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Untethered: Navigating Loss, Love and Life

Reconciling unfinished business with my mom

Heidi Suydam
Thirty over Fifty

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woman in anguish sitting on the ground covering her face with her hair and hands, grief, loss,
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

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When I tell people about the sudden loss of my mother, I often follow up with, “But she was 80.” I think I feel like the sudden loss of my mother shouldn’t have rocked me as hard as it did. My follow-up statement is some kind of apology to a question not yet asked: “How old was she?”

It’s strange to talk about the loss of my mom. First, it still feels unreal, and also, at my age, is it appropriate to feel so untethered and undone? I mean, parents age, and then they die. It’s a natural course of life.

My Mom and I

a picture of a toe headed toddler and her mom in the early 1970s, mom has a beehive hairdo and miniskirt on standing outside a stationwagon
photo provided by the Author, Heidi Suydam

My mom and I had a complicated but loving relationship. She had me in 1971 at the age of 29. She was a beehive hairdo, miniskirt wearing smoking (literally smoking cigarettes) knockout who walked out of the hospital in her pre-pregnancy clothes. I heard that story a million times growing up, about her walking out of the hospital, super thin and “back to normal.” She was forever stylish, skinny, and proud of it.

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