I ‘pulled the plug’ on my mother. She had cancer from smoking and it caught up with her, spreading throughout her body. She also had GI issues as long as I can remember. Went into the hospital on a Monday because she couldn’t move her bowels for a week. She passed the following Sunday after having a colostomy during that week. She had always insisted she didn’t want to go through what her older sister, my ‘Aunt Amy’ went through, chemo and everything that went with it. Some back story: My ‘Aunt Amy’ had a grown daughter ‘Cindy’, several years older than me, a young adult when I was born. Cindy was ‘Miss Perfect’ and I was always being compared (unfavorably) to her by my mother. My mother was extremely overprotective and controlling. She had wanted me to be smart, pretty, kind, popular and stylish in high school like ‘Cindy’ had been. ‘Cindy’ graduated, then went to secretarial school and married an executive at one of the biggest businesses in the city. I was smart, but I hospitalized the girl that bullied me… I was introverted and preferred to stay home, read and listen to music. My mother bought my clothes and when I asked her to buy what I liked to wear, she’d always say ‘That’s not the style’. I didn’t discover thrift stores or yard sales until after I moved out at the age of 19. She didn’t want me to date anybody older than me. When I graduated high school jobs were hard to come by, so I signed up with a temp agency. I saved enough money to get my own place. I didn’t want a curfew, wanted to stay out and party. My mother was so against it, but thinking back I think she talked to ‘Aunt Amy’ or ‘Cindy’ and all of a sudden she relented, and she and my father even helped me furnish it! She talked me into getting an apartment nearby, in a nice building I couldn’t afford, looking back on it. Guess she figured I’d lose it, not be able to pay the rent and end up moving back home. I had talked to the landlord and made a deal to clean the hallways and his office in trade for a reduction on the rent. I had a boyfriend my parents didn’t know about, and he moved in with me. I didn’t have to go out and party, I had beer in the fridge and all the …. I wanted! He paid the rent and I didn’t have to work. Fourteen years later when I asked ‘Cindy’ what I should do about my mother she coldly told me it was my decision. I was an only child and I knew my mother would hate living a compromised life, so I signed the papers. After the funeral, I had little to do with any of the family, which was fine by me since our family had never been close since my mother had been arguing with most of them anyways. ‘Cindy’ moved out of state shortly thereafter when her husband retired. I was going through my mother’s house and found out she had started papers to put me in ‘Cindy’s’ custody because she thought I couldn’t take care of myself! By that time, I was a widow myself and had a string of bad relationships, but never had to move back home. I had been diagnosed bipolar, but never told her that. I’d have lived under a bridge before I moved home. She left quite a bit of money and two houses. I now am married, living in rural Tennessee with my awesome husband and our 6 (mostly) rescued dogs. Content, even happy at times. If I hadn’t pulled the plug and my mother had gone through with the paperwork and court, I’d have been stuck in the frozen North with Miss Perfect ‘Cindy’ until I found a man I could bribe to marry me and take over the conservatorship. As soon as the estate was settled, I took off for Florida, learned to drive, bought a sports car, had some of the best years of my life, met my husband and we moved back to his home town.
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