Is This What Menopause Is Supposed To Feel Like?
Thoughts on being a 47-year-old motherless child.
It’s funny, the things that just don’t occur to you until you’re right on top of them.
Like this one: I know what menopause is, of course, but my mom died young. Her sister isn’t the kind of aunt that imparts wisdom on her nieces. She’s not even the kind of aunt who speaks to her nieces, after her sister is dead. My grandmother died the year after my mother did.
I have my mother-in-law, and she lives with me, but she’s slipped deep enough into Alzheimer’s to give us a relationship that’s flipped on its axis. She’s more like the child. I’m more like the mother. And she fixates on health issues — it’s uncomfortable to bring any up with her.
I’ve reached my late 40s without any kind of elder female family.
I never thought about it before — that I might one day wake up and realize that I’ve missed something pretty major. I imagine it’s a little bit like a girl who grows up without a mother.
She might know what puberty is and expect that her period will come someday. Maybe her dad or a teacher or someone has told her something about it. Maybe she’s heard some things, from her friends. But none of that replaces…
