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Originally Posted by rainbow8
Thank you for sharing, Sally. I'm sorry you've gone through so many losses. Your perspective on it is helpful to me. I think, in my case, I still regret "checking out" when my Mom was sick and dying. I wasn't there emotionally because I couldn't deal with it. Looking back, I see myself almost like dissociating through her last months. She didn't talk to me, and I didn't talk to her. I didn't have words to even say "I love you." I didn't talk about death and neither did she. For a mother and daughter who were so close, it seems weird. I wish I had been in therapy then, to get help with how to have closure with a dying mother when I didn't know how.
I've written letters to her in my therapy, and written answers back. That helps, but doesn't take away from the way I handled her death back then. One of my Ts said that my Mom could have initiated a conversation. It wasn't my fault. It is just the way it was. I was 33 with a child, my Mom's only grandchild. We knew this was coming; she was sick for about 3 years. My family did the best we could, in the way we could. I just wish I had told her "I love you". I don't know if she said it to me either. I remember how much it hurt for me to be in the room with her, and I didn't know what to say. I wasn't ready to see her like that. I wanted her to still be around and be a Mom and grandma, and a great grandma like my Dad was. It's really sad for me.
So, the phrase I wrote is significant for me, in my own way. With Ts and Moms, it's always too soon.... I know that Blur will say it ties in with my other statement: "If I stay in therapy forever, it's like my mother never died." I think I cried because T is like my Mom. She always praises my artwork and my writing; she is there for me, she says nice things to me, she is kind to me, she smiles at me, she cares about my life--all the details like my Mom did. When I quit seeing my T, it's the loss of 2 very important people in my life, not one. That's how I feel, but intellectually I know it's not quite like that. When I wrote those two statements, they came from my heart, in a deep place, not from my brain. They aren't meant to be logical. I can see it's personal, not general. It's MY stuff, not anyone else's. It's okay if no one understands. Your perspectives are your own. We're each different.  |
This seems very insightful to me, Rainbow. I wish I had a way to tell you how to process your mom's passing and the regrets you have surrounding it, and it's not really surprising, in light of what you said, that it's coming up again now with leaving T. They might not BE the same, but the feelings that are getting dredged up are the same.
When I terminated with my T last year, I had actually just experienced two deaths in my family -- actually, my T informed me he had decided we would not meet anymore on the same day that I found out my great-uncle (who was basically my surrogate grandfather) was dying. That was a crappy day.
Anyway, my great-uncle was a really good man. Just a really great guy. And he was over 90, and it was time for him to go, but I was very sad. And his passing made me think of my actual grandfather's death. I did not know my grandfather well; he walked out on my dad and grandmother when my dad was little, and never really got his act together. Most of the time when he called, it was in a drunken rage. I remember when he died, I was just angry and upset. Not because I missed him. But because it wasn't fair to my dad, that we had to go out to another state and take care of his dad's stuff because my grandfather had no other family, not fair for my dad to have never had a father that loved him and wanted what was best for him. My great-uncle couldn't be more of a contrast -- that guy saw everything through, and I knew how he felt about me, and he knew how I felt about him. No loose ends. My actual grandfather was a hot mess of loose ends.
I wrote to my T about all of this, because terminating with T really WAS a time of grief. It wasn't the same kind of grief, but I realized I was angry at my T in the same way I was angry at my grandfather. We were parting on terms that were so unnecessarily bitter. I knew I'd be very upset when my great-uncle finally passed on, but I was surprised at just how ok I was. I would have liked him to be there for the birth of my first child, but it was ok. He knew I felt that way. I knew he would have liked that. It was ok. So all of this really did resurface -- I mean, obviously, my great-uncle's death happened right at the same time, but what was remarkable was how both events made me think of my grandfather's death over 13 years before... one because it was just like it, one because it was nothing like it.
Just wanted to say I don't think you need to be logical about this, or that you need to say it exactly the right way. It's not really a logical thing.
ETA: I hope you know that no one really knows how to deal with death while it's happening. I know you feel a lot of pain and regret over what happened with your mom, but I hope you are more able to forgive yourself now for not really knowing what to do or how to deal. Nobody really does.