I’m probably too old to say this but there are times like today when I have such a primal, urgent need for my mother that I want to throw myself on the floor of the supermarket – right there in the Ben and Jerry’s aisle – and shout at the top of my lungs like a three-year-old:
Today was my mom’s birthday.
She died 11 years ago, so she never got to meet my daughters. She never got to meet Fiona, her little lookalike:
My mother.
Fiona
Or Ella, her temperamental twin:
The times it hurts the most are not holidays or birthdays – I can brace myself for these because I know they’re coming. They happen when I’m caught by surprise, like at the mall, and I see a mom my age with her kids and her mother. All of them together. Not understanding how lucky they are. That’s when the loss hits me with the shock of its emptiness, all the memories we should have had but don’t. It doesn’t happen too often – but it happens.
In the dressing room I’ll hear a mom discussing something ordinary with her mother – like bra size, or how a certain dress fits. It’s during these ordinary moments that it hurts the most because I’m unprepared. So I’ve learned to go carefully into dressing rooms and malls, and if I’m feeling squirrelly like today, I avoid them.
I don’t go to Grandparents Day at school because the sight of all those grandparents with their children and grandchildren – well, you can imagine.
When I was a kid she spoiled me. She kept bright red German chocolate lady bugs in her pockets and occasionally she’d slip me one – always at the right moment. So for me, a chocolate ladybug isn’t just a chocolate…it’s a feast. Of memory.
As a mother, she was a total marshmallow, an unapologetic pushover who adored children and went overboard for us in any way she possibly could – ridiculous Easter Egg hunts, over-the-top Christmas decorations, birthday surprises, staged pranks, dolls, puppies, private schools they probably couldn’t afford, but somehow did.
She had Marilyn Monroe hair and blue eyes. Sometimes she wore velvet hot pants with go-go boots (and she looked hot in them, too).
Sometimes she played dumb. She was from a generation where women were valued more for being sex kittens with shiny kitchen floors than brainiacs. Despite the go-go boots and an unhealthy love of daytime soaps, she had a Master’s degree from the University of Heidelburg, and a Ph.D from UC Berkeley. She was a babe in go-go boots, yes, and she watched General Hospital, but she was also a college professor who spoke five languages and could slaughter you with her wit.
But she was so much more.
She survived WW II. She escaped from Lithuania and somehow survived in Berlin throughout the war, during her formative years. I once came across a photo of her in braids standing in a line of young girls, in uniform.
I said. “Holy shit, mom. Is that a photo of you doing a Heil Hitler?”
“Oh Shnooky,” she said, “that was just Hitler Youth Camp. It was like the Girl Scouts, only we had to go.”
She kept things to herself. She had never once told me that she had gone to Hitler Youth Camp until I asked her. She hated Hitler. She said he was a swine-hound who only had one testicle.
After the war, she spent five years in the DP camps. She became a Displaced Person.
After the camps she emigrated to Canada and survived the death of her father, of suicide.
She moved to California with my father, and had my sister and I.
Then she survived the death of my little sister, Gail, who was 2 when she died. The same year, she lost her unborn son – in her third trimester.
After that she had to have a hysterectomy.
After that she became an alcoholic.
I tried my whole life to help her. I couldn’t.
Children have a strange way of blaming themselves if something goes terribly wrong in the family, and that’s what I did: I convinced myself it was somehow my fault.
My mother – a beautiful light. Technically she died of alcoholic cirrhosis. But really, she died of grief.
So today is her birthday. I miss her so much that I ache. The sad thing is that even if she were here, I wouldn’t really want her here since she was an alcoholic and things had gotten beyond terrible. So it was a sad relief when she died.
I didn’t have to parent her anymore.
She was no longer in pain.
She became all that she was at her core: beauty and light.
The day before she died I asked if she was afraid (she knew she was going to die). She said, “You’re going to think this is silly but I get these glimpses: fields of green grasses, flowers, and light. I’m not afraid.”
When she died, the hillside near her bedroom window bloomed in the most overt and abundant display of flowers – flowers that were not in bloom the day before. My sister and I knew that the flowers were her, waving good bye.
You might also like...
