Hi @Silenus @eth @Mazarita
I am awake and tracking back through Night Shift, resisting the urge to plaster 'likes' all over everything, but I am quite happy to go back and do it !!! You guys are so amazing ... you live the concept of turning lemons into lemonade, and are so strong and compassionate as a result.
My mother's mother had "something" going on. We lived away, my dad turning to mining to preserve my mother's life through a resurgence of major health issues she had suffered through childhood. She had been one of the first civilian recipients of antibiotics after the war, and it had seemed to cure her.
Strange how many connections are flowing through these threads (!!!). My brother and I were born in Canada (hi @Snuchu) one of us in British Columbia, the other in Ontario. We also lived in Tassie and Melbourne, all without my father understanding how crippling my mother's childhood illnesses had been to her health previously, but all the cold and wet climates seemed to have undone the apparent recovery achieved by copious amounts of antibiotics - they had been treating war wounds with it after all. God knows how much they used on her !
In any case, we started living in outback towns around Australia under specialists orders for Mum, and only returned for holidays to visit relatives on both sides of the family. I knew my maternal grandma was often I'll, and we visited her less, but I thought that was in part because she used a walking frame, and maybe we made her tired. Only as a young adult did I learn that my grandparents were separated, and my mother told me my grandma had schizophrenia, and she had struggled to have a relationship with her. She never talked at length about her mum. Later I realised she probably couldn't.
After my Mum passed, I spoke with her sister who was a nurse. This aunt suggested it was bipolar rather than schizophrenia, but there are such advances in medication and treatment now, who knows, it may have been both. I think all the childhood trauma she suffered caused my mother, and it would have been a conscious choice to do so, to focus her life energy on positives, as you guys have done, and keep giving out to others. In may be instead of dealing with grief, but I suspect it is a way of moving through grief.
To say "well done" can sound patronising, so I am just going to say "well done her (my Mum) and all who are 'like' her" and celebrate all the 'wins'.
I think you are all amazing, and it gives me comfort in missing my Mum. There have been steep hills to climb without her, but probably not as steep as yours ... bless you ❤️
