So this started soon after my older brother, Charles(27M) died at sea, about four months ago. Ever since, my mom(47F) has been acting super weird to me and my siblings. My dad(49M) divorced her two weeks after Charles passed because of how crazy she’d been acting, and although I thought he was bad then, I think he made the right choice.
Me(15M) and my siblings, Raine(13F), Issac(13M) and Olive(10M) are all living with our mom. As I said in the paragraph above, my older brother Charles died a few months ago and although mom was acting normal then— normal for a grieving mother, of course— it’s gotten much, much worse.
This first incident happened one month exactly after Charles died. Me and my siblings were coming back from my aunt’s house. We had been dropped there after the divorce to help mom cope. Apparently, she forgot we were coming, because when I walked in the back door what I saw was quite a… scene.
Mom had a baby doll in a high chair we hadn’t used since Olive was an infant, and she was “feeding” it applesauce. Airplanes, a Mickey Mouse paper plate, spilled yogurt on the ground, the whole deal. If the thing in the chair wasn’t lifeless, it would even be normal. But it wasn’t.
She was super surprised when we walked in, and at first I didn’t know what to say. So I just took the twins and Olive to their rooms to unpack, and when I got back to the kitchen mom and the “baby” were gone. I found her in the bathroom, brushing her teeth like she wasn’t just trying to feed a fake toy.
“Oh, hey Dylan(my name), what’s up?”
She acted completely normal. It kinda freaked me out, but I accepted it. Mom is weird like this all the time, it’s not completely out of the normal. She acted normal as she got us dinner, talked about our time at our aunt’s, or did the dishes with Raine. I think my siblings forgot it, or brushed it off, so I did too.
Later just that night, I woke up to her sobbing. My room is right next to hers, so I can hear pretty much everything in there. She was crying, talking about her “baby boy.” It freaked me out, but I just listened to her rant until she fell asleep. I did too.
May sound normal to you, but my mom NEVER cries. Not even at my brother’s funeral. Or her own dad’s.
The next strange incident was two weeks ago, and from then she’s been acting increasingly creepy. Two weeks ago, when I came home from school, she was yelling at Olive. Calling him Charles. Telling him not to “run away from mommy like that”. It freaked me the fuck out and I took Olive and ran. She came and apologized later. Olive didn’t come down for dinner, but I could hear him crying.
A few days later, she lashed out at Issac. She said how he took Charles, her baby, away from her. She hit him. Hard. He cried that night, too.
For the past weeks, she has been yelling at us. For hurting Charles, for leaving her, for all sorts of things that had to do with Charles. This isn’t normal grieving stuff. Not anymore. She’s been hitting us, rejecting us dinner, and generally abusing us. I hate it.
But tonight, tonight was different. I have Issac and Olive cowering in my room right now with me.
Why?
I heard mom going to Raine’s room. And she said something that chills me to the bottom of my soul.
“Maybe I’ve been going at this the wrong way. A child for a child, right?”