When I was pregnant with Bean, I wrote an extended letter to her as part of an assessment for a Life Writing class. I wrote extensively about her grandfather; the sadness I felt over him not living to see his grandchild was easily expressed. It’s a sad thing. It’s a normal kind of sad that most people understand. And it’s really and truly unfair and also Nobody’s Fault At All. Cancer sucks is a narrative that fits well into our collective psyche because, sadly, most of us have some verifying experience of it.
What I didn’t include in my assignment was how I was feeling about being motherless at the time I was becoming a mother. And I wonder, now, if my inablity to even write about that was because I can’t categorically say that this particular fucked-up state of affairs is Nobody’s Fault. Getting angry is scary and I was, up until quite recently, extremely angry. After Bean was born I got so angry, in fact, that I shouted and ranted all the time. All the time I wasn’t crying, or sleeping, or breastfeeding, or trying not to shout.
Yeah, it was loads of fun, those weeks.
I don’t even really know where I’m going with this post except that I want to say this: I am a motherless mother. I am only just beginning to define the ways in which this affects me and I can’t yet explain it very clearly. But the fact that I feel this loss no less keenly for it having been nearly three decades since she left me behind is something I am now willing to admit.
There are support groups, google tells me, for motherless mothers. But these are for the bereaved. These are for the orphans of breast cancer and car accidents. These are not for me.
I remember crying for my mother one night. I must have been around six. I sobbed with the conviction all children can muster but few adults seem able to sustain – until I was hushed. Grieving the living was not allowed. Now, I grieve the hypothetical and magical. I grieve the tug of the psychic umbilicus.
I too am a motherless mother. My mum did die of breast cancer but, in our family at least, that did not make it any more acceptable to talk about or grieve. I too find that having my children has brought so much of that grief and anger to the surface. I find myself back in my childhood so often wondering how on earth people made the decisions that they did. Your experience is different to mine but I imagine that you too look at your child and wonder how she could have left you. It must be so much harder struggling with the fact that she chose to leave. I’m angry enough with my mum for not dealing with the lump in her breast until it was the size of a 20c piece, for never telling me she was sick, for leaving me with an emotionally incompetent father. The list could go on!
After some counselling in my early 20s I definitely thought I had it all packaged away but motherhood brings a new dimension to the pain.
I hope you keep writing through your anger and through your thinking about how it affects you now. It will help you but also help others as well.
Take care,
Ann
My heart goes out to you. My mother has been an important role model for me and an important support in raising my children. I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like without her.
As painful and as difficult as it is, I’m sure your experience also makes you more conscious of your importance in your child’s life than perhaps other mothers understand.
I’m glad you wrote about it. I hope you will continue to talk about it and to work through your feelings.
(hug)
Wow! I feel the same way, but in my situation I morn my mother not being around emotionally and I had to take on the role. I feel the same as you, that I was mad for being motherless when I was becoming a mother myself. It was hard to find out my own definition of what a mother was about.
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I completely understand where you are coming from. I am currently working on a paper about motherless children, specifically daughters. I chose this topic to better understand myself because I am a motherless daughter. I didn’t lose my mother to death, or anything drastically related to death. The fact is, she abandoned me, so I guess I could classify her as a deadbeat mom.
The sad part is, when I was in my late teens she popped back up out of no where and tried to act like the last 10+ years she was gone, never happened. She expected me to respect her as my mother, listen to her, and just accept her right back into the life I built on my own… with children.
I don’t speak to her often, and prefer not to. The most important years of my life where I needed a mother, guidance only a mother could give, and advice only a mother could give… she was not there.
I am very angry with the situation, especially since my childhood was not so pleasant. Now, the toughest part I am having is putting all my feelings and beliefs onto this paper. I didn’t realize it would be so difficult to write about it.