Mothers - being one and having one

Sad to say my mother died of breast cancer when she was 46 years old, I was 24 at the time. In fact by then my father had died four years beforehand. A day never passes that I don't think of her. It saddens me that she died before I had my own children, she would have made a wonderful grandmother. She spent most of her married life being shunted around the world following my father on his many postings. Sometimes we lived in dreadful homes and sometimes in luxury depending on the country. Dad had very little involvement with our upbringing and there were many times when he simply wasn't around. I have no memories of him telling us bedtime stories, helping with homework, help in the kitchen, shopping etc. This was the fifties and I suppose quite normal. He wasn't a father to look up to. However, in between travels we lived with my maternal g/parents and I was particularly close to my beloved grandfather. Mum was huge fun and I realised how wonderful she was after I grew out of my teens. We would have been as close as I am to my daughter, who is my best friend, so sad.
I know someone who's mother is still going at ninety one. I have to say her mother isn't and never has been the most cheerful of beings. But she seems to resent her terribly and is just waiting for her to die. I would have loved to have the chance to resent my mother, she doesn't realise how lucky she is, she really doesn't.

My mother coped with running our family after my father's physical and mental health had been destroyed by the war and long-term illness. She worked full-time, made all our clothes, shopped and cooked. She looked after my grandmother when she became senile and incontinent, coped with my father's death the week before our wedding and was a rock to friends and wider family. She remarried, had a few brief years of happiness and then died of cancer. I think of her often, see her face now when I look in the mirror and am very moved when my DD says to her girls, "my granny always said...".

My Mum was a highly intelligent lady who missed out on an education because of her parent's attitudes. It made her a bitter lady and all her good qualities got drowned under this sense of being hard done by. She focused her anger on men in general and my father in particular, which made life under their roof as a child very hard. Superficially we had everything - clothes, education, parties, holidays - but underneath was a seething tension that was very damaging. In some ways I think that was harder than out and out rows, as there was an unspoken agreement that we would not mention the elephant in the room and we would pretend that all was well. She also suffered (as I now realise) from PMT and was very much Jeckyl and Hyde.

She was still a bitter lady when she died - although her physical death was preceded by years of severe dementia.

It is very sad as I would love to have good memories of her to look back on - but there were few - except that, in the main, she was a good grandmother. The children did not notice the tensions as they saw them so seldom, and when they were together they tried very hard to do the right thing by the GC. There was one notable occasion when my mother did try to manipulate my wee DD in her battle with my Dad - but I soon put a stop to that!

I have tried very hard to be better Mum, but we are all damaged/strengthened by our childhood experiences and I am sure that I too have made many mistakes as a Mum.

We can only live our lives as best we can - as I guess my Mum did in her own way.

My mum was hard-done to by nature. I have no way of knowing whether any of her gripes are true or not but it took until we had a six year estrangement for me to start to see things more clearly. She was difficult when she had all her faculties and still can be. She has seemed to dislike me for as long as I can remember but she thinks that her mother disliked her so maybe she learned that behaviour.

Mum was not a good grandmother either, having extreme favourites (my two sons and my brother's only daughter) and seemed to actively dislike my daughters to the extent of ignoring them or telling DD3 that she didn't think she belonged to us.

She told me that she knew she had been a good mother because I was such a good mother to my children Although she was really embarrassed that we had so many.

I love being a mother, I have tried to learn from her mistakes and my children appear to like me. I suspect the reason we had 5 children was partly an attempt by me to create a loving, warm family life.

Mum is very frail now and I have posted on another thread about the confusion that brings to my feelings.

I envy those of you who have, or did have, a good relationship with your mothers and hope you cherish really happy memories.

My mother is 95 and now in a nursing home. I've always had a close relationship with her but given a choice I would have liked more freedom. I felt that with two adored brothers I was born with a job description round my neck and she was never going to change her Victorian attitude towards 'the daughter of the house'. My father died shortly after I was married and I realised in later years that his delight in my engagement was probably because he feared if anything happened to him, which it did, Mum would rule my life.

