Was I wrong to have made peace with my mother?

Dear Agatha, I am at a cross road. I lost my father about a decade ago. My siblings and I were shared amongst my father’s sibling for proper care. I was fortunate to be taken to an uncle who took good care of me. Besides, God also blessed me with intelligence which, made me excel and graduate from the university at an early age despite the three years I lost due to the death of my father. To cut the long story short, my uncles hate my mother and all tried everything to turn the children against her. Things became worse when she had to leave the family’s house to live with another man she had other children for. My uncles never failed to remind me at every point how much they spent on me and who my mother was, I graduated and got a well paying job. Unfortunately, the stories I was told over the years about my mother have made me to hate her with passion; the reason I didn’t invite her for my wedding. Strangely, my guardians were happy that I wasn’t in good terms with my mother. They now hate me as I have decided to make up with my mother and doing what they think is unthinkable by taking my mother to them to ask for their forgiveness if she has offended them in anyway. Did I do wrong making up with my mother? Worried Daughter. Dear Worried Daughter, You aren’t wrong to have made up with your mother. Apart from being the only parent you have left in the world, she remains the only mother you can ever have. No matter how much your uncles care for you, they can never replace your mother’s position in your life. Besides, what did your mother do to warrant the kind of hatred they have against her? Do they have any evidence that she killed their brother? If they do, why didn’t they hand her over to the Police instead of poisoning the minds of her children against her? Whatever your mother may have done is all in the past. I am sure if they have the evidences that she had a hand in the death of their brother, they wouldn’t have allowed her to stay in the family house before she left to remarry. Whatever their reasons maybe, they were wrong to have tried to disassociate you from your mother. She is your mother irrespective of what they think of her conduct or attitude. They didn’t do well by asking you to ignore her existence to the extent of excluding her from your wedding ceremony. If she were that bad, I am not sure she would have remained in the family after the death of your father. If she left of her own accord, it means whatever they had against her wasn’t so fundamental. There is no way they would have allowed her stay a minute more than necessarily if in truth, she had anything to do with the death of your father. Although, you didn’t give her age but not every person is gifted with the power of resilience. She had to remarry because she couldn’t cope with loneliness. If your uncles were expecting her life to end with the death of their brother, they thought wrongly. A woman has as much right to go on with her life after the death of her husband as a man. Since nobody appears willing to tell you exactly what she did, it might have been a case of one of your uncles aspiring to inherit your mother after the death her husband. That she is your mother and wife to their late brother doesn’t make her lacking in human or emotional feelings. Don’t neglect the fact that before she became wife and mother, she had a life. And as adult there are limits to what she can be forced to do. If as a child you noticed the hostility towards her, then the place must have been very uncomfortable for her. Expecting her to stay on would have led to her early death. Given the situation she found herself, the choice to leave was the best at the time. You have done right by making up with your mother because one day, you will also become a mother. Even if you think her guilty of any offence, it isn’t your place to judge her. That is between her and her creator. As a child to a mother, learn to love her and give her all the respect she deserves as a mother. One day when you are older and more experienced in the way of men and women then you will appreciate that it isn’t everything in marriage that glitters; there are many instances in marriage when the people involved wished for some form of freedom to be happy. You are married and no longer under their control. Bring your mother near but go on with your peace moves. Hear whatever your mother has to say on the frosty relationship between her and your father’s family. Remember there is usually no smoke without fire. You can never know how deep her pains are until you ask. It couldn’t have been easy enduring the pains of not seeing her children, of being shut out of their lives. Do the right thing by trying to settle the disagreement by going to your uncles to plead with them to let go of something that has been so long. Resist anger in the process of trying to buy back peace but if at the end of the day, your uncles maintain their stance against your mother, go ahead and begin a relationship with your mother. Encourage your siblings to do same. Just think how you would feel as a mother some day if anybody influences your child to abandon you or exclude you from his or her wedding ceremony. She has paid for whatever sins your father’s family think she may have committed by not allowing her attend your wedding. Yes, they gave you education but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a mind of your own. If your mother didn’t give birth to you, they won’t have you. You can only be their niece, not their daughter. Even women, who abandoned their children at birth, still get pardoned by their children. No influence should make you abandon your mother. If for nothing else but for God’s command that mandates us to honour our father and mother so that our days on earth can be long. While they can afford to ignore her existence, you cannot afford such luxury because of the umbilical cord that binds every child to the mother. Perform your obligations to her to escape the wrath of God. This issue has long passed who is right to what is right. Besides, you weren’t in there with her so cannot tell what she endured or who is right. Good luck.