All this time I’ve been waiting for my stepfather to release his anger at me – the anger I know he holds for me putting him in the nursing home; the anger I know he holds for believing my mother died of negligence; the anger he holds because of the loss of his independence.
I’ve been waiting for him to unleash it all on me, and today I realized…I’m the one who’s angry.
Furious, truth be told.
I never got to say goodbye to my mother.
If not for my husband rushing to her bedside when I couldn’t get there, she would have died alone. I am so furious at that.
So furious.
I’m furious she spent her life in what most would believe was a poverty state. Never having any money for anything other than the bare essentials; never doing what she wanted with her life instead of always having to find a job she could physically and mentally perform when she was so damn exhausted it was a wonder she could stand upright most of the time.
She bought clothes and shoes in the local Goodwill – shoes that were always the wrong size for her. Her foot measured at an 8 but she bought whatever she could afford, many times, squeezing into a 7. And she wondered why her feet always hurt.
I hate the fact she only saw her great-grandson once and that she’ll never meet her great-granddaughter.
I could scream at the top of my lungs about how unfair life was to her, how people took advantage of her – even those who claimed to love her, myself included. I could smash something against a wall and shatter it with the amount of fury inside me for how her own mother mistreated her for her entire life.
Who am I kidding? What I want to smash is my grandmother.
I’m so damn angry she never got to see Ireland – her dream.
I’m so damn angry she never knew how much I truly loved her – loved her – despite our tortured our relationship was at times.
And I’m so, so mad I never told her the extent of my love.
All this time I’ve been the one sitting on a mountain of anger, waiting for it to unleash.
And it finally has…
Peggy Jaeger, Author 
My dear Peggy, I wish I had the right words to comfort you, but unfortunately I don’t. No one does. The anger you experienced is a progression of grieving. I went through the same thing when my husband died. I was so damned pissed off that life cheated us out of fifteen years together, then mad at myself because I didn’t always handle situations in the marriage the way I should have. But he’s gone and I can only hope that when I cross over we will have a long conversation. In the meantime, I do talk to him. And you can do the same. Go somewhere you can be alone and talk to her. Tell her all these things, let them out, then let them go. Sending massive hugs!
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Bless you, dear lady. I,too,talk to my mother. Aloud, and sometimes in not exactly the best places ( i;e.grocery store where people think I’m nuts!!) I will take your advice,though, and quietly tell her about my anger. Bless you. Peg
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