Dear Mum
Today is ten years since you passed away, and over twenty years since I last saw you, spoke to or had anything to do with you. People that have a loving relationship with their parents cannot begin to understand, but I have to say I felt nothing when you went. I can’t say as I was pleased, because I can say by that point I had no feelings for you what so ever, but I do have some questions I would like answered.
Why oh why oh why did you hate me so much? No from where I stood in my childhood hate is not too strong a term to use. My childhood is filled with you telling me how much you hated me, how you never wanted me, and how you had drunk gin and taken hot baths hoping to miscarry me. I mean I was the third of four children, not like I was the first or the last and you never seemed to have any of that hatred for my other three brothers and sisters.
I often wondered if my dad was my biological father. I was different than my siblings, looks, build, colouring, and being right handed not left. I am now mature enough to realize that a dad is the person who brings you up not the person who plants the seed. Whilst dad was never outwardly horrible to me in the way you were he never defended me, or stuck up for me, he just quietly let you do what you wanted.
There is only thirteen months between my sister and I and you told us that you had a miscarriage in between the two of us, was that another one you were more successful with then you were with me? Dad was working away from home at the time so I often wonder.
You treated me like I was your punishment for some crime you had committed. I did not ask to be born, I was no way at fault, and as a mother and a grandmother now I cannot begin to get my head round the concept that any parent would treat their own child the way you treated me.
I was punished constantly, didn’t matter who had committed the “crime” it was always my fault in your eyes. As is typical of siblings they soon picked up on this and realize they could do what they wanted and get some fun out of getting me punished.
Things that I had no control over were cast up to me again and again. Episodes like giving measles to my big brother, apparently I had been left with a neighbor whose children had measles as I had already had them and would not catch them again, well I did and the way you went I had planned it and done it deliberately, I was two years old for goodness sake. I was blamed forever because I passed it on to my big brother – I mean it was in the community and he could not possible have picked it up anywhere else could he?? But he nearly died and that was because I was so nasty (according to you) that I caught it again and gave it to him.
I remember being about six years old, we were in London so I must have been about that age, and went off to the park with my big brother, who would have been nine at the time, and we were playing a game of jumping off the swings to see who could get the furthest. Well I did cos I was a child that had no fear, but in the process of trying to beat me big brother broke his leg, and boy oh boy oh boy did I get a hammering for that.
It was entirely my fault, I should not have encouraged him, I should have known better – you went on and on and on for weeks , months, years – he was the oldest he should have known better. It was the same when we were in Germany and my big sister, thirteen months older than me, jumped off a climbing frame when we were playing in the park and broke her arm, that was my fault and I was punished for it.
Why was it that as my birthday was too near Christmas (according to you) I was not allowed birthday presents and Christmas presents, I alternated and got one or the other? My birthday was three weeks and six days before Christmas, and it was just an excuse not to buy me anything. It was not as though I got more spent on me that the others, I just did without. How could any parent do that to a child? Especially a child who was under ten. I could never imagine doing that to any of my children.
I do remember you being in hospital for most of the three years we were in Germany, a lot of the time in a hospital in England. You had no choice I know that, and I would of hated it to happen to me, I was ten at the time but I was left to look after little brother(five), as the older two children were in boarding school and dad worked shifts. I did not mind looking after him, that’s the way life was back then, but you resented me for ever for having a close bond with him that you never had. Surely you should just have been grateful that he had somebody to love him and care for him.
Talking to my younger brother when I went to help him with your funeral arrangements, for him not for you, his lasting memories of his young childhood was of the way I was treated, how you seemed to hate me and made my life miserable. Think how bad it must have been for him to pick up on that. You were even nasty mouthed to his wife, maybe because she is very like me, you probably hated her in lieu of me not being there because by then I had left your life for good. You bad mouthed her off in front of her own children, and so she stopped visiting and would not allow her children, your grandchildren to visit as you were horrible to them as well.
You had little to do with my children as I was not happy with bringing them near you, you did visit the odd time but could never even be nice to me or mine when you were under my roof. I remember the day you came to visit, my friend Patricia was in, you had never met Patricia before but you asked her why she was my friend? How could she like me as I was a horrible person, how I had blighted your life and was the worst thing that had happened to you and proceeded to tell her how you had tried to miscarry me. Come on get a grip you don’t say those sorts of things to people you have never met.
I just want to let you know despite your hatred of me I have turned into a kind, caring, loving person that is respected and thought highly of by everybody that is important in my life. Yon made me determined that I would be everything you were not.
I feel sorry for you, it was you who lost out. I have three beautiful children that I love to bits, who mean the world to me and who I would die to protect. They might not have been perfect but my love was unconditional for them, they were all treated equally and told every day I loved them. I could not imagine treating them the way you treated me, but you lost out so much by being the sad miserable lonely old lady you ended up.
Your daughter
