My aunt died a couple of weeks ago. I never said anything because I was feeling bad that I couldn’t go to her funeral. My husband couldn’t get the time off work to drive to Ottawa and my older brother who’d I normally get a lift with in cases like this was working out of town at a convention so he couldn’t go to the funeral either.
Yes I could have gone on my own or perhaps taken a bus with my sister, but it was just too far to travel with my health being as poor as it is these days.
So earlier today I got a call from my cousin – my aunts niece. Her mother was my aunts sister and both of these ladies happened to have married my fathers brothers so there’s a very tight connection between those two families.
Anyway .. I digress. My cousin is still very torn up about the death of my aunt. She was present when my aunt died and she proceeded to tell me just about every detail. This being only eight days from the 5 year anniversary of my mothers death (Aug 28th) made hearing details that were reminiscent of what I experienced with my mother made me really sad.
It also made me angry. This was the cousin that told me so many times how close she was to my mother, yet in the three months that my mother was in the hospital dying she could bear to bring herself to visit her because it would just be too hard. Now she’s wallowing in her sorrow and feeling traumatized over what she witnessed and experienced with my aunt.
I’m angry at her for deserting my mom and I guess deserting my brothers, sister and myself yet calling today and discussing stuff that she had to have known would make me think of my own mother and everything that I experienced five years ago.
Chris and I were the only ones able to be with my mom when she died and I’ll never forget that experience. Yet it was marred by the fact that I was trying to call my only brother who happened to live in Ottawa to tell him our mother was dying and he said to me “Oh the doctors think that all the time- they’re probably wrong” and, as I sat by my mom’s beside watching her moan and in pain and go through Cheyne Stoke breathing patterns (that awful gasping or lack of breathing for a moment followed by a gasp that makes you think over and over again the the person has just passed), I said to him “I’m a nurse, I’ve been with people when they’ve been dying. Our mom is dying. Leave work and come to the hospital”. He still didn’t believe me and didn’t come until I had to call him back and tell him that she had died.
This whole conversation with my cousin this afternoon not only left me feeling down and depressed all day but it also made me realize that I’m still very angry with my brother. I’m mad at him for what he did when my mom lay dying before me and for several things that happened later. I thought that I had finally let it go, but I guess I haven’t and I think now that I probably never will.
So … I guess I’m having a bad day. Oh and the migraine that I was suffering from a week or so ago seems to be back. Ughh.
The one thing that I did learn today that I didn’t know was that my aunt was a big traveler. I knew that, but I didn’t know that she’d seen every US State! She completed her mission just at the end of May this year when she went on one of those Alaskan cruises with her two sisters (0ne of whom is my other aunt – I guess my only aunt now on my dads side of the family). I’m not sure if she saw all of Canada. I didn’t think to ask, but I suspect that she didn’t see every province and territory.
Have you had a death in the family that because of the actions of others left you with bad feelings that you might not ever be able to forgive or forget?
You know, my cousin made me feel so bad thanks to her bring up memories and feelings that I try to keep buried that I was more depressed than I ever get with my Crohn’s and other complaints that make me feel ill almost every single day. Thanks cousin.
