Three and a half years ago my mother died, suddenly and
tragically. One moment I was washing dishes and the next I was
identifying her wedding bands. She was twenty days from her 54th birthday.
After that night, I knew for certain that no matter what we do, we are never
guaranteed another day with those we love. There are so many things I never
asked my mother, so many topics I still need her thoughts on. So I started
writing letters to my own daughter, so she would never have to ask herself what
her mother thought or felt.
The following is the letter I wrote to her on May 12, 2014 -
the day after my first motherless Mother’s Day.
Dear Irie,
It’s the day after Mother’s Day. My first motherless
Mother’s Day. I survived it, probably because essentially it’s no worse than
being motherless every other day of the year. I have no cards or gifts or
flowers to commemorate the day, there is no tangible gift. I didn’t want a gift
this year because for years I bought my mother gifts for Mother’s Day,
and now those gifts are sitting in a house that I will soon clean out to make my
own. It is my last gift to her: to take the home she loved and fill it with
love and laughter and the smell of southern cooking, the way she always did. You
see, she couldn’t take any of the things
that we bought her along with her, but I do hope she was able to take
her memories, because I am sure even Heaven gets lonely without the three of
you there.
Ironically in my attempt to escape
thoughts of my mother, I found myself only steps away from the spot where we
spent countless summer hours sitting under an umbrella and watching you and
your brothers play in the sand while we talked about everything and nothing all
at once. It was in those moments that all of the years of pushing and pulling
against my mother became worth it. It was there in those beach chairs with the
sound of waves breaking in the distance, that I told her how badly I wanted
children but couldn’t conceive, it was there we rejoiced when finally I found
out you were growing within me, and it was there that we planned your perfect
future with no clue she would never see any of it. We were cocooned in our
shaded world where Maw Maws watched their granddaughters become women and
danced at their weddings instead of being ripped away, leaving us to alternate
between the world we planned with them and the one we must navigate without
them. It was those moments with her and those glimpses of her -- not just as my
mother and your grandmother -- but as a woman and a friend that she gave me
every year for my birthday and that I wish I could give her now. And
although every moment was not perfection, I am reminded often that our
perfectly imperfect life fits me just fine.
For the past six and half months I have felt like an
anchorless ship, tossing on a sea that is not always calm. The thing no one
mentions about losing your mother, is the irony of it. You see the one person I
want to talk to about what happened to her, is her. The only person I feel
would understand and talk me through the pure injustice of what happened, is my
mother, and yet she’s not here, and for the life of me I can’t figure out how
to be okay with that.
I was thinking today that there
should be some magic clause that brings the people we lose back to us to help
us understand why we lost them in the first place, because although others will
talk us through it, frankly it’s only the thoughts of the one we lost that we
care about; it is their reassurance that they are happy and in a better place
that we need, their affirmation that we crave, not the words of people who only
hope that it’s true. I want to ask her how to heal the broken pieces of my
heart, and yet I remember being three years old and her holding me against her
as she cried for her grandmother, I can still feel her sadness as she mourned
her own parents till the day that she became the mourned. I fear that I will
never get over her because I see that she never got over them. And really I
guess that’s the way it works.
The thing about missing your mother, is that you don’t know
you miss her all the time. It is only when I let myself think about it and
truly feel it, that I realize my body has become weakened by the weight of
missing her. And though I wish I was given power over when I miss her, I am
not. I can go days, maybe a week or two without that sickening feeling
when reality sets in and I realize she is actually gone and not simply living
in another town or on vacation.
I miss her most not when I am at my lowest, but when I am at my highest.
I miss her when I am so happy that I
cannot wait to share that happiness with her,
I miss her when I am excited and I need someone to be excited
with me.
I miss her when I have a plan or a dream that I want to hear
spoken aloud so that it gains weight and becomes reality.
I miss her when I need someone to believe in me the way that
only a mother truly can.
I miss her when I need someone to think it can be done
because I want it, when I need
practicality to weigh less than the pure fire in my gut.
I miss her when I dream peacefully
and wake to the feel of her kiss on my forehead and the certainty that she has
been with me.
I wasn’t always a great daughter. I believe that is true for
most of us with any real spirit of our own. And yet, I can’t truly regret
most of it. -- I was a daughter and she was a mother, and neither of us could
escape the struggle of me becoming who I needed to be, and her making sure that
I survived it. My mother rarely, if ever, yelled. We waged a silent war of
wills that we somehow survived and came out closer in the end.
As I scrolled through Facebook
today, after avoiding it on Mother’s Day, I was swamped with picture after
picture and post after post of mothers and children and the expressions of love
and appreciation that they shared. I wonder though if they will feel this way on July 28 -- the
day I have a birthday without the woman who gave me life or October 17 -- the
anniversary of the last time I hugged my mother and told her I loved her,
thinking I would talk to her the next day and eat at her table that Sunday. I
hope that even on those days that seemingly mean nothing, mothers are loved,
and appreciated, and told so.
As I sit in my mother’s house,
filled with things but no people, I realize what she knew all along. You, baby
girl, are my greatest gift, my greatest blessing. I do not need gifts or
flowers; in all this world, all I need is you, and your brothers, and love that
comes without conditions.
Happy Mother’s Day to the three of you,
because without you, I would have no reason for celebration.
Love,
Mommy