She was a courageous young wife who, although terrified of flying, took my brother and me to Egypt to join Dad when I was only three. The war hadn't long been over and she'd never travelled further than her home town.

I like to think I'm as fun loving and hard working as she was. I have definitely got a better relationship with my daughters though and have always given them freedom and support. I am also close to our son but I would never put him above the girls which is something my mother always did. I also think I'm a better grandmother because my mother wanted all the accolades of being head of the family but never once offered to babysit!!

Strange you should have brought up this topic, GrannyK, because I was just thinking about it yesterday (as well as possibly starting a thread on our own Grans - maybe later.)
Although my Mum and I were very different in nature, we were very close, and I was fortunate to live near her in the last 12 years of her life, after Dad died. Though when she actually died, I wasn't with her, which I regret.
In her youth she was a beautiful woman, and when Dad was away in WW2 had many admirers, we were living with her parents then.
I used to get a bit irritable with her, probably because I felt that all the caring was on my shoulders, but somehow always managed to hold my tongue and we never actually fell out. I now appreciate her cheerful nature and ability to make friends more and more, and miss her more too.

I miss my Mum deeply. She was a strong and brave woman. I miss her hands on my shoulders, and the understanding in her eyes. A woman of few words, but I know I was loved as much as she could manage.

The older I get the more I understand and appreciate my mother, she had to work hard to ensure we all had a reasonable standard of life. My father was a sales rep and money was tight so mother always worked. Looking back I was not the easiest of daughters. I wish I could talk with her now if only to say 'sorry'.

If you miss your Mum (or Dad) after they have gone then you are very lucky people.

Aka and kitty and others with less than happy memories of their mothers

We are lucky people indeed. Despite a very stormy relationship with my mother, she remained my rock until the day she died. I wish I had been kinder to her, and wish she had known how much I loved her. I don't think I knew myself till she had gone. I miss her every day.

I went onto a Birmingham website the other night and found photos of the place where I lived as a child and the shop where my mum bought me a teddy bear that I'd seen in the window for weeks [it appeared in my room on Christmas morning]. I'm planning to go back to the area in the New Year, to walk around and try to connect, in some way to my past. Mum married my dad quite late; he was a divorcee, desperate for children, and she had a series of miscarriages until she had me after many years of trying. I think that tipped her over the edge, because she was always rather unstable and neurotic. She'd won a scholarship to a good school but deliberately failed the entrance exam when she saw how posh the school was, and she spent the rest of her life being a clever woman with no focus for her intelligence [although she gave me a thirst for knowledge and a love of literature]. She never got over me leaving home at 17 but I had to go. The love she felt for me is a constant presence in my life; I do hope she understood how much I cared for her.

Yes Aka, I recognise that. I miss both my parents and that is a measure of how we loved them. They met when my Mum was 5 and my Dad 7.They remained best friends as well as husband and wife. So that although they struggled financially we were loved and had a mostly happy childhood. A great gift. I wonder now if my Mum was frustrated at being a 50's housewife as after her death we found out that she had worked at Bletchley Park in the war. She was always very good and quick at crosswords!
She died at 59 and I still miss her and think of her most days.

Yes Aka I do miss my parents and you have made me realise how lucky I am

My mum never knew her grandchildren, having died at a young age. She would have been so proud of them. I see so much of her in my grown-up kids.

I miss my mum more than words can say. She was a wonderful, loving and supportive mother and grandmother and I feel lost without her. I know how lucky we were to have had her for so long ( she died almost two years ago aged 92).
I don't have many memories of my father - he died in 1966 aged 58. Sadly, he was an alcoholic, although a brilliantly clever man and a decorated war hero. I feel sad for all the things he missed and wish I had known him better.

