The Apology I’ll Never Get.
There are some words that will never be spoken.
Not because I don’t deserve them, but because the person who should have said them isn’t here anymore.
My mom is gone. And so is the apology I’ll never get.
Growing up, I placed her on a pedestal she never asked for, or maybe one I built just to survive her. She was my mother, and no matter how destructive she became, I clung to the idea that she was still my protector. She was supposed to keep me safe. Instead, she was often the one I needed protection from.
She was a severe alcoholic.
Our relationship was chaos: emotional, physical, mental. Every kind of battle you can imagine, we fought it. Sometimes we were inseparable. Other times we couldn’t stand to be in the same room. We lived many different lives together, and just as many apart. There was never any stability. We moved constantly, chasing new starts that always ended the same.
There was a lot of hurt.
A lot of uncertainty.
And a lot of things that happened to me as a child, things I’ll never speak on, things that changed the way I saw her, the way I saw myself, the way I saw love.
And while she didn’t commit all those wrongs herself, I held her responsible for them. Because she was supposed to protect me. And she didn’t.
When she passed, we were no contact. I had finally learned to protect myself, to draw the boundary I should have had as a little girl. But death doesn’t care about timing. When I got the call that she was dying, something in me still went to her. I sat by her side as she took her last breath. I watched her chest rise and fall until it didn’t anymore.
And even though I was there, she wasn’t.
There were no last words. No confessions. No “I’m sorry.” Just silence, and the weight of everything left unsaid.
For a long time, I didn’t know how to feel. I thought I would feel relief. But all I felt was heartbreak, for the mother I had, for the mother I wished she’d been, and for the little girl who still wanted her to say she was sorry.
The truth is, I’ll never get that apology. Not for the chaos. Not for the fear. Not for the trauma. Not for the things that shaped me in ways I’ll spend a lifetime unlearning.
But I’ve had to find a way to forgive her anyway, not because she earned it, but because I needed to heal.
My mom wasn’t always bad. She had moments where she was warm and funny and full of life. Moments where I could see the person she might’ve been if addiction hadn’t consumed her. I know she did the best she could with the tools she had, but her best still left scars.
Now, as a mother myself, I carry the lessons she never meant to teach me. I hold them close when I’m raising my kids, when I love them, when I listen, when I protect them from things no child should face. Because breaking that cycle is the only apology I’ll ever get.
And maybe, in some strange way, it’s the only one I’ll ever need.
If you’ve ever lost someone without closure, I see you. There’s a special kind of grief that comes from mourning both a person and the relationship you never got to have with them. It’s confusing, heavy, and lonely at times. But healing doesn’t always come from an apology. Sometimes it comes from choosing to stop carrying their pain as your own.
This piece isn’t just about loss—it’s about release. It’s about reclaiming peace, even when the past refuses to make sense. And if you’re standing in that same silence, I hope you know you’re not alone.