Improving the relationship with the mother – why it matters

Improving your relationship with your mother is not always easy. Disappointed expectations, hurts, feelings of guilt: the relationship between mother and daughter can be very stressful. Our author also experienced the relationship as difficult all her life – until the moment she thought her mother was dying.

Dear mum,

there was that one moment that changed everything. He freed us from all should, should and should slag between daughter and mother. For a split second I thought you were dead and felt a sense of boundless forlornness.

It was at the last family celebration. I sat across from you. You looked pale, the noise, the crowds, the waitress who constantly wanted to refill. Your brother-in-law talking to you. Within seconds, all the color left your face, your eyes closed, your upper body sank slightly forward. For a moment I was paralyzed, then I just screamed, "Hold her tight!"

Improve your relationship with your mother – it's never too late

We laid you on the floor, leaned over you, said reassuringly "We are here" and kept calling your name as if we could summon you to return. Your hands were ice cold, you had no pulse and showed no reaction for minutes.
Fortunately, there was a doctor at the next table. Who knew what to do. Call an ambulance immediately, talk to you, shake your shoulders, check your breath, do a chest compressions. The ribs cracked, and finally, finally you came back to yourself and looked at me in amazement, as if you had returned from a long journey.

"I'm back," you said, but couldn't remember where you had been. Your heart stopped, you paid a brief visit to death. But something had stopped you from staying. As you lay there lifeless, I had already caught myself thinking that this would actually be a beautiful moment to die, at the blessed age of 86, all loved ones gathered around you. For a moment I was ready to let you go. But it was only the head that had come up with this strategy, my heart was very happy when the color returned to your face.

The two of us spent half the night in the emergency room together. And as strange as it sounds, it was the most intense and beautiful encounter we have ever had.

I am so glad that you are there you said several times.

A sentence I waited longingly and in vain for half a life.

Suddenly he was pronounced and healed everything that was still sore

My whole life I was never allowed to touch you, except for brief, fleeting hugs, from which you always quickly wriggled yourself out, physical closeness was suspicious to you. But then you lay in the glaring light in the emergency room and were so grateful that I sat by your bed, gave you water, and helped you to undo the bodice that you had squeezed into to look good at the party the infusion could be started.

While the nurse was pacing back and forth, we were both perfectly calm and looked at each other as if we were seeing each other for the first time. What had been no longer mattered. It was a pure, perfect, real moment. The sight of your parchment skin made me speechless, I had to go to an adjoining room under an excuse to hide my tears. I was touched by the fragility of your body, which I was never allowed to see as a child.

Our roles were now reversed.

I turned into a lioness who did everything to protect her cub.

I snarled at the doctor who let you move from one room to the next, fended off painful and unnecessary examinations, refused to leave you in the hospital overnight because you only wanted to go to your own bed and finally sleep. I took you home against medical advice and was amazed at my bold determination.

When you got home and I came back to my life, we both pretended that this incident never happened. Our phone calls became irrelevant again, you asked the usual: What's the weather like? How is the work going? What are you cooking today? At some point I understood that it was existential for you to return to the agenda, to forget the encounter with death, to get our mother-daughter relationship back on track and to pretend you would live forever.

In a way, I also pretend you are immortal

The moment when the veils between our worlds were wafer-thin and death knocked to make us alive, I kept in a safe place within me.

If one day I do stand at your grave, I will remember that precious night when there was pure love between us and nothing else.

Your Ruth

This article appeared in BRIGITTE wir 01/2018