[jkonowitch]

Are you kidding me?! Are you completely devoid of empathy? He's not trying to command that anyone do anything, so drop the indignation. This is what we call a human response to grief; his mother is no longer here, and knowing what a wonderful and life-giving relationship that was, he is imploring the rest of us not to take our relationships with our mothers for granted.

[mpyne]

To be honest I might have made a similar comment.

I at least knew my mother. She would take me to bars with her, or leave me with her sister while she went out (but she usually made sure to drunkenly wake me up when she got back to tell me again and again how much she loooooorved me).

Eventually she left me and my siblings and fled to Holland, where she promptly stopped paying child support and started helping to raise the other guy's children instead. Occasionally I would get cards. Even less often I would get phone calls full of guilt and awkwardness.

She's actually on my FB now, but I'm not calling her.

It gets better though, my dad later remarried to someone who means well but didn't exactly contribute to a loving upbringing... but at least she stuck around. But how does Happy "Stepmother's" Day fall into this weekend?

And every single year I get to go through this dilemma anew. Thanks, Hallmark!

So I suppose the point is that for those who do have the doting, loving mother, by all means don't skip out on making that phone call. But not all of us are going to be in that situation, so Ed's advice isn't going to apply to all of us.

[GigabyteCoin]

My grandmother had a drunk for a father, so I am told.

He left the family and kept to himself, but that didn't stop my grandmother from visiting him every week. Bringing food and making sure he was doing OK.

To this day, I have never once heard her speak a bad word about the man. In fact, she wasn't even the person who told me this story.

I don't know if he paid "child support" or any form of it, but I would assume not as he was constantly penniless.

He couldn't help being a poor drunk, but it was nothing to punish him over is how my grandmother saw the situation.

Sometimes forgiveness and acceptance is the best medicine.

[mpyne]

> Sometimes forgiveness and acceptance is the best medicine.

Sometimes it's not. I don't wish ill of my mother even at this point, hopefully she's happy over in Holland with her new life. And I would certainly never deign to tell your grandmother what she should do, I'm assuming she maintained contact because she had good reasons to.

But I have kids of my own to think about, a wife of my own, and a very short life of my own to live, so I'm not going to waste a minute of it worrying about someone who could not reciprocate in kind. I stress myself enough worrying about the people who do care for me.

If my kids still respect me when they grow up I want it to be because I demonstrated a reason to earn their respect, not because I guilt-tripped them into feeling they have to live up to some familial bond which society imposes upon them.

Edit: I did end up calling my stepmother earlier today as well. Pays to stay involved, I guess.

[GigabyteCoin]

I wasn't suggesting you call your mother, just adding another side to a similar story.

Mother's day is almost over now, thank goodness!

[ams6110]

I've lost both my parents. Everyone does. It's nothing that deserves any special sympathy or empathy. It's part of life. I miss my parents, but beyond the initial short-term sadness after their deaths I don't grieve their loss, since it is inevitable. Far worse it would be to lose a child.