Summary

The author reflects on the complexities of Mother's Day after the loss of her mother, grappling with past estrangement, and finding peace through forgiveness and the lessons learned from her mother's absence.

Abstract

The article delves into the author's personal struggle with Mother's Day, a time that evoked mixed emotions due to a challenging relationship with her mother. The author describes the difficulty of finding genuine greeting cards that reflected their strained relationship. This year, however, the author is not faced with the dilemma of card shopping, as her mother has passed away. Instead, she is dealing with the aftermath of her mother's death, including a search for medical errors and the poignant experience of being by her mother's side during her final days. The author expresses gratitude for the opportunity to reconcile and forgive, acknowledging her mother's best efforts despite their troubled past. She resolves to break the cycle of neglect and abuse by treating her parents with care and kindness, and she finds solace in the maternal figures who have positively influenced her life. The author concludes that her mother's absence taught her valuable lessons about motherhood, leading to a strong relationship with her own children and a deeper compassion for her mother.

Opinions

The author has a history of feeling alienated by the conventional Mother's Day cards, finding them inauthentic to her experience.
She acknowledges the pain of not having the ideal relationship with her mother and the regret of estrangement.
The author believes in repaying past wrongs with positive actions, choosing to be caring and attentive to her parents in contrast to her own upbringing.
She feels that her mother's inability to provide love and support ultimately made her a more attentive and compassionate mother.
The author values the influence of other mother figures in her life and the lessons learned from her mother's absence.
She emphasizes the importance of honesty, trust, and respect in parent-child relationships, as opposed to fear, guilt, and manipulation.
The author has come to understand and forgive her mother, recognizing that her mother loved her to the best of her ability.

Mother’s Day for the Motherless.

It’s not all tulips and daffodils out here.

Every year, I dreaded that trip to the store. I would stand in the aisle scoffing, shaking my head, rolling my eyes at the flowery, sickeningly-sweet cards everyone else seemed to be shopping for. Sometimes, I left the store empty handed, and in tears.

I don’t do superficial well, and I suck at being fake. Fake is how I would have felt sending my mother the “World’s Best MOM! or “You’re My BEST FRIEND!” cards greeting card companies write for Mother’s Day. I typically went with a funny card, or just wrote my own little message.

Some years, I don’t think I even did that.

If I wrote greeting cards professionally, I would make sure there were some “We Survived Somehow!” and “Thanks for Birthing Me!” or “You Tried Your Best!” options for people like me who didn’t have the best childhood experiences, or healthiest relationships with their moms.

Mother’s Day has always come with a twinge of pain for me. A reminder that I was the girl with the parents who could not love or support her the way she needed them to. A reminder that I had been outcast years before I chose to leave my hometown and make a better life far away, and that I would never get to have the relationship with my mom that I wished I could.

This year, there won’t be a trip to the store to stand in the aisle and feel like an orphan of the living.

My mom died nearly twelve weeks ago. Instead of searching for the right card and sending flowers this May, I’m digging through her medical records to find the mistake that ended her life.

Instead of the two-hour phone call to catch up this weekend, I’ll be thinking about the eleven days we spent at her bedside while she suffered unnecessarily.

I never imagined that I would wash her hair as she lay dying. I never thought I would be there to hold her hand and speak the words I hadn’t spoken. “I forgive you. I know you did your best. I’m sorry you had such a hard life, and that I wasn’t there to help you more. I love you.”

I owe the opportunity to have those last conversations with mom to my little sister, who pushed and pushed to reunite our broken little family, even when I really didn’t want to. I am grateful to have left nothing unspoken. And, if it meant anything to my mother to know that I was there with her in those final days, I’m grateful I could do that for her.

I always wondered how I would feel when I lost my parents for real. I wondered if I would regret the years of estrangement — the silence and separation that I chose to protect myself.

I wondered if I would feel anything at all.

What has emerged is the knowing that I must not repay them in kind. I will speak up for my mother, and hold people accountable for harming her. I will see to it that my father’s needs are met in her absence. I will be attentive to their needs and do the right thing for them, because someone should have done that for me when I was small.

Repaying neglect with careful attention, abuse with kindness and denial with truth is the only way I can see to break the cycles in our family.

I was born for this.

Today, I feel at peace. Instead of struggling to find the right card to say something honest and real to the woman who brought me into this world, I’ve been sending little love notes to the women who have mothered me through the years. I’ve been fortunate to have wonderful aunts, grandmothers, in-laws and friends to give me good advice, and teach me how to be a women, a mother and a kick ass example of how to rise above your raising.

While my mother was dying, I started looking for any little positive memories or things that I could try to connect with and hold onto. Truly, the greatest gift my mother gave me, was her absence. Knowing how painful it was to not feel loved, accepted and protected by her made me a better mother to my children.

I owe my friendship with my adult kids today to my relationship with my mom, and all the things I learned from her.

I learned that kids need your time and attention more than anything you can buy them.

I learned that kids hear every word you say, and see everything you do, and if your actions and words don’t match, they know.

I learned that my words could actually change who my kids were, and how they saw themselves.

I learned that trust and respect are a two-way street. Fear and intimidation do not foster trust or respect, and neither do guilt and manipulation.

I learned that ignoring problems only gives them space to grow.

All these things are part of me, because of her. I am deeply grateful for my mother, and have found so much more compassion for her through the years. I understand now, that she loved me the best she could. And, as a mother, I know that’s all any of us can do.

Godspeed, mom. Happy Mother’s Day, wherever you are.