The Relentless Hope of Healing the Mother Wound upon a Mother’s Death
Reflections on Self-Mothering
Sitting here sipping a nip of Amaretto, not because I like it, but because it helps me feel close to Mom. It’s the same reason exactly twice a year I buzz through the McDonald’s drive-through and get a Filet o’ Fish or buy my sons the candies Sixlets and white Tic Tacs.
Tomorrow would have been Mom’s sixty-eighth birthday. Gratefully seventeen years ago on that day, we were able to celebrate together the birth of my second son on her birthday. That is so special to me. Then breast cancer took Mom a few days after Mother’s Day when she was sixty.
It’s an odd thing to be the oldest of the matrilineal ancestors at forty-six. Or back when Mom passed when I was forty. It’s lonely. It’s sad. It’s disorienting. I feel untethered, still, even after over seven years of missing her.
To be completely transparent, because I am only transparent these days, Mom and I never really saw eye-to-eye except when she was in the hospital for the last time when I spent my last day with her on Mother’s Day. I share a fair bit in my books, Body 2.0, Ischemia, and Unlearn Moderation, and my poetry, but we did find an understanding as she was transitioning from this earth. We found an unexpected common ground as I mothered her…
