“Mother Is No More”. It was the text message I was dreading to receive.

The blog post describes the emotional process and attitudes of a family during a difficult time when the author’s mother’s health was deteriorating. The family members experienced sensitivities such as distress, expectations, and blame, which led to predictable changes in their interactions and relationships. The author observed how these sensitivities affected the family’s functioning and how their life resource made them rely on a sense of control.

It is the second sequel to the last blog. This blog tells the factual story before death and sets the stage for the emotional reverberations felt after death in relationships. The emotional reverberations were distance, anger and fear.

My observations started in 2011 after my grandmother’s death. My mother lost her constant emotional support. Mother’s health had started a downhill. Then, in 2016, she took a severe turn when there was financial manipulation from a close member of her family. Throughout this process, she was distancing from these members and getting lonely with fear. I traveled again in 2018 and helped her move to another new house. I thought this latest move would help her get closer to father’s side of the family. However, the expectations were demanding of her. Father, feeling her pain, took steps to protect her, and the family blamed Mother, and she felt rejected. Mother and father remained in this cocoon for two years while COVID was a new social virus to be dealt with.

The year 2021 was relieving for me as I could travel and see her again. The memory of her was vivid; she was waiting for me, sitting on the high chair. There was joy and tears. But it was a shock for me to see how far her illness had progressed. From that visit, I had decided that I would visit her frequently. I did between 2021 and 2023, and I watched how the relationships around her were behaving. I was caught in it as well. The sensitivities such as distress and expectation had hit the highest level amongst all the family members, both immediate and extended. Family members avoided talking about sensitive topics, taking responsibility and blame, and change was a quick reaction for all of us. My parents became more isolated. My mother’s health had started deteriorating, and my father relied on the available support staff more.

What I am describing is the emotional process in relationships and the interchange of it. These are feelings and attitudes transpiring in relationships. My parents’ interactional relationship with their immediate and extended families was a predictable change in response to a predictable pattern of expectations, blame and change. One of the significant functional facts was that their life resource was limited. They found connecting taxing and needed a sense of control, an operating position.

This position was based within the immediate and extended family system regulated by sensitivities of distress, expectations, attention and approval. The more they experienced these sensitivities, the more their functioning was directed towards control. With these sensitivities came patterns such as distance, functioning beyond and below a capacity, which had become a part of the families my parents belonged to.

As posited by Dr Murray Bowen, the family systems describe this interdependence and the repercussions of the emotions as having underlying effects. My next blog will discuss my steps towards these sensitivities and their benefits.