Nothing is ever truly lost: memory, mother love and identity

This Mother's Day weekend was braided with love and grief. I invited the memories that comfort rather than the ones that haunt me. Even dementia can't take away the love.

This was the most difficult and the most reflective Mother’s Day weekend of my life. Aside from a Sunday brunch with my sister, so we could hold and comfort each other in our shared grief on this first Mother’s Day without Mom, I went inwards. I needed time alone to make space for the memories that would comfort me rather than the ones that haunt me.

I unearthed every box of photos and leafed through every album. I skimmed through journals I have keep since early adolescence, through high school, college, marriage, new motherhood, the empty-nest years and then, in my 60s, divorce. So much life lived. So much love. And longing and loss, too. Grief and desire, intertwined.

The later journals also chronicle how dementia came for my mother, stealing what it could in the last years of her life—which is always too much. As poet David Whyte writes in his book Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, about the word memory, “Robbed of our memory by Alzheimer’s or a stroke, we lose our identities. Memory is the living link to our personal freedom.”

Yet I don’t believe my mother ever lost her primary identity as a mother, even as I came to do the things for her that she once did for me: helping her to get dressed, tying her shoes, preparing her food, and in the end, changing diapers and feeding her. How she would have hated the indignity, the loss of personal freedom in these necessary ministrations. This is where cognitive decline is a mercy as she became less aware of how dependent she was on others for help. She chose gracious acceptance.

In the three weeks since her death, the images and memories that come to me are of Mom in the grip of dementia and her last weeks and days, and that heart-wrenching final Sunday afternoon with her. And with those images, guilt and a searing regret of wanting to have done more, shown more love, been more present. Guilt and regret are not helping me move on, and not what Mom would have wanted for me.

For the first time since she left us, I was able to pull out the photo albums and remember all the ways in which she was uniquely, beautifully herself. Dressing up for Halloween trick or treaters in a witchy hat and mask to hand children their treats, amusing herself with this tradition well into her 70s, long after her her own children were grown. Welcoming me home on my college breaks, patting a spot on the bed beside her, handing me a grownup glass of wine, urging me to “tell her everything.” Which I did—well, almost everything. In one of my journals, when I’m 27, I came across these lines:

My mother has always been my closest friend, confidante, advisor. We’re also alike in personality, I like to think. She is warm, open, enthusiastic, very kind, both to those she loves and anyone she perceives as oppressed. I remember being on a train one evening and catching a glimpse of my face—just the outline of my face—in the window and thinking, ‘That’s my mother. I look just like my mother.’ And I really don’t, objectively, in the daylight. But it was uncanny how quickly that reflection conveyed ‘mother', as if I carried a part of her within me. It was comforting to think one of my layers resembled hers. It was like a glimpse into what my middle-aged face would look like.

Now, more than three decades after writing that, I know that I have always carried so many parts of her within me. The most indelible is this: Everything I know about being a mother I learned from her—which comes down to one thing: love.

When my own daughters tell me, as they often do, that I am their “closest friend, confidante, advisor,” it is their grandmother’s legacy I carry within me.

Mom and me, New York City, 1960.

She became a mother at 22 years old in 1960. I was her first born. By the time she she was 28 years old, she had three children under the age of six. Only a year older than the younger me riding that train, seeing traces of her in my face, wondering how my life would unfold. I became a mother at 32, also to a daughter, and two years later, to a second daughter. Two precious opportunities to be the mother to my girls that she had been to me.

Mom and me with my first-born daughter Marielle.

And so, on this Mother’s Day, I am full of gratitude:

To my mother for the gift of life and for teaching me how to love and live well.

Sixth grade graduation, 1972

To my daughters for the gift of making me a mother, the deep joy at the center of my life. We live an ocean apart yet only a heartbeat away.

Mothers and daughters, cherishing every reunion

Becoming a mother has been the most beautiful and transformational experience of my life. That has been my good luck and life’s blessing. Many of us didn’t have that kind of relationship with our mothers, and for them, this day is hard. For those of you whose mothers are no longer with you, I see you in your grief and longing.

I also know that women can, and do, have a beautiful, transformational life without motherhood. There are so many ways to nurture the people (and fur babies) in our lives, and nurturing is the essence of mother love. I have been so deeply nurtured and held by my women friends, especially during these last few difficult years of divorce and caregiving. Motherhood resists easy definition, and shouldn’t be siloed into Hallmark greeting cards.

All I can do is tell my truth—and invite my readers to do the same in the comments.

Let’s talk. Please share your perspectives on being a mother, a daughter, a nurturer and the gifts of unconditional love, in whatever form that takes in your life.

Three Songs for 3-D

Divorce

“That’s The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be,” Carly Simon

You say we can keep our love alive
Babe, all I know is what I see
The couples cling and claw
And drown in love's debris
You say we'll soar like two birds through the clouds
But soon you'll cage me on your shelf
I'll never learn to be just me first
By myself

Dementia

“Moon River,” Audrey Hepburn—Mom’s favorite song

Moon river, wider than a mile
I'm crossing you in style some day
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker
Wherever you're goin', I'm goin' your way

Destiny

“I’ve been a thousand different women,” Emory Hall

make peace
with all the women
you once were

lay flowers
at their feet

offer them incense
and honey
and forgiveness

honor them
and give them
your silence

listen.

bless them
and let them be.

for they are the bones
of the temple
you sit in now.

for they are
the rivers
of wisdom
leading you toward
the sea.

//i have been a thousand different women

By Emory Hall from her book “Made of Rivers”