Mothers and Daughters, A Healing

Recently my mother was taken to the hospital. She is 89. The doctors thought she had pneumonia, but it turned out she had taken too much of one of her medicines and had come severely dehydrated. I had not seen her for about six months. Until then I had been, or tried to be, the dutiful daughter, caring, yearning to make her life better –– I think in the desperate hope that she would turn finally into the soft, loving, accepting mother who filled my fantasies. But last July, the tensions between us had become so stressful that my health was being affected and I decided I had to make a long overdue separation. It was difficult. I wasn’t sure I could resolve my issues with her before she died. I did not know if I would ever see her again.

At first, when I View the rest of this article