My mom

I have recently located my mother's blog. It has given me some great insite into who she is and what she has gone through. My mother is a widow. She was devastated when my father died almost 4 years ago. He was her soulmate. Her best friend. He was everything. His death has been hard on all of us, but she tettered on the edge of depression and possibly suicide. She has since met someone wonderful, who my brother and I like alot. But this also pains her because in some ways she feels she is being unfaithful to my father's memory.

My mother has done alot for me in my life, and especially here recently with my transportation issues. She has felt (according to her blog) that she had to take up alot of the extras dad did. I always knew if I was short on cash I could give him a call and he would have the money for me. She can't do that. She is on a strict budget, and my financial needs are a huge burden on her. I have been making more effort to budget my money better, and if I don't I certainly don't tell her. She carries alot of guilt for not being about to do for me (and my brother) like dad did. I have no animosity toward her for not being about to do these things. It truly never occurred to me that she had her own financial worries. I knew the house and the truck were paid off, so what worries could she have? Power? Water? Food? I didn't think that her income had seriously diminished. Instead of dad's 40++ hours, she now has to manage the small social security and insurance she gets. I figured if things were tight she'd get a part time job to make up the difference. I still don't know why she hasn't, but that's her decision.

I do know that after reading her blog, I feel very guilty for taking her and the money for granted. I'm not sure I will tell her I have read the blog, if I do it will be awhile. I feel like I've invaded a part of her I wasn't supposed to. Not that she wrote anything she didn't want others to read, but it gave me a view I wasn't expecting.