Member-only story
Life Lesson
How My Mother's Death Set Me Free
With death comes freedom for the living as well as the dead
For most people, I imagine, the death of a loved one is a painfully poignant time of loss and sadness. It is also a time that brings together families in a unifying act of mourning for the dearly departed. It is sad to reflect that in my case only one of these characteristics, the sense of loss and sadness, was present when my beloved mother passed away in 2012.
My mother had eight children, four sons and four daughters, all of whom were still alive at the time of her passing at the age of eighty four. During my mother's lifetime we had all drifted apart geographically as well as personally. I cannot think of a single time when as adults we all came together. The separation was not just down to the geographic dispersal, but also due to the fact that we never really got on as a large group. The reasons for this harked back many years to our childhood and early youth. As children the most senior of us sexually abused at least three of her siblings and one or two others were nothing less than selfish bullies who wasted no opportunity to lash out and thump anybody who got in their way.
We were the epitome of the dysfunctional nuclear family. However, as adults we did come together in smaller…