10 Things I Wish I Could Delete About My Alcoholic Mom
The Impact of Parental Alcoholism On Children
Every Tear Drop Is A Waterfall
Dankeschön, Dad! 10 for My Alcoholic Dad
Everybody Wants
Oh I’m so, so sorry for your loss, your grief and the mom-shaped hole in your heart and life. This was a beautiful tribute to her, to what sounds like an amazing woman. I’m glad you choose to remember the good times. Thoughts are with you. xo
Allison – I like that phrase: “a Mom-shaped hole.” That’s exactly the shape of it. Thanks (-;
This was so beautiful. Your mom had a life that’s worthy of a sweeping, epic novel. Hmmmm, I wonder who could write it…
I already wrote that novel. (-:
What a hard post to read — and probably write — and I’m so sorry for your loss. I lost my mom (about 15 years ago) under similar circumstances with similar feelings of relief. That made it so much harder: mourning the mother I never had and never would have. Combined with guilt for my own feelings. And so much more. I’m with you, there are times I want my mommy, but I also know that even if she was here I wouldn’t be able to be with her. I’m so sorry, Ado.
Julia, the more I know you the more strikingly similar we are! It’s amazing, these similarities. Thanks for your kind words. I’m actually just fine now (years of therapy, good friends, and an amazing mother and father-in-law who I have adopted myself to…) so I’m as “over it” as I think possible. Except for the dressing rooms…
Oh, this made me cry. I am so sorry for the loss of your Mom – clearly a remarkable, impressive woman and a great parent. How sad that she did not get to meet your beautiful daughters. But she brought you, an equally amazing woman, into this world and we are happy for that. I lost my Mom when I was twelve, and I miss not knowing her as an adult…I feel your pain, Ado.
Oh boy Iza – 12. Oh my God, what a sensitive age for a daughter to lose her mother. I’m so sorry for that. And thanks for your kind words…these comments all require a hanky box to be nearby! (-:
for you the dressing rooms, for me the moms-daughters out for lunch together…. yes, as you say, strikingly similar.
I want your mommy too…the younger one, the one you remember fondly. She sounds wonderful! I am sorry about what happened to her later and I am glad for you that you can understand what happened to her and yet still remember the good things. You are a strong woman, daughter, mother. You did a beautiful job of painting her picture for me. Thank you.
thanks for telling the truth. it may be a bit of downer of a blog but it is the kind of sharing that sets us all free. free from certainty that our mom was the only one who…. that we are the only ones who feel….
I think that sort of freedom leads to joy. its different than happiness.
hugs to you, dear friend.
C
So nice to know you are there Catherine my old friend. xoxo
You brought me to tears and I am still crying writing this. I see the title and think here we go again a funny piece full of wit and side stitch humor. Instead you spoke to my heart. So much of what you can say I can relate to. I am so very moved by this piece. Beautiful. I actually feel a strong urge to pick up the phone and call you just so I can tell you that (and I don’t even know you in real-life). WOW!!! Just beautiful! -Laverne
P.S. Still crying… happy tears though. The memories are hard aren’t they!
Okay Laverne that one made me cry. You can call me anytime. I’ll DM you my #. (-:
Oh that is a beautiful blog. Its so hard to watch our parents disinegrate before our eyes. We feel so helpless, yet we love the person that they once were and yearn to have them back. I miss my mommy too. She is still here in a physical sense, but mentally has been gone for a long long time. While Hayden was in the hospital there were many times that I cried “I want my mommy” because there is nothing like a mother’s unconditional love and a hug that can cure all. xo
Megan I’m so sorry – I didn’t know this about your mom. (I want to know more.) I am so glad Hayden is out of the hospital. But I wish when you were there all those months that your mom was there to give you a hug esp. in the middle of the night when you were wide awake. xo A.
Oh, you have me in tears. This hits close to home for me, but from a different perspective. My husband’s mother passed away just a year before I met him, about 15 yrs ago. My sister-in-law Lisa still has a terribly difficult time, and like you, not just on holidays, just in the moment she forgets she can’t call to ask advice.
So I never got to meet my mother-in-law. Nor, obviously, have my 2 kids or their 5 cousins on my husband’s side. And she was an incredibly strong, smart woman that I know all of the kids would have benefited greatly from knowing. I really would have liked my daughter to have a relationship with her. She raised young 3 kids alone, on a social worker’s salary, after her husband died.
And like you, we focus on the good stories about the mom who’s not here anymore. Like the fact that she was savvy & cool enough to pack three sets of sheets for her kids’ freshman year of college: one for the bed, another waiting to be washed, the third in case they got wasted & puked.
Maybe it’ll help just a little bit to tell you what I remind Lisa, who hates to think about what all of our kids miss because they don’t know their grandma. Here’s what they do know: Your mom helped shape you as a person and the mother they adore… as much as you love yours.
