Mother's Day is just around the corner. I recently saw a pink and white banner at one of the hoardings displaying, SURPRISE YOUR MOM! The preparations have already started – the gift shops have cards, ad commercials are running around celebrating motherhood, lifestyle stores will soon have mom weekend sale and food outlets will come out with ‘no cooking’ deals to treat your mom.
A day dedicated to all the mothers of the world – a day to celebrate motherhood. But what about us, the kids without mothers - the motherless ones? Ever thought how difficult the life becomes without a mother? Every year her birthday and Mother’s Day, makes me remember that my mom is not here to be celebrated for the beautiful woman she was. I feel lonely thinking there must be many people busy buying a gift, ordering a cake, reserving a table for buffet and planning many other activities for their mom. I am aware that I'm not the only one, there are people like me on this earth, who grieve for their mom on Mother's Day. There are some daughters and some sons who still struggle and still fight with God only to know and understand why their mother is no longer here.
Even today, with every advertisement and every empty card I know I won't be filling, my heart cries in pain for her absence. If I could write her a card, I wouldn't scribble “thanks for being the best mom in the world I love you so much”, like I used to do in my childhood years. Instead I'd write that “I know you’re here, I know you’re never far. I know you are my guardian angel on and off duty.”
However, Mother’s Day 2019 is ‘hand-picked’ for me; as I'm myself a mother now. Last year, when I became a mother to my child, I am learning and experiencing motherhood – something that’s raw and pure – a God’s greatest gift. Yay, after decades, I have got a moment to celebrate motherhood. I can see my mother through my child’s eye; I can feel how she must've felt when she was loving me. I can realize that she’s with me, laced in and through my daughter, loving her as she continues to love me. I would say hold her tightly in your heart, and feel her motherly touch, even if you can't gift her something special on this special day.
Yes, I am a motherless mom, and a motherless daughter.
Do you know every year on Mother's Day, I long for only one thing that my mother could pay a visit, sit with me at the kitchen table and catch up on all she's missed. I know that won't happen. My mother's been dead for nearly 25 years. She was gone in a fatal car accident that killed her on the spot. I was 10, the eldest one in the family. My father tried to reassure us that life would go on. And, life did go on — but her death left a void that's been impossible to fill and difficult to explain. Even now, I still imagine the conversations we might have, still wonder at every challenge: "What would Mommy do?" The sight of a middle-aged mother getting a pedicure or shopping her heart out can move me to jealous tears.
Nobody in this world can ever understand the emotional terrain a woman goes through when she loses a mother. When a mother dies, a child’s grief and mourning never completely ends. “I would learn to live comfortably with my mother's shadow.” - That's harder than it might sound.
Yes, I have been crazy – Yes, I fought my battles alone – Yes, I am lonely, or needy. And, there is an empty place in the heart that will never be filled. During our lifetime, we search for nurturing, but don't know how to accept it because that seems too scary. We call ourselves independent and are always braced for rejection. But we will never ask for help because we have learnt to live life without mother’s support. The daughters who lose their mothers prematurely have a higher sense of isolation and the strong desire to give their children the kind of mothering that we lost forever. The grief that accompanies early loss of a mother flows through a daughter's life, and surge at milestones: a graduation, a wedding and the birth of a first child.
A mother’s lap is a place where daughter can go anytime, behave like weirdo, do pranks and feel like home. Yes, there’s no one like mom. Mothering my own daughter always feel like a solo tightrope walk, with no net and no cheering from the stands. But, I never forget that we are still a family and mother’s love lives on. Today, I appreciate my mother's legacy; how fiercely yet tenderly she loved her children.