Harold's mother's reaction to the news he had been killed

But watching it again I paid closer attention to Harold's description of her behavior at the time. He said she put a hand to her face and her other hand went out to the side and she collapsed into the arms of the people who had told her. Doesn't that sound rather theatrical? Almost as if she was acting in some old melodrama. Yet the whole scenario only makes sense if he believed she was genuinely upset.

My take was that he thought her reaction was theatrical and he was doing it over and over trying to get a real authentic emotional reaction from her.

That is why he kept committing suicide for her viewing "pleasure". That is what filled him with such pain. His mother didn't care at all that he had been killed accidentally in the explosion. Her reaction was Broadway, and he knew it. She faked any emotion whatsoever that she had lost her son, and he saw that and realised she did not feel a single thing for him. Hence dramatically killing himself always in sight of her, becoming more graphic and over the top with each attempt, JUST to see if anything real came out of her. The closest he got was the bathtub suicide. That's about as real as she got, but that was in complaint or exhaustion with the whole suicide attempt scenario. She was clearly shaken by it, but not in the way he wants. He wants her to actually care about him. And she doesn't. It's blatantly clear when he tells Maude this story that what truly wounds him the greatest, is that his mother is just going through the motions. He's just property, like her possessions.