been drinking. She learned not to call me unless she was sober and we could have good conversations. I could tell by her voice if she had been drinking and I would hang up on her. She knew not to call back because I wouldn't answer. She was a terrible mother, but she was MY mother. She was all I had! I loved her because she was MY mother! She was ill! She was an alcoholic, she was depressed, she was bi-polar. Because she was so deathly afraid of losing her children, she would not seek out help, she did not want to be hospitalized like her mother and sister and get electric shock therapy. When she came to visit, I wouldn't let her hold her first grandchild because when she got off the plane, she was wearing a cowboy hat and hollering like a cowboy, she was drunk! She threw a fit in the middle of the airport. I dealt with it. It was also the first time she had met my husband. The next morning, she apologized, and she held my daughter. Sometimes I mothered her more than she mothered me.

I got help. I have raised my daughters so differently. I am on medication. I know my mother was sick. But I still miss her. There were moments when she was so nurturing and loving, and that is what I hold onto. Those are the memories I keep. That is the mother I have in my heart!

[Alffe]

Oh your ability to really see your mother is amazing...your understanding of the pressures she lived under and your ability to forgive her is just incredible.
You turned out beautifully inspite of her...you realized that you needed medication and were determined to raise your own children differently.

I am just so impressed with your honesty and willingness to share such personal information. You carry your mother in your heart...so you'll be taking her home with you.

[Alffe]

I woke up thinking about you Seams and your trip home. It reminds me of a lot of things in the past.....most of them "firsts". I "spilled my guts" to use a graphic phrase, on OBT and I forget at times that this is a new "home" and not everyone knows about our son and what his suicide did to us.

When Michael joinned the Air Force and met the woman he would marry...I rearranged his bedroom...turned it into a den w/bookcases and when he brought her home to meet us he kidded me about his room disappearing. Told his wife..."Here's what used to be my room"! However, he did notice that I hadn't touched his closet..his clothes hanging there, his desk in there...yr. books..etc. He suggested that it'd make a nice "phonebooth".

When he died, I slept in one of his shirts for a year because it still smelled of him. I gave his young son one of his dads' shirts and he slept in it also.

I remember the police coming to our house that night and I resented their probing questions when in reality they were just doing a difficult job...suicide is the only kind of death where the police get to come out and invade your privacy while you're in shock.

I remember walking about the cemetary with a loaded gun when he was newly buried...it made sense to want to join him. I remember crawling to the bathroom on my hands and knees because I was unable to rise. And I raged at God.....why MY son??? And I was furious at Michael for leaving this terrible legacy for his son.

And I still cry....especially this time of year. But I laugh too because we have wonderful memories and the anger has been replaced with a sadness at all he has missed and is missing.

So go home...go bravely home and know that you won't be alone there. It's ok to cry. ((((SeamsLikeStitches))))

[~scrabble]

Hi Seams,

I'm so glad that you not only survived all of that with your mother, but that you got help. Too often we hear about a cycle that just continues with abuse within families. You have shown a lot of strength in telling your story to us.

I can understand how difficult going home might be for you. I think if you can hold onto the memories of the good times with your mother ... like you said "moments when she was so nurturing and loving" ... then maybe you will still feel her 'there' with you.

take care,

[heyjude5050]

Seams,
I am new to this site too and I intend to stay here and get the support I need from unbiased people who we all have common links. LIFE AND ILLNESSES!!!
I am so glad that you have had the wisdom over the years to understand the things you do about your mother. I am sure that she loved you, but what has love got to do with it, right? She was taken from you by an illness, even mental, which is to me almost worse than physical. I hope you know that the mentally healthly mom loved you dearly.
Mental illness is such a complex ugly demon, and I believe that most of us are step or two away from it. There is a fine line between mentally competent and not.
You sound like you have learned about who your mom was and why she did what she did. You are right, no one could have stopped her and I hope you have put that notion to rest first and foremost. You did not make her ill and I also come from a family with a parent who did awful things to me. I forgave and learned in my adult years about my dad and I look at the way he was raised and I can almost understand why he became so dysfunctional. My grandmother was pure evil and I can only imagine what his life was like.
But like you said, the buck stopped with you. You are raising your family entirely different than you were raised. Not everyone realizes that the chain can be broken. Doesn't mean we are going to be perfect, no one is, but like you, I raised my boys to the best of my ability and I cannot live beating myself up for mistakes. I am more Roseanne than June Cleaver, but I think that is better anyway. LOL
Be very proud of yourself. You sound like an amazing woman. It will be very hard for you to go back, but maybe you can face some more demons and then bury them in your home town. That is were they belong.
Suicide is a horrible thing for the survivors and there have been times in my life that I would would haveliked the easy way out, but that is were the fine line comes in. I do not want that legacy for my sons.
But your mother sounds like she was a very sick woman who just couldn't bring herself to get the help she needed and then just buried the pain in alcohol. How sad for all of you. But you have learned from her and forgiven her and those are sure signs of a brave, intelligent and loving human being. Remember that you will not be alone when you go home.
God bless you and give you the strength you need to continue growing
Judy
please post when you return and vent to us or me if you need. You will definitely be in my thoughts.

[Doody]

(((Seams))) I also am in awe of your strength and determination to be good to yourself and your family. The pain lessens as the years go by, but unfortunately there will still be moments of sadness to go through. 3 years...there is no magic marker for stopping your grief. We all do that in different ways. If there are still people out there in the world who think there is a magic marker for getting over grief, they're wrong.

I hate having to climb hills and go over hurdles at every turn and this is one of those times for you. I have a feeling you'll do just fine.

[Addy]

My dad was an alcoholic.
I can't imagine how difficult it would have been if my mother were one too.
I am the oldest of 3.

I knew things weren't right in our home. I had voices that talked to me in my head... they were voices that I now know were the result of my stress as the oldest child protecting her younger sister and brother...

My mom took us away from our dad when I was 10.... 500 miles away. Nothing was explained to us - we just went on a "holiday" ... which lasted the rest of our lives...

we were then children of divorce in a small town in the 60's...

I was always that little girl who hoped to cure her alcoholic daddy. I never did succeed.

I grew up and married (for all the wrong reasons).. my dad gave me away at my wedding... he was drunk.

He phoned a lot... he was always drunk.... I hated it...

I lived far away... and couldn't escape... and I would lie when he asked for my brother or sisters phone number... so that he wouldn't hurt them, too...

One day... he died.. of his alcoholism...
and the squalor and hell hole that we found when he died is like a nightmare.... my sister and I took photos .... our brother ridiculed us... but we knew... maybe... just maybe someday... we could come out of this strong ... and those pictures may help someone else...

they are still hidden

I can't write anymore.. I am not sad... I am just tired.....

And I simply write to share with you all that in spite of it all... we share and grow...

bless you all

((hugs))

[~KELLWANTSANSWERS~]

I want to thank you for being so open and honest because when i read these kinds of things it really helps me to remember how my children would feel
if something should happen to me!
I agree with everyone else.You have come a long way {{{seems}}}
I think you turned out to be an insightful and intellegent woman!
I always say,you cant do anything about the past-just learn from it and make sure you change the cycle and dont do to your kids what was done to you!
I think if you have something that belonged to your mom.Maybe you could take it with you to hold..Just a thought,since you said your stepfather has changed everything..I am sure it wont be easy when you walk in the house for the first time-but i am sure you will feel your mom's presense-right there with you in your heart!
Have a safe trip and know you are in my thoughts and prayers..
{{{{{hugs}}}}
~Kell

[Doody]

I wonder if Seams will be back and when her visit home is.

(((Seams)))