My mum was truly hideous . . . so why do I miss her?

Your longer email confesses this puzzle is giving you ‘nightmares and panic attacks’ — which must be a post-traumatic response, not so much to your mother’s recent death, as to her life.

While she was still alive you were permanently caught on the interface between disliking her and yearning for everything to have been different.

Now she is dead there is no oxygen to fuel the flame of hate, therefore you are left with loss and longing as deep and sorrowful as any unrequited love. I find it touching that all through your email you call her ‘Mum’. For most people that word is so full of meaning: affectionate, intimate and full of symbolism.

A ‘mum’ is the first face you ever saw, someone you can lean on when the going gets tough, someone who loves unconditionally . . . Yet nowhere does your letter describe a ‘ mum’ any of us would recognise. The woman was your biological mother, that’s all.

Therefore it’s not in the least surprising you can’t mourn. You loved your father, but I’m wondering why he stood by and allowed her to behave as you describe, and whether her death released such questions. Was he, in fact, weak and cowed by her?

I think it would help you to have some counselling in order to look back on your relationship with both parents and explore some truths.

But the main question here is profound: can we mourn those we dislike — who have treated us badly? Surely not in any conventional way.

When you say you want to mourn her — and the rest of your birth family — we should be clear what you are saying.

Your true loss is that of an ideal of family life which you know about, but never experienced growing up. You have never known a mother’s love (this applies to many sad people) and yet enshrined within your very DNA is a vision of what it should be like. Maybe you had friends with lovely mothers; maybe your husband did, too . . . and I have no doubt as to the kind of mother you yourself aim to be. But it was never her — and I think you have to come to terms with that somehow. You really do.

Some years ago, I had a similar letter and my reply suggested a little sacred ritual. Since that woman wrote and told me it had worked, I shall share it again.

You take a large piece of paper and carefully write your mother a long, frank letter. Not only do you describe the hurt, but also the dreams — letting her know all you longed for and lacked. At the end of the letter, you tell her that you forgive her, simply because she is dead and there is nothing else to do. Tell her that your sadness and disappointment will not weigh you down any more.

Seal the letter in an envelope, carry it to a beautiful spot, take some deep breaths — and put a match to it. Watch until the ashes are white. Then bid her goodbye, wish her the peace she never had in life — and go home to where your loved ones are waiting.