I never knew a father. For years I believed I had never had one. Sort of identified with someone else really.

jingle

I think of my mum all the time and like you I too think one of my biggest regrets is the fact she has missed out the joy of seeing her great grandchildren. She was such a warm and kind person she would have loved every minute watching them grow and cuddling them.

I am the 'spit' of my mum apparently, in fact we are a family of Hobbits. [laugh].

My sister once said the loveliest thing to me. She was holding my hand in a sisterly way and said "Your hands feel and look exactly like mum's, you have her kind heart too and view the world through similar eye's".

I said to my daughter the other day, "You will turn into me you know" She replied "I B----Y well hope not, can't I have something to look forward too". [laugh]

I think of my mother everyday, but sadly she died when she was only 38 years old. I was only 3 years old. My two older brothers were born before the war and I was the post war baby, a bit of a celebration I suppose. I am so envious of all you gransnetters that had the privilege of knowing your mothers, she became sick very suddenly and died within 6 weeks of being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I am left with the image of my poor young mother sitting on the fire escape of Petersfield hospital, she was put there to say goodbye to me, as children weren't allowed into wards in those days. I was forced to walk up the iron fire escape and can remember feeling very frightened by this.
I still feel anger at the barbaric way in which my mother was forced to say her farewell to me. I would give anything to be able to speak of my mother in knowing way and most of all to know her as an adult.
She would have been a wonderful mother and of course a very proud Granny. Please forgive me if this post sounds miserable, especially at this time of year.

POGS

Oh Thistle my heart goes out to you. That is absolutely brutal. .

As sad as some of the posts on this thread are, they are still a celebration of our mother's lives. Hugs to all.

Thistledoo what a tragedy to lose your mum at such a young age and what a cruel way she was made to say goodbye to you. Unbelievable how there seemed to be no compassion shown to her or to a little bewildered three year old

My father lost his mother to TB when aged four years old and his earliest memory was of being lifted up to see his young mother in her casket. Truly heartbreaking.

My mum died aged only 44 when I was 18. A couple of years later my dad remarried and I had a wonderful "step" mum for over 40 years until she died a few years ago.

I think about my mum often, how she missed all the big events in my life and of course her grandchildren. She was a kind and gentle woman who was ill for the majority of my childhood and although this impacted on family life, she never let it affect our close relationship.

My step-mum was caring and supportive of me through various ups and downs and I count myself very lucky to have had two special mothers

I have just had a little weep reading all of your posts. A mother/daughter relationship can be so fraught especially in the teenage years. Hugs to those who never got a chance to give your mum a hard time. My father lost his mother to TB when he was 10 and continuously reminded us how lucky we were to have a good and loving mother. Mine was beautiful physically and emotionally and this is not hyperbole and was a wonderful and supportive Gran. My children loved her immensely and still talk about her with affection.

She died 16 years ago of bowel cancer having spent the year before nursing my father through the same thing. My grief was tinged with anger that she had to go through this having nursed him and knew what would happen. She wasn't ready to go.

Just before she died I told her what a great mother and Gran she had been. Her reply was that it had all been a sham! I am still wondering what she meant by this. They were some of her last words. Like several of your mothers, she too had been a very bright lady but had to give up work to become a mother!

I still miss her every day and on Christmas Eve still have a sherry like we used to have together while listening to the Kings College Carols. And I weep buckets.......

I feel sad that my mother would not allow her grandchildren and their children to stay with her because neither of them was married to their partner. She lived a long way away from us and when they did visit they felt very uncomfortable - she always made her feelings known. She actually turned them out on one visit when it came to the evening and told them to find somewhere to stay the night in spite of the fact she had a large bedroom going spare which could have easily accommodated them. I was furious when I heard about this and I think my mother was stunned that I felt so strongly about it.
Yes, I do wish my children were married but they're not but one is in a very stable relationship and the other has a very good relationship with her ex-partner and they still go out together. All the children are well brought up and much loved. I like being a grandma and being part of their lives and I feel my mother missed out such a lot because of her 'principles'.