It is upon us...?

My sister called yesterday to tell me our mother’s one friend says she believes our mother has cancer and is in her final days. This could be it. Or, it could be yet another in a series of false alarms. But at 76, alone, isolated and in terrible health (with zero medical intervention for decades), her day is coming. It might as well be today.

Quick summary - our mother has lived alone in Rio for about 20 years. Apparently she hasn’t left her apartment in years and is only in contact with people via computer. She has had some mysterious ailment for at least twenty years that has caused her to announce “I’m at death’s door!” many times; and yet she keeps soldiering on. She belongs (used to belong? Who knows) to a religion that eschews medical science. My leaving the religion is a lot of why we’re alienated and have been since 2006. The current friend, who is in the US, video chats with her regularly but says our mother is refusing video chats and has been increasingly difficult to get a hold of.

Our mother blocked both me and my sister on FB recently so we can’t even keep tabs on her. The friend says she did it because seeing me and my sister in our happy lives made her sad. This made me sad for her. But surprisingly, the friends I’ve mentioned this to had a different reaction - they think it’s further proof of how petty and selfish she is. My guess is they are correct. Sometimes my extreme empathy does me no favors. 

So my sister and I are, not for the first time, steeling ourselves for what may happen (and as of this writing, may have already happened). My mother - my talented, smart, funny, charismatic mother, who in so many ways made me who I am, for better or worse - is going to be one of those people who are “found”. Yes. This is how her story ends. It is unbearable but true. She has no one but herself to blame for her fate. And yet.

She did all of these things. She bore me and my sister, nursed us, wiped our butts, endured our tantrums and teenaged snark and everything else, only to die alone having pushed both of us away with her extreme narcissism, selfishness, and cruelty. What, indeed, was the point? She often told me she never should have had children. No truer statement has ever been made. 

Like all narcissists she self-published a meandering autobiography (which at one point I served as editor for; me and my sister are barely mentioned in it. My sister has a friend with a similar mother who also self-published an autobiography in which she and her sister are barely mentioned. How bizarre is that?). Last night I googled it and found a review written by someone who claimed to be a long time friend. It was carefully worded; while he overall praised the book, he also occasionally slips in criticism of her (“I didn’t always agree with her life choices”), etc. It was interesting to read that others picked up on her possible NPD. 

So now...we wait. Since the friend is not near her, the only thing we can do is keep in touch with her to see if they’ve spoken, and perhaps try to get in touch with the management of her apartment building to see if anything “happened”. My sister wants to go down there to “clean up” and I should go too...although it may not be possible. I just don’t know. 

One thing is for sure - I don’t want this. I don’t want to grieve, to be made non-functional, to be weepy and sad and preoccupied. All of those things will happen, and I am very resentful of it, in advance. I am going to cry and wail and rend my garment and feel all alone in the world, even though this woman never gave me an ounce of comfort in the 35 years she was in my life. I’ve been mourning her for twelve years. More, really. I am exhausted. Enough. And it hasn’t even begun.