A year since mum's 90th birthday

My mother died a year ago on the 13th August 2018. She was 90 years old and was living with myself and my husband. It had been a roller coaster life of technicolour, ups and downs, marriages, divorces, drama, and the last ten years with her to-ing and fro-ing to Essex (where we lived then), and back to Liverpool to hold on to her independence.... Ending up with us moving back home to be near to her, and finally, with her moving in with us - which is what she wanted all along.... My actual memories of the days and weeks that led up to mum's death are slowly fading, but my feelings of immense sorrow stay with me. I don’t need to remember with any amount of clarity in order to feel overwhelmingly sad. There was a point, when i was younger, when mum and i would spat regularly, she would wish i was adopted, and i would wish she would just leave me alone to live my adult life and not draw me back into thinking i was a thirteen year old naughty teenager.... I would never be "good enough" as a child - i could not play the piano as well as my sister, i did not write as neatly, i was not as amiable - i think i just knew my own mind - much as i see myself in my children - i love that they are both different, and that David is very like i was as a child and teenager... I believed then, that one day, i would be free of all the drama, the anxiety, the worry, the bewilderment, i believe that i went into mental health nursing to somehow get my head around my mixed up childhood with her... It helped me give her behaviour a label, and friends would stick their "two penneth worth in" as to what they believed the problems were, and my problems were.... but in the end, with my husband Neil, we worked through all our angst, our hurt, our relationship issues, mum's anxieties and anger, and we became reluctant friends who cared very deeply about each other, and were not afraid to say so... Mum was provocative and would demand a response and as a child, i would be determined not to! As the arrival of mum's birthday looms tomorrow, it's knocked me for six - a whole year since we had the family and friends over to celebrate her 90th birthday, and my grief is still present - all week i have been so sad, bursting into tears for no reason... my husband thinks it's the change - maybe it is? I find it hard to keep a lid on my feelings. I feel good, bad, grateful, deprived, strong, vulnerable, and a hundred other things. My memories, thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions about life and loss have become very mixed up. At 52 years of age, i am an orphan, and what i find incredibly sad, is that i have not seen my sister or her family since the day of the funeral, nor my brother - (the brother is no loss as he skips in and out of peoples lives to cause chaos).... Because of mum's will, which i knew i had an up to date copy, mum had left what little she had, to my boys as was her wish. The government take your money in care fee contributions until you have only £12,000 left, - luckily, mum was a very keen invester, and had given away as gifts her properties and capital sums years ago. My sister seemed to be so almost histrionic and excited a day after mum died about the will and it leaving money to her son (who had already had £66k from the sale of my mothers last house, and his daughter, (my mother's great grandaughter,) who had already had gifts during her young life of Savings bonds and cash sums, We felt that my sister behaved very poorly when she found out that their will out of date - even demanding to see it and saying i would need a solicitor as there was so much to organise! - My husband had recorded the heated discussion as he wanted me to realise how obtuse they were being. The funeral itself was enormously sad - both myself and my son and best friend Nikki read an Epitaph about mum's life, my sister insisted on a hymn to make everyone emotional, when surely the service itself was emotional enough?? - and afterwards at the wake, and then at home, they had their own funeral party in my sitting room not mixing with family and friends who had come to pay their respects... Some months after the funeral, i received a text message from my sister wanting money from her share of the top up fee for the care home mum had stayed at, but the will did not allow for this. Not a word since.... When she thought the will was made out to her families favour, she had looked up how much an inscription would be for mum on the exsisting family headstone, and was balking at a new headstone being purchased - however, once she realised that the will was made out to my boys, she actually had the audacity to tell the stonemason - "Oh, money is no object" - she wanted as little left to my children as possible....I really saw her for who she is... So very sad, and this breeak in the family is not what my mum would have wanted, but there it is... I am now at a paradox of opposite emotions, which is confusing for everyone, but really its ok - Life after a loss is simply perplexing but it is normal and my feelings of sadness are very real. As the seasons have come full circle, I have found that although it's nearly a year, i go back to the past more often - whether that is because i do not have a "present" time to think of her, or whether in me knowing her better over the years, i understand her foibles more... i suddenly have a lightbulb moment and realise - "Ahhhhh - thats why mum said this"... whereas before, i could not always understand it, and could not dissect her behaviour from her feelings... Liverpool was home - my mum was "home" - yet here i am without mum - feeling somehow without a pull to her as she has gone, though now i am secure with my family half here - David has come home, and i have Neil and my step daughter Sadie and parents in law and sister in law in Spain - but my own blood line - sister and brother and their families are no longer part of the equation... What is odd for me to get my head around, is that some days i could crumble under the sadness of mum and my sister as she was such an important part of my life, yet I have to be secure and represent stability for my husband and children... My mother was pregnant with me when her own mother died - i recall her saying she cried for three months - yet, in later years she would voice how hard her mother had been... All of this is normal grief, and although time doesn't heal - it distances itself and you remember the funny times, or the times when she did something which left me in such a high emotive state that it remains in my long term memory...