Earlier this year, in March, my mother passed away. I only made a brief announcement to alert family members that she had joined my eldest brother on the other side. It was just the beginning of an emotional rollercoaster that only recently led me to feel well enough to post today. I wanted to share my journey, the ups and downs, but thought ultimately it wouldn’t help matters if I posted constant updates of my feelings and my experiences, and shared my grief in that manner.
In private, I was able to find help through loved ones. Without their support and guidance, I would still, to this day, be struggling. My mother’s passing affected me very differently and more deeply than when my father passed in 2016. His passing stirred brief emotions that mimicked deep sadness, but through help, I realized that it wasn’t because I truly felt sadness for his passing instead, I was grieving the ‘could have been’ while also feeling a profound sense of clarity.
My emotions toward both of my parents’ passing(s) have been complicated due to the past traumas I survived. I have shared my childhood stories in brief, but it is clear that I have gone through a lot in my life. I am a survivor, but what I have shared less was about my parentification. This is something that heavily encircled my relationship with my mother and so as she passed, I was grieving in an ‘odd way’.
The majority are aware of the Kubler-Ross Grief Cycle, but it is also misunderstood. The cycle of grief is often looked at as a set of steps ending with acceptance, but that isn’t accurate. It does cover stages, but what is not understood is that they’re not in a specific order and can sometimes be repeated. What’s unique, as I’ve come to understand through aid from professionals, is even my grieving wasn’t appropriate due to my past parentification.
For those who do not know what parentification is, I will roughly explain. Parentification occurs when the roles reverse between parent and child. It forces the child to take on roles and responsibilities they’re not mature enough to handle. For example, the care of a parent or in my case financially supporting my parents when the irresponsibility of my father caused us to have electricity turned off or even groceries to not be bought. I also was often the shoulder my mother leaned on which turned into emotional reliance and support for my depressed disabled mother. I didn’t know this wasn’t normal until my adulthood.
After years of abuse on every level, I was diagnosed shortly before my father’s passing with CPTSD. I was never explained my diagnosis correctly which led to me believing I had post-traumatic stress disorder, but I learned in the last few years I shouldn’t have relied simply on my therapists’ words, because I have CPTSD. A more complicated version of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Due to all the complications of mental health and dealing with the fallout of many beloved family members passing away due to cancer or COVID-19 over the past eight years, I haven’t been able to heal a wound before a new one opened. My mother’s passing is the latest, but the difference this time is I had a much better support system in place.
If you have watched my appearances or listened to them, you’ll know I mentioned my mother. Before she decided to move out of my home I was her full-time caregiver. It felt natural as I had for years prior been doing just that, caregiving for her in some form or fashion, but it also built tension within my household. In the end, she chose to move out and into her own place. She had been in her own place for almost a year without any health improvements. She remained almost constantly ill for one reason or another.
Our relationship has always been complicated. In the last years of her life, she began trying to repair some of the damage she caused by allowing me to have a voice. This isn’t the same ‘voice’ I’ve mentioned when it comes to writing and this isn’t a physical loss of voice. My ‘voice’ was stolen by never being allowed to express myself to my family members as I grew up which, through trauma, led to me being a very quiet person. I became an observer. This didn’t start changing until I met my spouse.
After years of trying to tell my parents of some of the abuse I was enduring and authority figures not listening to my pleas I overtime gave up. I stopped speaking up because no one seemed to care about me unless they wanted money from me or for me to do something for them. My mother was a big reason for this. As an adult, I found my voice again and refused to be silenced again. I found myself expressing to her the damage that had been caused and she finally wanted to hear all the words she kept me from saying. She wanted to repair any damage she had caused.
She had become mournful of the damage she had caused unaware she had ever caused it in the first place. My mother asked me a lot of questions. Sometimes this could be 8 to 10 hours of straight conversing. During all of this, she revealed information I had never heard before, like the existence of a miscarriage. This meant I am the youngest of not three but four children. She had not lost one, but two. Due to the stage in which she lost this fetus, the development would’ve made this it a female if it had lived.
Due to the above writing, when my mother passed, I grieved as if I, too, had lost a child instead of the appropriate grieving of a mother I should’ve experienced. With her health issues starting up late last year and lasting up until her passing, I haven’t had time to really stabilize. I have struggled to finish projects or finish them. I agreed to things I most likely would have never otherwise agreed to. I didn’t know what to do with myself and threw myself into what I knew, writing and working.
It felt like I was floating along lost on a sea that I had become used to being rough waters suddenly becoming still. After a lifetime of chaos, the calm and quiet threw me off. Peace hasn’t been something I’ve known, but I did feel it before my mother’s passing. Everything had begun looking up and I knew what I wanted in my life, peace…true peace.
I have quickly learned the kind of people I want around me. I have had to learn hard lessons; it seems to be the only way I learn any kind of lesson. I never go straight for anything; I find myself taking the more challenging road every time. This is reflected best in my independent writing career. Growing up the way I did has led me to make hard choices, the hardest was setting boundaries and sticking to them. I’m on the best track I could be on now.
For those wondering how my family is dealing with this latest passing in our family. We’re all as well as expected. For those wondering how my only living sibling is handling it since we grew up together, my answer is I don’t know. I really don’t care. They’re not the kind of person I want in my life, and I have had ‘no contact’ with them years ago (roughly over a decade ago). They’re not the kind of person I ever want to be around again for safety reasons. For my safety and my family’s, it is best that we are not in contact.
Memoirs are still being worked on. Her passing had led to me doing rewrites. This is my most extended and most ongoing project as I started it many years ago. It sits in the word-in-progress box and will remain there until I feel I am done telling the stories of my life. I hope that this/these works ultimately help others and that they land in the right hands.
The Official Website of L. Bachman 