My mother’s best friend (I’ll call her Renee) growing up basically disowned my mother when she decided to begin practicing as a Jehovah’s Witness. She had been raised this way and wanted me to grow up this way, so it wasn’t an out of the blue decision.
I was with my mother when she went to tell Renee she was going to go back. My mom told me to stay in the car while she went up to the house. She came back a few minutes later sobbing heavily. I don’t know what was said, but it was certain that they wouldn’t have a friendship with Renee anymore.
My mom wasn’t the type to cry for no reason. I can really only remember her crying one other time when my great grandmother died. So I knew this was an important relationship to her.
Years later my mother was diagnosed with cancer, and after a long fight and short-lived success, she passed away. She has changed so much, I didn’t recognize her personality by the end. After her affairs were wrapped up, I moved across country with my wife.
About 5 months after my mother passed, I got a call from Renee, who had just learned that my mother passed. I spoke to her briefly, telling her about my mother’s final years, then, sobbing, she asked if she could stay in touch with me, as a way to be close to my mother. I refused her offer and got off the phone. As I hung up I could hear her sobbing intensify and for a moment I wondered if I had made the right decision.
It wasn’t until later that I remembered how shattered my mother had been all those years ago when Renee had refused my mother. Looking back, I wish I had told her the story of how crushed my mother was and that this was how she was going to have to live with the pain of knowing she wasted all of the years from when she had rejected my mother, to the moment she passed because of what I could only assume was her choice if religion.
That was 15 years ago. Today, my values have changed so much that I look at the damage that I caused people around me because of what Jehovah’s Witnesses teach and believe, that I have to say that I understood Renee’s decision and if my closest friend now said they were going back, I might have to make a tough choice also.
However, as much as I feel Renee has to live with the pain her decision caused her, and as much as I have the right to not be the one to soothe that pain, I feel she should have known the pain she caused my mother all those years ago. Not to ‘rub her nose’ in it or anything so petty, but so that maybe she will understand that my mother felt the same way about her, and Renee might be able to take comfort from that.
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