Nov 2024

Some details have been very slightly altered or moved around to prevent doxxing myself.

My mother was born in the 50s on a small farm in the UK. She was raised on the farm and would later work in my grandpa's shop. I never asked what they sold.

Eventually she met an American GI on some kind of leave in the UK. They hit it off, and she got pregnant. The GI got shipped back home, and they kept in contact for a while, but then, for some reason, stopped. My older brother was born after his father had already returned to the USA.

My brother had a good upbringing, but they were both very poor. He turned delinquent and eventually got sent to reform school after a series of minor thefts. It didn't really do much good.

Eventually my mother met my father - over HAM radio. He was a trucker. Again, they hit it off, and again, she fell pregnant. After that, my father revealed he already had a family and intended to stay with them. As you can tell, my mum was not a particularly good judge of character.

Then I was born. I was half raised by my grandma, as my mum had to keep working. She had several types of jobs - delivery, factory, even had a part-time job as a playground attendant at one of my elementary schools. She loved the driving jobs the most. She always loved driving, and kept driving right up until the end.

I had a fantastic childhood. We were poor, and I understood that, but I was safe, warm, and well fed. I wasn't abused or neglected. Compared to a lot of the other adults I've talked to, I truly had a blessed upbringing. Mum kept working throughout it. She had a couple of relationships, but they never lasted long. All with men that ended up physically abusing her. I barely remember any of them myself. I never really spoke to her about them.

She loved her cats. We'd always had cats, ever since I was born. I think at one point we had over 10. Way too many, but she loved them all, and took surprisingly good care of them. They were all fixed; none of them were sick. They were all well fed and well loved. She only stopped homing new cats because losing them became too difficult to bear. She got her final cat cremated and kept her ashes in a little wooden cat-shaped box on her living room table.

Our relationship with the rest of our family has always been strange. My mum has always been socially awkward, usually saying the wrong things, preferring her own company, etc. Her dream was always to get a cottage "in the middle of nowhere" where she could just live by herself. She had siblings but didn't really get along well with them. Her father, my grandfather, was always very distant and cold. He died when I was still young.

She got on well with her mother, though. At least up until the point where my grandma got too old to understand what she was doing. My mum took care of both of her parents into their dotage; she took care of my grandpa through the illness that killed him, and did 90% of the visits, all the weekly shopping, etc, for my grandma. Once they both passed, however, there were family infights over inheritance, as there always are. My mother had her final falling out with the rest of the family at that point. She was in her mid-60s. As far as I know, she never spoke to any of them ever again.

In my late teenage years, my brother took his family (his girlfriend and their two kids, my mother's only grandkids) and vanished. It was due to some family disagreement over money that I barely remember. He did work as a general contractor, and a family member had hired him to do some work that he balked on and ran off with the money, or something like that. All I know is he disappeared. He never made any attempt to contact his own mother after that day.

In my 20s, still living at home, I met a woman online. I ended up moving to the USA to live with her. We're still married. I continued living in the USA to this very day. I only visited the UK once or twice, mainly due to lack of funds. Flying is expensive. But also due to a lack of.. wanting to. I absolutely loved my mum, and really did want her to move to the USA with us.. or at least visit.. but things were so hard to organize, and weeks became months, which became years, and now it's now.

In her late 60s, or maybe early 70s, she was diagnosed with autism. I was not surprised to hear this, but it made me feel conflicted - on the one hand, it makes a lot of her behaviour make a lot more sense, but on the other hand.. why now? Why not when she was younger, when she could have learned to deal with it properly? I know such diagnoses did not exist back then, but it hardly felt fair to be told "Oh, by the way, you were playing on hard mode this whole time".

I was continuing to email my mum almost daily (sometimes weekly.. I have a lot of troubles communicating myself) up until several months ago. After not hearing anything for a couple of weeks, I got an email from her local hospital saying she'd been hospitalized. Eventually, she managed to email me herself to let me know she's been suffering from bladder problems. The doctors were scanning her and testing her. She was in and out of hospital for weeks, all while I was still in the USA. Thank goodness for the health network in the UK - they organized all of this for her.

Long story short, after several months of this, I got an email from a local hospice, saying she'd been transferred there. She had bladder cancer and a blocked bowel, and was dying. I finally mentioned what'd been happening to my wife - again, I have a real hard time communicating important things - and talked about whether or not I should visit. My wife was very pro-visit, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I felt powerless. I still do. I can't change anything. And in my memory, my mother is still a sweet, active older lady that enjoys driving and biking and her father's allotment. She loves her cats and her plants. She loves Fleetwood Mac, Simply Red, and Wet Wet Wet. She didn't like me listening to Papa Roach after I left the lyrics to "Last Resort" up on my monitor one day. She always played Labyrinth Zone in Sonic 1 for me when I was too scared of drowning. She loves sci-fi movies and horror movies. She makes inappropriate comments around strangers, and is very interested in what the neighbours are up to. And I didn't want to see her dying. I didn't want her dying to be my last memory of what she looked like.

Mum herself also suggested I didn't visit in her last lucid email to me. We tended to think similarly about this kind of awful, morbid stuff. So I didn't go. I kept in constant communication with the hospice. The doctors and carers there are fantastic. Mum herself managed to email me a couple times. I even phoned twice.. though she was hallucinatory by then, and honestly, I feel the phonecalls probably did me more psychic damage than they did her any good.

A couple days ago, the hospice told me she had written me a letter. They had scanned and attached it. She'd always written me letters. I guess her brain was just telling her to default back to what she knew how to do. Unfortunately, the letter was.. basically meaningless. Some information about what the hospice had been treating her with, but mostly gibberish. I can't even understand 50% of it. It's the last thing I will ever get from my mother, and I hate it.

She's still deteriorating. The hospice doctor was surprised she's stuck on as long as she has. Very "resilient". But she no longer wakes up.

It's incredibly unfair. My mum worked hard her entire life. She was kind and compassionate. She had untreated, undiagnosed autism. She managed to raise two sons. She had several abusive relationships. And now she's dying. She never got her cottage.

I kept waiting for the big cinematic goodbye - that one phonecall, or email, or letter, where we both said our goodbyes and meant it. But that's not how real human brains work as they die. They deteriorate. They don't understand what's going on.

So I'll say it here. Goodbye, mum. I'll miss you. I'm sorry I wasn't a better son. I'm sorry you were playing by unfair rules. I'm sorry you didn't get the life you deserved.

Love, herb

xxx