Mom passed away after 15 month decline in health. Any advice on working through this?

I’m sorry for your loss. I don’t have any great answers for the painful thing your mother felt the need to say, but I do hope the knowledge that you did your best for her and set a great example for those who saw and know that is a comfort to you. At the end of the day, we each have to live with what we’ve done. Your mom left this world with a hateful comment. You’ve left her with kindness and compassionate care. That should bring you peace. I wish you that

My mother is an extremely selfish woman. I was just telling my 28 y/o daughter that when I was pregnant with my first child, my son, I was very sick and spent more time in the hospital than out of it. My mother was living across the country at the time and working as a saleswoman in the Better Sportswear Dept at what's now Macy's. She was making lots of $$$ in commissions and doing lots of dirty deeds by switching price tags and fighting other saleswomen for sales. She wasn't about to give any of that up to come help me out, or give me support, while I was in the hospital for the better part of 5 months. Oh, she talked a good game, asking if I 'wanted' her to come to Connecticut, where I was living at the time, but I wasn't going to ASK her to come. I wanted her to WANT to come, know what I mean?

But you know what? You can't get blood from a stone.

And here's another thing: when someone is facing the end of their life, they start thinking. They start making realizations. They start feeling sorry for the things they didn't do so perfectly in life. Take my father, for instance. When I lied in bed next to him during his hospice days, I told him what a great dad he was and what an accomplished man he'd been in his life. He vehemently disagreed. He said he'd been a failure. He was looking back over his life, ruing what he'd been and lamenting what he could have done differently. Nothing I said was going to change HIS mind.

Your mother was facing the end of her life here on Earth. She knew she was selfish in certain ways, and she was honestly asking WHY you were doing something for HER that she didn't have in her to do for YOU. Why? What quality did you have inside of your soul that she lacked? An honest question, more than likely. And probably not intended to hurt you.........or to leave you unsettled, in spite of it having left you that way (as it would have me).

When I am at the end of my life, and my whole life is flashing before my eyes, I think I will wonder why I did certain things, or felt certain ways, and probably wish I'd done some things differently too. Who's to say?

Right after my father took his last breath, my mother began crying. She said that she 'wasn't very nice' to him during their 68 years of marriage. Which is a gross understatement. But she was already sorry for what she hadn't been for him while he was alive. I imagine that when she is at the end of her life, she will have some regrets to share with me as well.

Your mother was a a great mom and great person, as you've said yourself. She may have lacked certain traits, as she was admitting to you, which does not take away from the fact that she was still a great mom and a great person. Just not perfect.

Now is her chance to be perfect. To be all she wishes she was in human form. Now she is at perfect peace.

I am so sorry for your loss, my friend. Wishing you peace and comfort as you pass through your grieving period.

I would consider that the reason she didn't visit you in the last few years of her life, was due to dementia. Dementia creeps up sometimes. I didn't know what early dementia looked like, until my LO (cousin) got it. I never understood why she stopped coming to family holiday gatherings and meals. She would fake being sick or show up and leave early. LATER, I found out that she was confused, scared and disoriented. She hid the fact she had early dementia. She could still manage her household. She was embarrassed that she couldn't keep up with the conversation, she had forgotten names of family members, and felt overwhelmed when out of her home. It wasn't that she didn't want to or that she didn't still love us. She was scared. I feel bad now that I shamed her over not showing up.

And, I wouldn't take what someone who has dementia says near the time of death. She likely suffered delusions. Near death, she likely had low oxygen to the brain. My LO (cousin) later in her dementia, doesn't even know who I am. At one point, she thought the staff members were her friends and that the deliveryman was her boyfriend that she dated. They get things mixed up. So, I'd base my opinion of your mother on her life as a whole and not a few things she said after getting dementia.

If you still believe that she was not as caring as you would like, I'd try to look at the positive and negative, weigh it out and try to take with you, things that comfort you. I know that with my mom, I see things that no other people in this world see and it's pretty negative. I have chosen to forgive her and accept it. She's not perfect and that is just something that she will take with her to her grave one day. I have chosen to free myself from it. I hope that you can find peace.

Since you knew she was sincere and lucid when she said she wouldn’t have done the same for you.... that is not a “great” mom or person. It’s crappy. She basically told you you weren’t worth it to her. And I think deep down you realize that. It’s very hard to accept when the one who was supposed to love us unconditionally— a mother’s love— simply didn’t love us like she ought. It makes us feel terrible and maybe we have to accept the fact that Mom wasn’t the mom we needed.

We tend to exalt our dead. “Oh, grandma was so lovely, if only I could hear her complain once more just to have her here!”... when in life they were actually difficult people.

You can miss someone and still be real that they weren’t a great parent or person.