Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.
—George Eliot
Dear readers, our daughter and soon-to-be-formally adopted grandbaby, Keira, are feeling their way forward, day by day. And sometimes, when the baby’s drug withdrawal symptoms worsen, hour by hour. Thank you for your ongoing prayers. (Catch up on our miracle here.)
Remembering means
being fully present—to the past
Anyone else with a complex parental relationship?
I’ve been questioning my dry-eyed, ongoing numbness over my mother’s death, a few years ago.
Weeping neither proves nor validates one’s depth of love or loss: I learned this at “Grief Share,” a 12-week class for the bereaved.
A relief, yes.
Still, I needed more.
The book
I’ve been reading Everything that Makes You Mom, written by dear friend Laura Lynn Brown, who distills memories of her mother, then poses surprising questions for the reader.
Take that angry day little Laura ran away: Her mom asked her to pause so she could describe to the police what her child was wearing.
Brown confesses she “made it three houses away before [her] resolve melted, but went all the way around the block just to save face.”
Brown’s mom took her child seriously. She made room for heated, headlong reaction. Subtly assured her that she’d be found, brought safely home.
What would your mom have said?
Three questions
How might you answer Brown’s follow-up questions?
Did your mom ever deal with a fit by pretending to take you seriously?
How has she made it hard to stay mad?
Has she blessed your independence in ways that make you want to come home?
Near the end of my mother’s life, I wanted to run away.
Around the block, around the bend
Parenthood was my mother’s high calling, her crowning joy. She amazed me in a thousand ways.
Dementia and disease unraveled her. Mom became increasingly hard to recognize and even harder to spend time with during her final, anguished year. Those scenes still cloud my memory of her, block out better times.
Who was she, really?
Remembering home
Brown’s disarming book invites personal time-travel. I started remembering:
- Mom opening cornerless cupboards (gnawed by our dog), stashing her Nestles Crunch bars somewhere new every week
- Mom painting Mercurochrome “kittens” on my skinned knees to distract me from the pain
- Mom providing unlimited buttercream frosting, colored sprinkles, and gingerbread men for my birthday party
Glimpse by glimpse, I have finally started remembering better days. Finding her again. Forgiving myself for how long this has taken.
Laura’s page of fill-in-the-blank statements will coax forth more riches:
Mom, it made me feel loved when you . . .
It made me feel safe when you . . .
It made me feel smart when you . . .
Remembering, anyway
For some of us, calling up memories of our mothers feels crazy. Daunting. Impossible.
Maybe, like our new grandbaby, your birth mother relinquished her rights with courageous love. Or it might have been negligence. Maybe the courts or a relative stepped in, later on, to protect you.
Perhaps your mother’s actions, or yours, caused estrangement and she’s gone now and there’s no chance to absolve her. Or ask her forgiveness.*
Pain-crazed, afraid of death, your mother might have turned away from you, at the end.
Even so . . .
What if we had the mother we needed
to shape who we are still becoming?
If we sit quietly with this idea and invite God to speak into our past and present, we might find a new equilibrium somewhere between runaway anger and fond remembrance, between guilt and growing wholeness.
Even if my mother and father leave me, the Lord will take me in.
Psalm 27:10 ERV
MAKING IT PERSONAL:
*Many people find that writing a letter to their deceased loved one, creating a memory book, or garden, or sharing their story aloud with a trusted listener alleviates pain. This site offers ideas.
Wow, Laurie. Very sensitive post. I still have my mother and take care to spend time with her now. I’m sorry you lost your mother before the time. But I’m just as glad you are rediscovering her. God is good.
Linda Jo, thanks for your lovely words. “Rediscovering” describes things well for me these days.
I’m glad you and your mom still have time to be together. May each occasion be blessed!
“…a new equilibrium, somewhere between…” Thank you, once again for your beautiful and honest words, strung together as finely wrought Jewelry. Three years (almost four) after saying goodbye to Mom, my sister and I have moved from inconsolable grief to carefully parsing fragments of what she said that have bounced around in our individual heads over the past 50-60+ years. We counsel one another and laugh together at the completely inappropriate ways she reacted on more occasions than we originally remembered. She was a rock. She was a pistol. She was a tender fragrant apple blossom. And we now represent the orchards of her seeds that continue to grow and mature and have lives of their own. What will our children say?
Pacia, I love this verbal portrait of your mom: “She was a rock She was a pistol. She was a tender, fragrant apple blossom.” What a vibrant tribute. Have you written a poem using those lines?
And yes, I wonder what our kids will say about us . . . 🙂
Dear Laurie-
Your Mother making us cocoa after skating…your Mother’s kitchen window full treasures… your Mother’s gentle voice… your Mother’s hospitality to all of us swimming off the Brendmuehl pier… your Mother’s gentle spirit, living on in you and your daughters. Shalom- Lynn
Hi Lynn, I tried to comment on this a few days ago but see it failed to print. What a gift it is to read your memories, and also to think of myself (and our girls) carrying Mom’s gentle spirit forward. Those days of making cocoa from scratch seem so distant. And popcorn shaken over a fire on a Sunday night in the long-handled thingamabob. I’m so glad you lived close by, so grateful for memories we share of growing up together.
“What if we had the mother we needed
to shape who we are still becoming?”
Wow, Laurie, what a question.
My mother died over 33 years ago (she was only 55). I sometimes feel guilty then grateful to have lived to see 64, but I miss her every day, unable to share with her all that my live is becoming…
Thank you for this window you’ve opened to us as God lets in the light to your re discovery. Laura’s words sound like abalm.
Jody, somehow I missed replying to this. Oh, I am sorry. Thank you for sharing a little about your mother. You lost her so young! “Guilty, then grateful”—such complex emotions, added to the ongoing ache of not being able to pick up the phone and talk. If there’s a portal in heaven where our loved ones sometimes stand, I can easily imagine how proud she must be of all you continue to share and accomplish.