You’ll get through today. I promise.
xoxo
Cary
Cary – that was so sweet. I did get through the day just fine, let myself have a really good cry (that once-a-year kind) and got through it. Your MIL would’ve been lucky to know you – it’s so nice you carry on her memory, even without having met her. Also – FYI I have a good few years before the girls go away to college but boy is that “3 sheet sets” tip an awesome one! (-;
and kicking myself about the insensitivity of the three sheets for drinking too much… did NOT mean to make light of it. so sorry
Not my finest moment. Back to trying to inject humor in every possible scenario.
Oh my goodness – it was so funny – please don’t worry about it!! (-:
Ado – I haven’t the words…. You wrote a lovely tribute to your mommy and I’m glad you have so many happy memories of her. I, too, lost my mother. I was a teenager and she’s been gone for 30 years….I miss her still. She didn’t die from alcoholism, but from a long, slow, painful, debilitating illness that took her away one day at a time for years – I have no memories of her healthy. I understand the idea of being relieved… You are in my heart and prayers.
I can’t imagine losing your mom when you’re a teenager. That must’ve been so hard for you and I’m sure still is. So many moms are telling me about the loss of their mothers and how it’s affected them and their mothering. It’s very moving. Thanks for sharing your story w. me Ann. xoxo A.
Dear Ado, your story, your writing, YOU move me. I have no words.
This post had me bawling my eyes out. The first portion was exactly what I’ve said a million times. My mom dyed at the ripe old age of 60, very suddenly of cancer when I was pregnant with my first son. She never got to meet my boys, I miss her the most when something in my life is sad or happy or when I see 3 or even 4 generations together at the farmer’s market or somewhere and I’m jealous. For the first time in my life I am blatantly jealous. I think the same things, that they don’t realize just how lucky they are. My mom died almost 5 years ago and the ache is still very huge. She was too young and I was too young. Anyhow, thank you for your post. Somehow it is comforting to know I’m not alone in this pain.
I just stumbled across your blog and this made me tear up. I want my mommy too, only she is still alive but not there for me. She is very abusive. I have this hole in my heart that will always be there that I try to pretend is not there. If only I can be a better mommy for my little ones. Thanks for sharing with me.
Thanks for your comment. ((Hugs to you.))
[...] know if it’s because I grew up in an alcoholic home, or because I write a lot about what it’s like to be an ACOA parent, or what my sister is going through with her alcoholic ex-husband, or what it is exactly – [...]
I stumbled upon your blog by googling the phrase “I want my mommy.” I feel so sad and so alone and so lonely. My mother has been dead since 2001. And although we had a very complicated relationship that sounds very similar in some facets to your relationship with our mother, there are days when I yearn for the comfort only a mother can give to a daughter. I want to lay my head in her lap and cry and have her rub my hair and tell me I deserve to be treated better and that I’m good and beautiful and that everything will be okay. I want her to tell me my sons are perfect as they are. I want to know she’s there.
I bet your mom would be incredibly proud of you and your daughters. I bet she’d want you to know she was sorry and that she loved you.
Thank you for writing that. I’m sorry you had to, sorry you were in pain, and hope it’s a little less now. I feel a little less lonely knowing someone somewhere understands the hole in my heart.
Oh my goodness: thank you. For reading that blog post, for sharing how much you miss your mom, and for commenting. I don’t think we ever get over the feeling of missing our moms, ever. I also loved my dad a lot but there is a deeper connection to our moms. Part of what helps me is to know that the hole in my heart I feel without her is well…permanent. I used to think it would go away, but now I know it won’t – I’ve accepted that I will miss her forever. No matter how old we are, we all “want our mommies” at times in our lives and you’re so right – it’s only the comfort a mother can give us. Anyway thank you so much Dawn for writing your sweet comment. I’m thinking of you and I bet your mom is peeking over your shoulder and giving you a hug somehow. (-:
This was a beautiful post. I’m sitting in my bed right now, a mother of two, and I just thought “I want my mom” and typed it into google and came across this perfect post of what it is to be a mother and a daughter. Your mother was stunning. She certainly has an aura about her in the pictures that just speaks for itself. With some people, you can’t even stop them for moving in pictures. Take care, I bet your mom would be ever so proud of you.
Okay, well: you made my night. And I also got teary-eyed reading that comment. Very special. Thank you so much for taking the time to write it, means a lot. (-: