Being a Mom without a Mom

This piece should probably be called being a person without your person, because I don’t think missing Mom has been harder since Finley arrived. If anything he has helped. By becoming a new person in my world he has made the gaping hole she left just that little bit smaller. This piece may ring true to some of you who have lost a person though; maybe you have felt similar or maybe you have felt differently but for some reason I decided that now is the time to share my first experience of loss.

My Mom died of a heart attack in December 2001. I went to my Saturday job that morning, my Dad arrived to it in the afternoon and had to tell me that his wife, my mother, was dead. He had to do that five times in total, to each of my four siblings, one of whom was pregnant. I remember walking out of the shop into the street decorated for Christmas and I couldn’t breath. The wind had been knocked right out of me and would take a long time to return.

Before I continue my Dad is more of a hero than you even think he is right now and so I know he won’t feel left out in this piece because he knows what I think of him. He has been Mom and Dad for 15 years, he even used to buy sanitary products for me and sister in the weekly shop (thanks Dad), He did everything possible to ease the loss and ease it he did. He has now taken up the role of being Grandad and Nanny and is doing so with aplomb.

So Mom. I keep starting a sentence with when she died and then deleting it because…well what about when she died? When she died so did the future that I had been planning. When she died I lost the chance of just being 18, of just being 19, of just having my twenties. Death had knocked on my door and left it ajar. I was acutely aware that life can end, with one missed beat of a heart it can stop. It’s very hard to live in the moment when you know that that moment may be the very last you have.

As strange as it may sound I have had to work hard to accept that I would probably see the night, and the morning, and I would probably see the weekend. I had to relearn how to make plans expecting to keep them. Your brain, or at least my brain, tried to protect me from the shock I suffered with her death but in doing so it prepared me for everyone’s death, that’s a pretty exhausting way to go about your day. It’s also exhausting to be the partner of someone who lives like this. If my now husband didn’t return a call quick enough I would get anxious and I would be angry at him for making me wait. To this day when I get a call from a family member that I am not expecting for a brief second I am scared to answer. It’s unfair and it sucks for all involved, it’s hard to ask someone to buy a litre of milk when they are talking to you as if you might be the grim reaper.

When Mom died I suffered from fits which damaged the nerve in my right arm and meant I could no longer write like an adult should, I would write maybe two or three words at a time and then my arm would freeze and I could do no more. Every time I tried to write I cursed her and so in the months following her death I missed her, I hated her, I grieved for her, I begged for one more moment with her and I blamed her for not letting me have it. When she died I spent some portion of every day sitting and thinking about her face and her voice because I was so scared of forgetting them. When she died I felt her face with my eyes closed so that I could store it to memory. When she died I wondered what the hell was I meant to do now?

For those of you who never met her she had beautiful cheekbones. Her whole makeup regime involved only black eyeliner and mascara. She washed her face with soap and used Vaseline as her moisturiser and she was glorious. She always took her glasses off for pictures even though she really couldn’t see without them. She organised a holiday every summer that would take us all around Ireland, once to Wales and once to France where my brother was made sleep in a separate tent including on a night that a storm arrived and he almost got washed away. God how we laughed, my poor brother. She made memories for us without knowing that we would spend most of our life reliving them without her.

Men loved my Mom. She was funny and beautiful, she was a great flirt (sorry Dad!) but I don’t think she knew she was. A few weeks after she died the oil man arrived, when we told him she died he had to come in for tea with sugar, he was devastated. Imagine when you die that your impact is so great even the oil man is in mourning. My Mom was a treasure and I didn’t even know it. As it turns out I want to be the kind of Mother that she was, I think that would probably give her a knowing laugh.

When Finley arrived I discovered how much she loved me. God that regret of never knowing or appreciating it. Of course she told me she loved me but hey I was 18, what did I care? A few weeks after Finley was born I was really sick and I was tired, and I cried so hard for her. Where the hell was she? How could she not stay to meet my baby, to meet the father of my baby. And the hardest thing of all is that I know, wherever she is, she’s asking herself the same questions.

So being a Mom without a Mom, being a person without your person? If you’ve never lost someone close then the experience of it is far more encompassing than you think. It affects more parts of your life for longer than you can probably appreciate. You may not need to hear that but it might help with the level of empathy you give someone, and for how long you give it. When you wake up ready for your day I wake up ready for mine missing Mom. Every day feels like it starts with a -1 and while we may both end up with a +10 for an awesome day I’ve worked that little bit harder to get there. Every death, and every knock that follows hits hard because the foundation is already a little shaky. That’s what it feels like to me. Somedays I realise it, some days I don’t, but every day I remember she died. For every time you get a message, or a call from your Mom I don’t. For every coffee you have with her, for every dinner she makes you, for every smile she has given you I have not had this. And mostly now for every kiss she gives your baby, mine has received none.

How has it affected my parenting? I’m not sure because I guess I have nothing to compare it to. I know that it has affected every part of me and therefore it affects me as a mother. I know I’m anxious about getting pictures with him because I want to make sure he has them if I die. I write down how much I love him so that he knows how wanted he was if I die. Life becomes a little more about death than it should be. I accept that as Finley grows he will be interested in his Nanny but she’ll always be an abstract concept. I know that’s not his fault and I will need to not blame him for it. She will always be a part of my life but she will have never been a real part of his. Kids know what they can see, I have to learn to accept this.

I also know that I bathe in the glory of motherhood. I know that I haven’t fought with my husband as much, or he with me, because we are just so grateful to have this happiness. The joy Finley has brought us feels like a relief or maybe more accurately it feels like a release. Death is a leech, it hangs on trying to ruin your finest moments but the life of a baby is far more powerful. Finally something more powerful than death. In many ways life feels lighter and easier since he arrived, I can welcome back use of the word Mom now. It’s a small word when often used but it echoes loudly when left unsaid.

This piece feels very self absorbed and pitying, lets be honest that’s because it is. I’m writing this one for me, and for everyone who has lost a person and tries so hard to just get on with it. Perhaps Mothers Day inspired me. Also I’m interested in human experience, especially ones I have not gone through and so some of you may be interested to read this having never felt able to ask the questions.

And I want to appreciate that I’m here writing it because I was surrounded by wonderful people when it happened. The evening of Moms funeral my friends brought me back to one of their family homes and put on Shrek. I think they were probably worried that Shrek was a terrible movie choice but it has given me my  single happy memory from that time. They were only 18 too and yet how they reacted to me from then to now was perfect. The first thing my sister did was to ask if I was ok, she too had just lost Mom but in that moment she cared more about me. My sister in law sat beside me when the coffin was brought into the house, and my brother held me as my fits took hold. I like to think that each of us has protected each other and I hope this is Moms legacy, she created a family to love each other and that we do.

Hmm how do you finish a piece like this? I want to finish it by telling you to love your Mom or your person more, to tell them that you do, to listen to them when they say it back, to create memories with them, to let arguments go and not waste time but I’m saying all of that because I still live as if I will die tomorrow….maybe though instead of that being a curse it is actually a blessing?