'Vanderpump Rules' Star Jax Taylor Was Estranged From His Mother After His Father's Death

Jax Taylor's engagement to Brittany Cartwright had a tinge of sadness to it, the Vanderpump Rules couple revealed in Monday's all-new episode of the Bravo show.

After Taylor dropped to one knee for his girlfriend in the Season 7 premiere last week, he revealed that his mother, Marie Cauchi, hadn't responded to him breaking the big news.

"I used to be very close to my mom," he told the cameras, admitting, "We really haven't communicated in the last six months — pretty much since my father passed."

Taylor's father, Ronald Cauchi, passed away in December 2017 after a prolonged battle with stage IV esophageal cancer, but the Bravo personality said things were not good between his parents prior to the devastating diagnosis.

"Their marriage was on the rocks," he explained. "She was talking about leaving my dad about a year before he got cancer."

He even claimed his mother didn't tell him or his sister how bad things were getting near the end of their dad's life, resulting in him not getting to say goodbye to his dad.

"Towards the end, my mom would say, 'Oh, he's fine.' We didn't know he was in ICU, I would have been there in a heartbeat if I knew he was in ICU," he said, breaking down and crying. "I mean, I get it, my mother's trying to protect my sister and I, but I should have been able to say good to my dad. I should have."

Following his proposal to Cartwright, Taylor attributed his change from notorious Vanderpump bad guy to soon-to-be husband to his father.

"I was really at rock bottom with my life, you know?" Taylor told Entertainment Tonight. "I was at my worst, and then with the passing of my father and everything else, it was really rough. It was rough. I could either go one way or the other."

"I could either go hit the bottle, or do something bad with myself, or I can turn my life around and make everything a positive," he continued. "I was just like, 'What would my dad want me to do?' And I'm like, I'm not going to lose my best friend. I'm not going to lose the girl that I'm supposed to be with for the rest of my life, I'm not gonna let that happen. So, we're going to work through this and get through it."

Cartwright said of her forgiving state of mind, "I'm a person who I would rather forgive you than have that hate in my heart. As a Christian woman, being forgiving is a very important part of what I grew up learning, and it's just very important to me. It can be hard. It's not easy to be forgiving, but we definitely made it work."

Vanderpump Rules airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.

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