What's happening now?

Sometimes, when a person you have known for 29 years closes the door for you, you can change any way you ever ever thought of. Did I bring up my daughter? Did I love her? Did I trust her? Would I support her?

The answers to each question was "yes". Yes, I brought her up and a whole lot more.

When my daughter was little I worked every day, and all my income - my only income - went to help her and her brother. I supported them through their schooling, I supported them through their sports (mostly ice skating). I made their clothes and, for their skating, their costumes. I took my daughter also to dancing, where I made her costumes for her competitions and concerts. I loved it, and she did.

When she turned 16 I joined a dating website, and met my new husband who talked me onto moving to Australia. I loved my daughter, even when she stayed in New Zealand when I came over here. She finished her degree and then came over here, and stayed in my home and moved on from there into one - or more - of Brisbane's "big group". All of those years I still loved her, visited her - and she visited me. I was married, I worked, I was okay.

Until 2013. My ex left. I had my brain aneurysm diagnosed. I was fired from my 7-year job. I ended up in hospital... and I had a stroke. My daughter came to visit me in ICU, came to talk me into staying in BIRU, came to visit me in BIRU. After I got out, she suggested I move closer to her, so I left Inala and moved to Woody Point and, later, moved to Scarborough. I've been here for more than a year, on DSP, and in the last year feeling so broke after I "woke up" from my stroke. Two and a half years since I last worked. And now, no more help by my daughter.

Last year The Australian wrote an article about daughters walking away from their mothers. That really hurt me, because, even reading this, I still don't understand why my daughter decided to leave me. She told me that I complained too much. She told me that I asked for too much money. She told me that she had too much 'stuff' on to keep coming here to visit me.

This last weekend she met her half-sisters, who she hadn't met for her entire 29 years. I knew them - they were daughters of my first husband, I used to encourage them, as children, to come and visit us in Hamilton (NZ). They even came to our wedding! I hadn't caught up with them in more than 30 years, but I would have been very, very happy to catch up with them. That never happened. Photos on my daughter's FB page. The look of happiness. I wasn't in them. I was never invited.

I realised that my daughter had left me.

Two and a half years ago I was earning as much as she is now. These days, after my surgery - uninvited - and my stroke - uninvited - I'm on around a third of that. I have to decide what I will keep - my car? My insurance? My phone? My funeral insurance? Certainly no new clothes, no meals out, no holidays. In these last two and a half years I have dropped from respectfulness to condemnation. I have lost pretty much all my 'old' friends, with only a few new ones who had their brain aneurysm or stroke and understand what I was going through. 

My brain aneurysm and stroke stories have been published in Redcliffe's Herald, on Brain Foundation's BrainWave (pp2-3), Synapse's Bridge (p28) and National Stroke Foundation's "Fight Stroke Stories" pages. I have been the administrator of the Facebook Brain Aneurysm Support Australia page for nearly two years. I have two websites and three blogs myself. Last November my first fiction book, First Person Singular, was published and my non-fiction, Aneurysms with Aphorisms, based on my blog, will be published very soon. Yet I have applied, in the last few months, for some jobs which I felt I could do - no response from any of them.

Have I fully recovered? No, I don't think so. My language still plays games with me, and when I realise that I can't change whatever I said, when I get very tired, my language just vanishes. What has this done between me and my daughter?

It cut me off. My daughter doesn't seem to know enough about my stroke and how it plays games with me, but she closed the door. Not unlike so many people. I wish, I truly wish, that education about stroke - and, for me, brain aneurysms - is happening. Learn how our brain goes after a stroke. Learn how many people die from a stroke or from a brain aneurysm. And learn how WE get dumped by far too many people we always thought we loved.

Next week I go to a neurosurgeon meeting. I would really like to ask this person about what happened to me, but I don't really think it will influence my future.

What future?