Making peace with a dead parent
Mutley
Somerset UK Explorer
My mother was widowed at the end of WW2 when I was a few weeks old. We were very close in my childhood but when puberty came and with it girl friends she became increasingly jealous. There were other problems in the relationship, she was domineering and would often belittle me in front of others. She had a man friend who would not view this objectively and would always support her.
Both are now dead but I am quite haunted by them. I hear their critical voices when I am driving my car or waiting in a queue in a supermarket. I say "hear", their voices do not override "ordinary normality" but are on the back of my mind.
What can I do about this? I realize that the above is a very brief resume. If anyone wants more detail I can send a PM.
How do you make peace with the dead?
Comments
I don't think it's the dead you need to make peace with.
I think it's yourself, and you have to begin by understanding that you are not your thoughts, your worst fears are also the best liars, and that simply because someone says something, it doesn't make it true.
Dear @Mutley - you are haunted by the pain. You seem to understand quite well that your mom's behavior was caused by jealousy (and probably fear of the inevitable, that she would lose you to your own life, after having replaced dad with you, psychologically speaking). You're haunted by not just your own pain, but knowing the pain your mom endured, as well.
The negative voices are just a way to label the pain factor - you'd do well to allow meditation and mindfulness practice to help create a causeway to the very surface and then they can be released by you. It could take forever, but at least you'll be on the road. I think you'll feel a lot safer and saner if you try it. (and welcome to NB)
@Mutley
Just a few thoughts
These hauntings are just the manifestations of any self wrought identity,
which means that I think that everyone is subject to them to some extent.
To the Buddhist meditator, they can be meditation teachers telling us to wake up from where ever we are.
These hauntings are actually fed and cause suffering whenever we cling to them, push them away or try to ignore them.
They lose their ability to cause suffering when we learn to stop trying to control their existence.
For me, they indicate some lack of acceptance on my part for where ever I presently am.
When I recognize this, to the degree that I am able to lovingly accept the whole of where ever I presently am, is the same degree to which they no longer cause me to suffer.
@Mutley -- If it bothers you enough, see a counselor. In my opinion, everyone goes through life dragging a little red wagon full of things that cannot be undone. It helps if the wagon wheels are oiled.
http://www.psychalive.org/critical-inner-voice/
http://www.wildmind.org/metta/one
OP, you can write letters to your deceased parent. If you're feeling the pain of the difficult relationship, pour that pain onto the page. Tell her all about it. Write and write until there are no more words. Then flush or burn the letter. You could make a ritual of it. If you feel a conciliatory streak coming on, pour that onto the page (on a different occasion from the first). Let the words flow, get it all out of your heart and mind onto paper. This helps move the energy that's been trapped inside, and lessens the burden. Repeat this exercise as often as needed until you notice that you're feeling better.
Our emotions can get trapped inside our body/mind, where they create stress. According to Tibetan medicine, this is one of the main sources of illness. By opening up the blockages and allowing your feelings to flow, as if communicating them directly to the person in question, you're releasing the stress, the "dukkha", or suffering, that you were holding inside. After you do that enough times, it will be gone, and lightness will take its place. Blessings.
@Mutley do you have children ? You can make peace with your dead parents by showing love and kindness to your children, and keep in mind your parents would have treated you better if they had 'known' better....You are in the fortunate position in that you do know better, so show it, not only to your children (if you have any) but also to people you meet and interact with...
Also you have to forgive your parents...Metta mediation can help with this...This article might also be of interest "No big deal on Metta Meditation"
I'm going to be somewhat controversial and suggest that the first step to take here is not making peace.
I would think that part of the reason that you still hear their voices is because you have not reclaimed what they took from you with their poor behaviour. You have absorbed those voices because on some level the young adult who you were allowed it to be true.
There is an essential step of rebellion, of reclaiming ones authorship over one's own self image, where you become master of your own destiny and your view of yourself. Some people never go through that, and stay at the stage of propitiation, "what did I do wrong?" As if you should accept blame somehow.
But it is important to acknowledge, especially for daughters whose mothers become jealous at their youth and sexual maturity, that this isn't down to anything that you did. The flaw was in them, and you shouldn't allow their mean spiritedness to invade how you think about yourself, even if for your child self it was natural to just accept it.
In the end none of us come out undamaged, some part of our parents legacy defines some of what is good about us and what is bad. Buddhism can help you find peace once you have achieved independence, but that first step of reclaiming yourself is one only you can take for yourself.
Great suggests, I particularly liked @Kerome insight.
This is question is very relevant to me. My dead father would visit me for years in an emotional nightmare, where I always felt the oppression of realising he was still alive. He was an impossible parent, having unresolved and undiagnosed mental health issues. He also loved and did his best for us kids (children).
I consider his efforts as outstanding - considering his difficulties. 
