How My Daughter Helped Me Realize My Bond With My Mom Lives On
Distance does not dictate closeness, on earth or beyond
A while ago, my daughter Kate told me that she felt bad that she hadn’t been home for the past few months.
She recently moved from our hometown of Brooklyn, NY to another state, and though she and her fiancé drive here for holidays and even my birthday, she said she felt guilty and just plain bad for not being home more.
It couldn’t be any further from how I feel about her not being home with me.
For starters, she is blossoming in her new life, and it brings me a peace and happiness that I’ve never known. She has had ongoing health issues since a child. When she was diagnosed at the age of nine with an autoimmune disease, I knew very little about the battles she would face and was terrified.
I was strong for her when she was overwhelmed and at a loss, though inside I felt crippled and helpless myself. I praised her for every blood test, scan, and MRI, hoping she would find strength in her courage.
She still has the disease, but she has learned to manage it with careful determination and incredible intuitiveness (she’s also become a better doctor for herself than many doctors we’ve seen in the past 10 years, but that’s for another essay).
Kate has always felt a fondness for rural areas and an aversion to big city life, so her move to rustic Pennsylvania always made sense to me. This love for small-town life started at my Mom and Dad’s house in New Jersey where Kate and all my kids spent school vacations, holidays, summers, birthdays, winter breaks, you name it.
My mom, their Nanny, was such an integral part of our lives that I almost didn’t even feel like things that happened to us existed until I’d call her and tell her about them.
Mom was involved in everything the kids and I were into at the time: new bands, favorite foods, new toys, clothes, inside jokes, personal upsets, and especially accomplishments and highs. She’d call every day normally, and 3–4 times when any of us were sick.
The bond she had with each of my kids was and is unbreakable. It’s exactly how I feel about Kate not being home.
We text, call, and FaceTime and are still deeply involved in each other’s lives. I don’t feel any less close to her though geographically apart. This is her time. My kids are growing, blossoming, and taking their next steps in the world, and that’s exactly how it should be.
When I lost my Mom someone told me that her journey is hers, and my journey is mine, and that she would want me to live my journey to its fullest. I somehow absolutely 100% know that, too.
When I heard Kate say she felt guilty, I told her she had absolutely nothing to be guilty about, but I related … because I feel guilty for everything with Mom.
That I didn’t see her enough before she got sick, that I didn’t do enough in the hospital, that she transitioned a few hours after I left her.
The brain’s urge to fix what went wrong is so strong that even after it’s over, it’s so easy to second-guess every decision I made, it’s also detrimental.
What I would tell my kids in that situation is that I know without a doubt in the world how much they love me and how much I love them and nothing would ever or will ever change that. We each do have our own journeys that we have to live out no matter how difficult they may be.
I know Mom would agree. When I feel particularly sad and I can get into a quiet headspace, I can almost hear her telling me, “Oh, Danielle, don’t be silly.” Then I hear the loving words she always had for me saying how much she loved me.
In these moments, I know she’s still here with me, though on the other side. Our bond has not broken and it never will.
The love and bond between a mother and her children will never, ever diminish … whether the distance is between Brooklyn and Pennsylvania, or heaven and earth.
