Annie Graham quotes

View Quote [at her mother's funeral] It's heartening to see so many strange, new faces here today. I know my mom would be very touched, and probably a little suspicious to see this turnout. So. My mother was a very secretive and private woman. She had private rituals, private friends, private anxieties. It honestly feels like a betrayal just to be standing here talking about her. She was a very difficult woman to read. If you ever thought you knew what was going on with her, and God forbid you tried to confront that. But when her life was unpolluted, she could be the sweetest, warmest, most loving person in the world. She was also incredibly stubborn, which maybe, explains me.

View Quote [to a support group] My mom died a week ago. So I'm just here for trying it. I have a lot of resistance to things like this, but I came to these a couple years ago. Well, I was forced to come and I guess it, um... I guess it helped. So, um... My mom was old and she wasn't all together there at the end. And we were pretty much estranged before that, so it really wasn't a huge blow. But I did love her. And she didn't have an easy life. She had DID, which became extreme at the end. And dementia. And my father died when I was a baby from starvation, um, because he had psychotic depression and he starved himself, which I'm sure was just as pleasant as it sounds. And then there's my brother. My older brother had schizophrenia and when he was 16 he hanged himself in my mother's bedroom and of course the suicide note blamed her accusing her of putting people inside him. So. [sighs] That was my mom's life. And then she lived in our house at the end before hospice. We weren't even talking before that. I mean, we were and then we weren't. And then we were. She's completely manipulative. Until my husband finally enforced a no-contact rule, which lasted until I got pregnant with my daughter. I didn't let her anywhere near me when I had my first, my son, which is why I gave her my daughter, who she immediately stabbed her hooks into. And I just... I felt guilty again. I felt guilty again. When she got sick, not that she was really even my mom at the end, and not that she would ever feel guilty about anything. And I just don't want to put any more stress on my family. I'm not even really sure if they could... Could give me that support. And I just... I just feel like... I just sometimes feel like it's all ruined. [sobbing] And then I realize that I am to blame. Or not that I'm to blame, but I am blamed!