Others are not so lucky.
The idea of a letter is a good one. You can be angry, hateful BUT you must try to find understanding, compassion and forgiving of flaws and failings. Those positive, moving on qualities are the 'inner grand children' that you can manifest ...
Good luck to us kids.
@Kerome. An excellent and insightful post. If we can go forward identifying with the positive qualities we gained from out parents while letting the negative wither on the vine then being a slave to the past will not be our portion.
Memories, good or bad, do haunt us. Especially memories of our parents and other authority figures from our childhood. I have such great memories of my grandma and grandpa and uncles I lived with as a child and who pretty much raised me until I was about 10. Those will always stay with me because I cherish them. I have not so good memories of a stepfather who treated me like dirt yet took me away from my grandparents. For a while as a young man those bothered me a great deal. I still remember those times and the terrible things he said to me, because they're a part of what made me what I am today.
I don't know if I would be a better or worse person without my painful childhood. I like to think the grounding in my early years proved able to withstand the battering it received later on until I joined the service to get away from my stepfather and turned 18 in basic training. I guess I'm just being long-winded and telling you that you're not alone in having old voices haunt you. In my case they were replaced by new voices eventually. Hope this helps.
-There it is...
Thank you so much to all who have replied. Every reply has brought me enormously useful material. FWIW, I did start writing a letter (in 2014). I have found this on disc and will be continuing it. Also I do have children. It was having them and realizing my feelings for them that enabled me to see how "wrong" my own upbringing had been. I say "wrong", my feeling is that your upbringing is a sort of Koan and it's up to you to "solve" it.
Once again, many thanks. There are clearly some very compassionate and insightful people on this site and I am glad I joined.
Sometimes I wonder what experiences from their childhoods my kids will dwell on later in life.
Hee. Just make sure there's enough fun ones to balance out the times you blew it.
Actually you'll probably need to do better than just a balance, it's been shown in psychological experiments that people tend to remember negative experiences more strongly than positive ones.
Not only 'remember'. But also 'focus on'. As has been amply illustrated here.
There is no question in my mind that @Mutley must have experienced some extremely happy, jovial and serene times with his mother, but it's sad how this situation has overshadowed that., to the extent that he barely mentions anything good.
But I bet there was plenty that WAS good....
Hi @Mutley ,
@federica mentioned how our fears are our best liars. Astute point, and in my experience, they are very, very convincing, and seem immune to reasoning. I've often tried to "think" my way out of paralyzing fear, only to realize that the "thinking" and fear were one in the same.
I think accepting and letting go the thoughts and fears can be hard, but that's why it's practice. Maybe show them some compassion, and get to know them.
@Deformed
What @how says here about inner hauntings:
is worth repeating, so I have.
When we do formal practice we may have to face pain, demons, voices, insanity, fierce emotions. What kind of mirror gazing fanatic is up for that? [not me, lobster goes to hide behind the sofa/couch]
It is why it is sometimes useful to do prostrations to a semi wrathful or wrathful Buddha natured demon. For very obvious reasons such practices are prone to misunderstanding and we can be overwhelmed.
Here is the thing. The positive, rainbow, rose tinted Lovey Buddhas and bad Buddhas are made of the same intense emptiness.
Buddha is bad ass!
Be kind to demons
For me it has come with a true understanding of what it means to accept that all people do the best they can with what they have in knowledge, education, experience, resources, etc at any given time. I have struggled with the ghosts of the people who have passed, including an instance where I wondered for a long time if I had done enough to save him from himself. It's always easy to look at any situation and see what could have been done differently. But if you truly go back to that place you can see you did only what you could at the time. That your revisiting of the situation is a result of more experience and other things that now contribute to you seeing things differently. Even if they did a really bad job, your parents did the best they could at the time with what they were raised with, what resources they had and so on. It doesn't do much good to know today that they could have done better 60 years ago because the information you have today wasn't available to them then.
The only thing you can do is use that experience to do better today. If they knew then what you know now, they would have done better. But they couldn't. It also helps to realize that while they perhaps didn't do so great, they gave you life and you are here to improve your life today as a result of that experience, and as a result of having been born. They may not have raised you in the way you wish they would have. But they loved enough to keep you and raise you so that you survived. They presumably fed, housed and clothed you, educated you, and gave some degree of support at least for a while.
I think we all wish our parents did things better. It is a process of us getting to know ourselves and our needs and to look back and wish our parents had known us that way. But they are just people. And so are we. And even if those people come from our uterus, they are still their own people and sometimes their personalities and quirks and needs are vastly different than our own. Sometimes kids need a new way of parents seeing the world and not all parents are prepared to be able to do that. But we can learn from their mistakes while not judging them and accepting that they did do the best they could with what they had.
@lobster Indeed! Thanks!