A Motherless Mother's Day

Content Warning: Grief, Addiction 

My mother died when I was 29. She wasn't sick, and while it was sudden it also wasn't a huge surprise that she died. She just never woke up one day.

Saying goodbye to my mom nine years ago was hard, but I had already said goodbye to her multiple times in my life. 

My mom was a stay-at-home mom for the first eight years of my life. My dad always says that was when she was happiest. She had her four kids and loved being the mom that would take us on adventures in the Little Red Wagon and buy us all matching jean jackets. 

When I was eight years old, my mom went back to work full time. I said goodbye to my stay-at-home mom. I didn't know what I was losing and, honestly, I don't really remember that Mom too much. 

When my mom went back to work, she became a working mom. Working mom wore business suits with shoulder pads and high heels. Working mom seemed to have it all together, and for most days she did. She knew what she was doing, and she did it all. She quickly moved up at the company and soon became a manager. Working mom slowly became workaholic mom. She never said no to work, and the pressure and stress got to her. After some time, workaholic mom became alcoholic mom. 

My parents would come home from work (they both worked at the same company, which I do not recommend) and would both pour drinks and drink for the rest of the night. Sure, my mom would make sure dinner was made (by us kids or her), she would help us with school projects, and she would be engaging with us for the hour after she got home, but then we were on our own. She was never really the mom that would take us to friends' houses or the mall but every so often she would let us have a sleepover and take me and my friend to Blockbuster to pick out a movie and one sweet and one savory snack. 

Workaholic mom took on more and more projects at work because she was a people pleaser (largely due to her upbringing in an abusive household) and so she desperately wanted to please the owner of the company.  She spent so much time at work doing everything that was asked of her, and more, that the alcohol lost its coping effects and she started to have issues dealing with the stress. During my senior year of high school my mom had a nervous breakdown. The kind where she ended up spending days in the hospital. And that is when I realized I had to say goodbye to workaholic/alcoholic mom. 

The mom I got after that was, what I think, the happiest mom. She was on disability so wasn't working. After leaving the inpatient program she did an outpatient program and one-on-one therapy. She was getting better. She was healing. She talked about getting a job at the library. She raised our family dogs. She took care of herself and from where I stood, she was definitely healing. Then her psychologist retired, and that loss was just too much for her. She fell so far back down the breakdown path that we weren't sure if she would ever come back. 

And she never really did. 

And that mom, the healing mom, the mom who seemed so happy to me was gone. Another goodbye. 

The mom I had for the last years of her life wasn't my mom. Yes, technically she was the woman who birthed me, she was my mother, but the mothering was long gone. She was heavily medicated for her psychosis and her life became the same day over and over again. Sitting in her chair, with a dog in her lap, watching TV.  

So that mom was the one who died nine years ago, and I had to say a final goodbye to the shell of my mom. 

Was I sad? Absolutely. Losing your mom, whatever version, is hard, but like I said at the beginning I wasn't surprised. I stepped up and held it together while I helped my dad plan her funeral and make all the arrangements. 

With Mother's Day coming up, my therapist asked me this week if anyone has been able to fill that mom roll for me, even just a little. 

I think back to my mom's funeral. I hadn't really cried the whole week during the planning. I held it together seeing my mom in her casket.  I held it together as people started to arrive and offer their condolences. I was “fine” until my mother-in-law walked in. She gave me a hug and I collapsed into her arms. My husband's mother, a woman I had known for just six years, held me like a mom would hold a daughter allowing me to feel safe to fall apart. 

My mother-in-law is the closest person I have to a mom, but not just since my mother's death. My mother-in-law was more of a mother to me for the last several years of my mom's life than my own mom. My mother-in-law cooked family meals, invited us over, planned trips, asked about my day, my job, my dreams. She would worry about us if she hadn't heard from us and sent food when we were sick.  She did all the things a mom should do. 

Four years after my mom's death, I became a mother. And while my mother-in-law was great, I was still a mother without a mom.  I know that the mom that died wouldn't have been able to help me care for my twins (I would have been wary to even let her hold them) but she never even got to meet them, and that will always seem unfair. 

I think back to stay-at-home mom, workaholic/alcoholic mom, and healing mom and I get upset. Why did she go back to work? Why did she become an alcoholic? Why did she have to have a breakdown? Why did she have to change so much? 

Once I became a mom, I started to understand what she went through in her life. From being raised in an abusive household to being a mother of four children while working full time, and I'm grateful to have gained so much empathy for her. She tried her best at each phase of her life and she loved her kids more than we ever knew. 

And that's the mom I grieve. I don't grieve stay-at-home mom, workaholic/alcoholic mom, or healing mom. I grieve the mom I wish I had.  

I grieve the mom my mom wanted to be... because that's the mom who should be alive today. That's the Mom I wanted to see holding my babies. That's the mom who should be getting flowers this Mother's Day. 

So, while I'm motherless on Mother's Day, I'm not too sad. I know that I have an amazing mother -in- law when I need her and I have a beautiful, supportive family to spend the day with. And I believe that somewhere the mom I never got to meet, the mom my mom wanted to be, is watching, and she’s the mom I’ll never have to say goodbye to.