On My First Motherless Mother’s Day

“You have to be prepared for the fact that you will heal, but you will never be the same…”

My mum was only 19 when I was born, and we had a rather rocky road, primarily due to some unfortunate choices she made in the man department (not trash talking, just a fact which she’d confirm). We lived on food stamps, we lived the very high life, and we lived everything in between. There were many different eras but only one when it came to our bond and her laser-like focus on and devotion to me. For me, she was a towering figure. A fabulous, raving beauty in every sense. And it was never lost on me that despite our life’s ups and downs, she and I were always on the same page. We were best friends, and while I was growing up we were the primary, enduring source of each other’s happiness.

For 52 years, Mother’s Day for me was the most reliably sweet day of them all, as it is for so many of us. A sort of respite where I would be able to set burdens or distractions aside and just love on my mum in thoughts and actions, regardless of whether we were in the same physical space or (more commonly in recent years) not. A day of deep gratitude that never failed to warm my heart and feed my soul. All about my best friend.

The day has always kind of defined spring for me — like Easter, I guess, but without the pollen. The weather is usually ideal with everything in perfect bloom, and the air light. Spirits are generally higher and everyone a little bit sweeter because, after all, Mom would expect nothing less, would she? So on this day we are on our best behavior.

Setting aside a day to honor mothers is a centuries-old thing in some countries, and Wikipedia lists current Mother’s Day celebration data for 64 in toto. We first commemorated it here in the United States in 1907, when Anna Jarvis held a worship service at her Methodist church in Grafton, West Virginia, pre-dating the founding of Hallmark by three full years. Jarvis soon grew resentful of the commercialization of Mother’s Day which stemmed primarily from the upstart cardmaker, but alas I find myself digressing….

So then. It’s a day I always looked forward to without giving a great deal of thought to the fact that a time would come when it might not be so sweet. But life being life, that time has come for me this year. Forty-two days ago, I went through perhaps the second cruelest rite of passage life has to throw at us when I lost my dear mum at only 72 years old (I say second because I cannot imagine any crueler experience than losing a child).

My mum wasn’t in great health. Several years ago she was diagnosed with a rare and horrid type of blood cancer called polycythemia vera — which she beat , but from which she never really recovered. It left her permanently compromised health-wise. She had COPD and though she told me she had quit smoking years ago, she apparently didn’t. It took a bad turn last year and in conjunction with a sudden case of rapid-onset dementia (a nasty type of dementia that I didn’t even know existed), which overcame her with lightning speed and severity, she went from relatively stable with an encouraging but challenging longer-term prognosis to an end-stage hospice situation in just a few short, confusing, horrible months.

In mid-March I found myself rushing to California knowing, but having a hard time believing, it was to say goodbye in a surreal state of shock, fear, and confusion. By the time I got to her, she had stopped speaking altogether and, while conscious, was largely unresponsive. I held her, spoke to her, whisper-sang songs of mine to her I knew she liked, and tried to keep myself from losing it at the hotel in between visits. I believed she was hearing everything and I did not say goodbye. “Thank you, baby” were the last words I spoke to her.

Two days after I left, she left.

“She waited for you,” said her nurse, Dulce, when she called to give me the news. “It was all she needed.”

The dizzying confusion and sense of being entirely lost overwhelmed me. And the loneliness. Suddenly finding yourself in a world without your mother carries its own level of lonely, and is it ever deep and dark. l spent the first two weeks in a total fog, juggling a blend of emotions that I didn’t even recognize. “You cannot prepare for this event,” a friend who had been through it told me. “One has to experience it to understand. Now you have.” I felt like I had joined some sort of secret society. “You gonna teach me the handshake?” I asked.

“You have to be prepared for the fact that you will heal, but you also have to come to grips with the fact that you will never be the same,” he said. A brilliant point — the second part of which has become patently obvious, particularly with Mother’s Day all up in my face over the last few weeks.

But heal? Eek. I’m not feeling it yet but of course it’s early and I remain raw. But once I pulled myself out of the pit of immediate aftermath despair, I began to believe it would come in time. Deep down. I’m lucky that I live on a quiet beach and the Mother’s Day-time weather is allowing for some very long and peaceful walks. The beach was a big thing to mum and me, particularly when I was a toddler into pre-K age and she was a struggling single mother without much of a budget for entertaining me. We spent days and days and days, hours and hours and hours frolicking Newport beach, where I became somewhat famous for walking around offering Fruit Stripe gum to people during mum’s sunbathing breaks with my freckles and fire red hair — like a Chucky doll, but friendly. I went through a lot of Fruit Stripe gum on Newport Beach. But I’m digressing again….

Probably because some of our happiest times together were spent on beaches, I find I feel her presence most when I am on my beach. Often all alone with the rising sun, I hear her. Not like a voice in my head, but just a sense. I sense her walking with me. I sense her walking me through the pain and the loneliness. I sense her conveying to me that everything will be ok.

And in a very strange way, I feel closer to her now than I have in many years. We no longer have a whole country between us. She’s right here. I’ve much healing to do and I do not expect Mother’s Day and the weekslong commercial hullabaloo leading up to it to ever be fun, but I get it. And I’ll live. I know it isn’t a happy day for everyone, and for some, motherless Mother’s Days are familiar or even all they have known. Understanding this makes me especially grateful for the many blessings of my mum — and indeed how fortunate I am for having had 52 years of reliably sweet second Sundays of May with her.

Happy Mother’s Day. And if yours is still with us, don’t forget to count that blessing. Life comes at you fast.