New Family

[Silverose]

My mother passed away August 26th, 2007. The one year anniv. is coming up. My mother had been...weak, all my life. I hadn't ever really taken notice till I was fifteen. Not long after my fifteenth birthday she began getting ill all the time. Pneumonia always. She could never shake it. Complications from past injuries that damaged her spinal cord made things spiral out of control. Even then there were a few things that the doctors had trouble putting a name to. As soon as I could drive I spent most of my drive time going to hospitals, and after my sixteenth birthday things got horrible. Last summer was the worst thing I've ever had to live through. I had to watch her get worse day by day. I spent almost everyday driving back and forth between states to take her to her hospital or to visit or on a few awful occasions-to follow and ambulance or a helicopter there. Before last summer I'd never been very close with my mother, but in those last three months she became the best friend I ever had and I loved her more than anyone. But, despite her just coming out of physical therapy from her last surgery(which we were told might be the cure to her major threat), she passed away the second day she'd been home. I know they tried to save her, but I also know that she passed away before they even got her on the stretcher. I don't know how the others in my family felt, but her dying broke me in a way I never saw coming. I was the one that found her, that called 911 and tried to keep her breathing. I was the one that informed my father(he's a trucker and was states away by the time this happened) and grandparents of her passing. For two years I was the strongest one in our house, I never cried and I never gave up. But when I lost her it was like everytime I had felt pain over it came rushing back and hit me. And to make matter worse my father started dating again only 2 1/2 months after her passing. My brothers don't talk to him because of this. A little over three months after he death his girlfriend moved in with us, her and her three kids. The eldest moved away a few months back.

I wanted to hate him like my brothers do. But I can't. I heard his voice when I told him. I think he knew the second I said Dad. He couldn't take being alone and we were all hurt so bad that we couldn't seem to stick together anymore. Its like we lost our glue and had become three people who simply live in the same house. But his girlfriend changed all that. And at first...I really did hate her for it. Those first five months were so horrible. He threatened to admit me to an asylum, I think he thought her death was driving me insane because of the problems I had when I was around thirteen. He threatened to kick me out when I started fighting him for the first time in my life. But...despite all he has done, I still don't hate him. And now I don't even hate her. She just reminds me so much of my mother all the time. Her temperment is like my fathers(which can end very badly...) but her personality reminds me of mom. And though I didn't want to I know I love her. They're getting married in September, just a year and a month or so after my mom passing, but I don't talk about them as 'my dad and his girlfriend', I say 'my parents'. My mom and dad. But, is it wrong after I'll we've been through...after all I've been put through, to want to call her mom? I'm eighteen, but even if I am considered an adult now I want her. I need a mother still but I am afraid its wrong to call her mom or think of her in that way. She said she didn't want to take her place....and she isn't....but she's taken a new place. So is it wrong of me to not only forgive so much, but to want to accept her in such a short time?

[damd]

I think that is pretty admirable. It would have been really easy to hate this woman for replacing your mom and your father for seeking another woman. Betraying her memory. But I am sure that the last thing your mother wanted to to leave you and to leave you without a mother. I think it's great that even after the pain that you and your family has went through that you can open your heart to someone new. You are truley one of a kind. I don't think I would have handle your situtation so well. Loving this new mom doesn't mean that you loved your real mother any less.

Good for you.

[CHANDLERS WISH]

As damd said, it's not only admirable but a mature way of looking at things.

Everyone needs love, your Dad does, and so do you.

The fact that your "new mum" has said that she will not replace your Mum, she is willing obviously to be your mum and wants to be and you back in return want her to be.

Good for you...

It only spells happiness all way around and that would be what your Mum would have wanted.

CW