Resenting Mom

         My mother will turn 86 this December. She is in a care facility, and unfortunately, I am her only consistent weekly visitor.  I love Jesus, my family, my country, my friends and even strangers. I consider myself a kind, compassionate person. So…why do I resent my mother? Why do I resent it every time (well, not EVERY time) that I’m heading over for my weekly visit with her?
        I ponder this perplexity frequently. She wasn’t a mean or neglectful mother. I can’t say I was ever close with her as some mother-daughter relationships are close. She was closer to my sister who is nine years younger than me. I have three brothers, the two younger passed from this earth when they were adults, and it seemed Mom was always closer to the three younger siblings, especially my sister. That could be because my brother and I left home when we were very young. I married at sixteen and he went into the Army at seventeen.
        Visiting Mom is an emotional drain for me. She cries, she begs me to take her home with me, nothing about the care facility makes her happy and somehow she makes me feel guilty about this, and the fact that my brother and sister seldom visit her.  My sister has valid reasons for infrequent visits, but my brother does not.  His simple explanation is that it hurts him to see Mom like that.
        In my ponderings, I’ve acknowledged certain things, like how both my sister and older brother have gotten monetary blessings from my mom while I got nothing, how whenever I tried to tell Mom on numerous occasions that Jim, her third husband (both my dad and her second husband died), was only after her money and would leave her once the money was gone, she would hang up on me and accuse me of not caring or wanting her to be happy. (he did dump her once he’d drained and run through all her money and assets) Or the time she called to tell me she had sold the small piece of land that was my inheritance in her will because Jim wanted her too, and I started crying and telling her that she cared more about Jim than her own children, she hung up on me. Or all those times she did whatever Jim asked her to regardless of what we kids said or warned her about and she blew us off.
        I’m not a greedy person, so why do these things bother me so much? I need to move on, and not let it bother me when Mom whines about how her “people,” her family don’t come around, and I want to scream, “You didn’t care about any of us when you were with Jim!”

Sometimes I feel so petty and small!