I Wish I Had Told My Sister Our Mother Was Dead

Should I have?

Photo by Anton Darius on Unsplash

Everyone thinks I should have told her, no matter what the circumstances. The truth is I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t want my father to know because he never had a single good word to say about her. And I found out many years later, he was a compulsive liar.

I have firm beliefs about funerals. If you haven’t got time to see the recently deceased or keep in touch with them when they’re alive, don’t bother coming to their funeral.

So when my mother died, I didn’t tell anyone. If my sister had asked about her just once, I would have told her. My mother had a stroke when she was in Sydney and the hospital wouldn’t allow her to go home to her bed-sitter so I organised for her to be transferred by air ambulance to the hospital in Brisbane so she could be closer to us. I’d take the kids to see her in rehab and then in the nursing home after school. She loved seeing her grandkids. Her face would light up when she saw them.

My sister had a baby at the time and wasn’t working and our mother would beg, BEG, for me to get my sister to bring her other grandchild to see her. I kept on making excuses but I ended up begging her myself. She visited ONCE in two years and NEVER went again. She never asked how she was doing. So when our mother was put into hospital I didn’t tell my sister and she NEVER asked. I was angry at my sister for being so uncaring.

Our mother never had a chance to be a mother to us. My sister and I were ripped from our mother’s arms and shipped off to our paternal grandparents for 4 years! I was 6; my sister was 3. Our father filled our heads with lies. Our mother sent us cards and small gifts for our birthdays but we never received them.

So when she died of renal failure, I organised her private burial at the cemetery. Her body was placed on top of my brother who was killed on his motorbike 27 years earlier. I can’t believe I did all this on my own. I didn’t even know where my brother was buried so I must have checked records or something. This was 1983 so there was no searching on the internet for information.

I had Simplicity Funerals bring her body to the cemetery and bury her. There was only my husband and me in attendance. She truly had a shit of a life. I…