Mother’s Day is a wonderful holiday, a day to celebrate our moms. As a mother myself, it’s special to me. However, when you no longer have a mother to celebrate with, this day becomes bittersweet. I lost my mom 33 years ago and each Mother’s Day since has been hard. The pain of loss does not go away–yes, it diminishes, but there is a big hole in your life when the woman who gave you that life is no longer in it. No one else in your life will ever love you like your mom-no one.
Today I want to honor my brave and beautiful mom even though she is not here with us. This is my story of losing my mom. When my mother died, I was only 30 years old. Here is my story of my journey through grief.
Losing Mom
We’ve all heard of the 5 stages of grief that Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross detailed in her book On Death and Dying. You can’t have taken a basic psych class without this lesson thrown in. While I agree with these steps (and probably a few more!), not everyone experiences them in the same order or in the same amount of time.
Denial
In 1977, a couple of months after Rory and I were married, my father suffered a heart attack. My mother nursed him through this episode, making sure he rested, ate right and exercised when he could. Her world became him and his health—until he felt better and said, “that’s enough” and went back to life as he knew it.
At this point, my mother finally felt free enough to let her doctor know that she had found a lump in her breast. This was before routine mammograms, when lumps were the first sign of trouble. In this time period, they also went in for a biopsy and often came out with a mastectomy, which is what happened to my mother. Not only did she wake up to only one breast, but the doctors told her she needed the other removed as well.
So, in the course of one month’s time, my beloved mother lost both her breasts to cancer and then moved on to radiation and chemotherapy. Being the amazing woman she was, she made us all believe that everything would be alright. So, there you have it—our whole family believed she was “fixed” and it would be ok. All of us: myself, my sister and brother and my father were in complete denial about how serious this could be.
This denial was helped along by her having all treatments done, numerous bone scans that came back negative and a mom who was her old self and was thoroughly enjoying being a grandma to my children.
In cancer world, if you can make it to 5 years with no recurrence, you are a huge step closer to being cured. At 4 ½ years, on a Thanksgiving morning, my mother put the turkey in the oven, walked into the living room and collapsed in front of my father. So much for denial.
Anger
Mom spent almost the entire month between Thanksgiving and Christmas that year in the hospital. Not only was the cancer back, but it had wrapped itself around her aorta. More radiation and more chemotherapy. A woman who loved Christmas and wanted it to be special for her grandkids was too ill to bake or decorate or shop.
She was in pain, she was exhausted and we were angry. Why her? She never smoked a day in her life, lived for her family and was a good woman, well loved. We were all believers, but we were angry with God.
Bargaining
This is the hardest of the stages, because it never ends. Please God, let her live long enough to see my sister graduate. Please let her live long enough to see my new baby. Please cure her, make it go away—I promise to attend every Mass I can for the rest of my life…..to this day, if I could have her back again, I would give almost anything.
Depression and Acceptance
It took only 2 years from that collapse for my mother to die. Two years of treatments, hope, relapses, pain, exhaustion and finally, depression on our part and acceptance on hers. Somehow, she could smile and say, “it’s going to be ok”, while here I am, 33 years later sobbing as I write this. When I asked her what I was going to do without her, she said “live your life”. She was right—I have lived an amazing life that would have been even better with her in it!
As she became weaker and in more pain and spent more time in the hospital than she wanted to, she and I talked on the phone long distance. When I tried to stop her from saying she was dying, she told me that someone needed to talk to her about it. She said it was lonely to die alone with no one mentioning it. My father was unable to accept life without her, my sister was only 18, and my brother was unable to face it, either. Whether it was the physical distance between us or the emotional connection of mother to mother, I was able to finally listen to her talk about her own death.
Her last visit to the hospital, before they put a tracheotomy in her throat, she spoke with me on the phone. Telling me she knew we all wanted her to fight, she told me was so tired. I gave her the permission she was waiting for and told her it was okay for her to go if she needed to. She passed away 2 days later, before I could get to her.
Thirty-three years later
So yes, we did go through those stages. Yes, it does get a little easier as the years go by and you live your life. But I still miss her so much—I remember how she smelled (of hairspray and Charlie cologne), how it felt to hug her tiny little body towards the end. I remember her smile and laughter and all the love she gave to us. I hate that my children don’t remember her; that she did not get to see my sister become the awesome woman she is; that my brother lost his biggest champion in this world.
Years ago, I noticed that I frequently see streetlights go off or burn out as I am passing them. I have come to believe that it is my mom saying, “hi honey, I love you.”
I love you, too, mom. Happy Mother’s Day.
With tears from my amazing grace filled life.