Mother's Day is On It's Way -- What A Horrifying Concept!

I'm estranged from my mother. Severely estranged, as in: Have spoken less that 2 dozen words to her in the last decade +. I'm not saying she's completely at fault, or I'm completely at fault -- it is what it is.

There is an odd facet to our non-relationship. We have exchanged cards for holidays and I send her occasional gifts. I can't explain it. She actually didn't send me a birthday card last year because -- this is so weird -- at the urging of my grandmother I called my mother. My mother is pretty ill and my grandmother thought she could use the help. So I swallowed down my fears of further rejection and called my mother and the less than 2 dozen words occurred. Basically, she didn't want my help. I kept my cool until I hung up the phone, and then I sobbed, and vowed not to call her again. And she didn't send me a birthday card. Nor did she put any of the blame for my calling on my grandmother.

I love my mother, and I want to help her, but I can't beg her to love me back anymore. Cannot do it. The very act of asking the person who is supposed to love you unconditionally to love you at all is degrading. I was never the perfect daughter, and I made mistakes, but I've loved her and wanted the best for her my whole life.

The wound never heals. And even though I'm finally getting the move I want, part of me is feeling that same unworthiness -- part of me is asking what kind of person leaves the state when her mother is ailing? And people who care about me can tell me I've tried, and she's a grown woman who has chosen to cut me out of her life, but I still feel guilt. And anger.

Anger because something will happen to her someday. And I will blame myself for not being there. I will feel the weight of an incredible unworthiness. Her epitaph will be that her daughter was not good enough. Never good enough. What sort of mother leaves her daughter with that legacy? And how unworthy does a daughter have to be to deserve it?

(All these years later and I still can't "talk" about it without crying.)

So in short, would be be too much to ask, when I walk into Hallmark to just find a bleepin' card that says Happy Mother's Day? No wonderful memories, or the times to come, or spending the day together -- Just Happy Mother's Day. (Let's make it a clean incision rather than a jagged tear.)