My Mom Gave me a Message

This evening my mom sat down to talk to me. My mom and I have had a very strained relationship since Ansley died. As you can imagine she took Ansley's death very hard. Her outsides match her insides where my insides most of the time remain hidden. (Due to being a teacher and the nature of my job I had to learn that skill rather quickly. Ansley died in mid July and my school year at a new school started  the last week of July. I learned QUICKLY to hide for the time I was at work). It is very painful for me to be around my mom and see her face and body language and know she is wearing what I am feeling. So, she sits down to talk to me like we can have a normal conversation. Immediately my guard is up. We do some small talk for a couple of minutes and then she asks "Do you talk to Ansley?" I said "What do you mean?" She explained that she was wondering if I talked to Ansley in the morning or during prayer time or say things like "Good Morning Pooks". I said "Every morning and every evening." This alone had my guard raised more. She then started discussing a trip she took last weekend to see her Aunt Virginia. She said on the drive over she was praying and that she wanted to feel Ansley around her. (She also explained that she has only dreamed of Ansley 3 times since she left this earth and the last one was Ansley knocking on her front door and when my mom answered it she gave her a big Ansley-bug hug and then she woke up) She then heard a little voice, Ansley's voice that said "Tell Mommy I Love her!" My mom was so excited to give me this message. I responded with frustration. She did not understand why. I defensively and not very nicely snipped well that's nice that YOU heard her voice and ME, her mommy did not hear her voice and you have to give ME a message that MY daughter loves me. She started apologizing and saying she did not mean to upset me. I then told her to stop apologizing. That I hated how we can not even pretend to be normal around each other anymore. She said that she did not know what to do and she kept apologizing. Tears are streaming down my face and I said just accept that I want to f----ing die and be with my baby. That I know it is hard for you to hear this because I am your daughter but nothing has changed for me I want to be with my baby. If you can accept this and be OK with it and stop trying to make things better-that would be better than now but you have to accept that I am miserable and I am going to be miserable. I am no longer happy Jessica with the perfect family. I am now miserable Jessica with the unhappy broken family. She said she would stop trying to make things better and would try to accept me for what I have become. I then explained to her that it is not that I do not want her to hear Ansley but I thought it was unfair that I did not hear Ansley tell me she loved me and to please be OK that it hurt me to hear that she was the one who heard my daughter's beautiful voice. When she was leaving I did manage to tell her that just because I did not think her delivering a message was fair did not mean that I didn't want to hear them. I thought that that was progress for me. To open the door for her to share in the future and not completely end it on the I don't want to hear it note.

If you are not a parent who has lost a child you may not understand at all what I mean when I say I want to die. This does not mean I am suicidal nor does it mean that I am going to take life threatening risk or that I want to leave my husband alone on this earth. What it does mean is that I want to be with my daughter. My daughter is in heaven so that's where I would like to be. It also means that life on this earth is excruciating and being dead would be much easier than dealing with this overwhelming electric shock of pain that daily takes my breath away.