I wrote this during a memorial service for a friend’s mother, who died this spring. I just came home from a funeral for the mother of another dear friend. We are all adults and losing our mothers and it kind of stinks.
When Our Mothers Die We Come Unmoored
When our mothers die we come unmoored.
There is no one to call on a Wednesday night to ask how you can tell if frozen food is still good; how you know if you’re really sick or just have a normal cold; or the best way to get a stain out of your favorite shirt.
There is just you.
If you’re lucky, you have someone–a husband, a wife, a roommate, a best friend–to puzzle over these things with you. But still,
it’s just you and your little brain
in your car, alone, at 8:15 on a Monday morning looking for someone to tell you that everything will be fine in a way that makes you actually believe it.
When your mother dies, there is no one to tell you that you’re doing things right, or
more crucially,
about to make a faulty major life decision.
If you’re lucky, you and your little brain will someday be called “Mom.”
If you’re lucky,
if you want it,
you will become the center of another human being’s universe,
a human who will ask you the best way to lace your shoes
or make chocolate chip cookies.
Your method of making scrambled eggs will live on it another person’s little brain
as the best and only way to make them.
You will teach and instruct and advise and
someday,
somehow
you will come to know the answers to all the questions this young human being may pose.
If you don’t know, you will make them up,
but you will never lie.
Just as you suddenly knew all the words to every song in the top 40
when you hit 8th grade,
you will just know.
And you will trust your gut and will be able to answer all the questions
except the one about why one day
you will unmoor your child.
You will have days, sixteen years later, when you miss her like it was yesterday.
You will shake your head and be astounded that you indeed are unmoored.
You will wish your children had the opportunity to sit on her lap and be wrapped in her love… You alone will have to do, and some days it will be enough.
Oh goodness, yes.
Wow, just happened to be up too late on a Saturday night (or Sunday morning…) and somehow found my way to his post.
My mom is finishing her chemo for breast cancer this month, and I have every reason to believe she will be just fine, but still…
Your words brought a certain blue-grey reality to our relationship. I have her, and I will cherish her. My daughter has me, and I hope she understands no child is every ready to be unmoored.
Jeanetta,
Thank you for your comment. I think the idea of being on the mom side of the equation is very strange. So often we think we aren’t important, and then you realize that you are your child’s anchor. Sending good thoughts out to you and your mom.
Dear Susan;
Here is the Groundhog Day for Indians’ fans. The day after the end of the Indians’ season is the worst, especially if the weather is dreary & there’s no post-season for us. However, I am grateful this morning for your essay written in 2016 about the end of that remarkable season — grateful for all your essays that you’ve posted here.
2016 was great for this team & Cleveland. But wasn’t this season the most emotionally wrought of all seasons ever, or was it just me? Tragic, thrilling, aggravating, shocking. I don’t remember laughing once except when Jose Ramirez came back from his “hamate surgery” and hit that grand salami. I just cried about Kippy again today, but he’ll be around; maybe the Cubs will hire him as manager. Joe Madden may go save the Pittsburgh Pirates, whatdyathink? Cookie should win the Roberto Clemente Award; Corey Kluber’s cast will come off. He won’t retire/get traded/run for president in the offseason, right???
I love baseball and am happy you do, too, and that we share the love with so many wonderful fans. Here is my prediction for October/November of next year: “Cheers to the World Series Champions of 2020, Your Cleveland Indians!!!”
I agree–this season was an emotional roller coaster. With all the injuries, they still kept coming back. I’m looking forward to next season and hope your prediction is correct. Especially since I don’t see them being able to afford to keep Lindor around much longer unless they’re going to the playoffs (and beyond). Geez, and I thought losing Kipnis depressed me.
Go Tribe!
. . . And the reason I wrote this in your “When Our Mothers Die” string is because that day I was sorely missing baseball, but more so, of course, my mother. Mom died just before Mother’s Day 2019, and the last “normal” conversation we had was about Corey Kluber getting his arm busted by that ball striking him on the pitcher’s mound. Mom wasn’t a baseball fan … she was bored to tears and vaguely disgusted by most organized sports except for ice skating … but her father loved the Indians, and she was amused by my avid fandom from the age of nine or 10. And even though we both knew she didn’t really care for the game, she would often ask about the Tribe, especially when the team bus left for spring training, as it did today … our annual first harbinger of spring.