Last spring, I wrote a post entitled The Spiritual Education of Mommy, Part II, and reflected on a sobering, emotional religion class I’d just attended. To recap: As a group, the Monday night religion classes (kids and adults) were told about an upcoming annual four-mile walk/run, organized by a father in the parish whose son, Alec, had been run over and killed by a car backing up in his own driveway. Alec’s parents organized this yearly event to raise money and awareness, trying to press car manufacturers to make back-up cameras standard equipment.
We also talked, that evening in my class, about what Alec’s dad’s activities had to do with his faith. Our very wise teacher got us all thinking about the intersection of faith and being open to community. About how it is in the reaching out, the opening up of self, that we derive strength. As if Alec’s story was not enough, a woman in my class hesitantly ventured a concern of her own. She was afraid that she wasn’t very good on the whole opening-up thing, the letting go it requires to lean on other people. She needed, she told us, to learn to accept the fact that other people would have to do her most important job, which was to care for her daughter, a sweet little redheaded only child named Alexa, who my son had sat next to for all of first grade.
Because she was dying.
I bring this up this morning because that mother passed away last week. Wait a sec. She died. She’s gone.
I’m sure I’m not alone, as a parent, in naming this as probably my worst fear, leaving my children behind before they are ready to lose me. It ranks higher than my quite natural fear of something happening to them, or of losing my husband. Is that natural, do you think, or is it selfish? The thought that they cannot get along without me?
My husband says that when this fear crosses his mind and grips his heart, he comforts himself by knowing that if I were to die, my children would have the pile of stuff I’ve written over the length of my career (though one wonders what they’d glean from binders full of magazine articles on morning sickness or osteoarthritis or swim workouts) to learn about who I was, and how much I loved them. To me, even words I could write would be cold comfort to my boys, who need not just something written down by me, but me.
So last night, the religious-ed program’s director asked us all to say a prayer for this family, citing the often-repeated trope that our prayers help ease even a tiny bit of their pain.
As I’ve written before about faith and religion, I’m not sure I believe that.
The one thing I am absolutely sure of is that I won’t soon get the image out of my head of Alexa’s mom in that class last spring, her blonde hair precise and neat, her hands folded in her lap, facing the hardest moment a mother is likely to face with such composure. Hers were the only dry eyes in the room. Maybe she’d cried it all out already, or saved her tears for when she was alone. Or maybe she knew something that I resist understanding but know I must learn: That to raise your children, you have to be open to the pain of knowing you may not be able to finish the job.
Wow. That’s all. Just wow. So very sad. And thought provoking. Thanks, D, for your eloquence once again.
Denise-that’s my worst fear, too. Maybe it’s narcissistic of me; I dunno, but I don’t feel like anyone can do as good a job raising my kids as I can. That they NEED me and that to leave them would be worse for them, as a unit, than if one of them were to leave us (which would of course be unspeakably awful too.)
This is a really beautiful post about a really sad story. Thank you.
what an important and brave post…both to alex’s parents for opening up like that and to you for unflinchingly raising this tough issue.
I don’t think it is narcissistic at all. While the thought of losing a child makes me go cold, if it is the child that is gone, he or she won’t need me anymore. I think the underlying thought is that if I was gone, the kids would still be here, needing things that only I currently provide, but no one would do in my absence. Losing a child would be unspeakable awful, but I think as mothers we see that as pain that we would have to bear. If the mother is gone, the pain is on the children and we would not be able to fix it.
very well put, Amy — while we may think it’s the (sort of narcissistic) thought that no one but us could, say, make their school lunches or comb their hair just so, the deeper fear is that if we were gone, they’d have an irreparable pain. Thanks for reading and commenting.
Denise
I don’t think we’re ever ready to loose our mothers. It was no easier for me at 19 was it was for my own mom in her 40s, or my mother-in-law in her 50s. Whether the result of a long illness or sudden accident, it is never easy and nothing can ever make it so.
Oh, what a heartbreaking post. Every few years I write letters to my kids to let them know how special they are to me. I’ve never shown them to anyone – I just print them out and tuck them away, so in the event that I do go, my kids will have the letters to read, and know how special they were to me – and how much they were loved by their mother. I would hope that would give them some comfort.
Denise – I know how difficult it was to lose my mother at 23, there were so many things left unfinished (from learning how to make her cinnamon rolls – to marriage and babies!). I suppose that’s perhaps why my deepest fear is leaving my children behind while they are still children and not young adults. I think Amy hit it spot on in that while I know my husband is quite capable of caring for our children – even if he doesn’t do it exactly as I would (and I’ve threatened to come back and haunt him if he really screwed things up) – but I know he would not be able to remove the pain that they’d feel. But I suppose I wouldn’t be able to do the same if we were to lose him either.
So sad! And I’m mid-40s now, and lost my mother last year, and was not ready to lose her. You never are. But I lost my dad at 15, and that was even worse, because I didn’t know him when I was an adult, and there’s so much I wish i could have known. (Would have been his birthday today)
I don’t think it’s selfish to recognize how earth-shattering it is for children to lose their mother. In fact, quite the opposite, if a mother leaves her children voluntarily we say that’s selfish.
A good reminder that we all need to focus on doing the best job we can now as parents, even if we don’t get to finish the job. If we do our best our kids will probably know more than anything that we did all we could for them, and that would be about the greatest gift we could give our children!
[...] October, I got into a contemplative mood, after hearing about the death of a mother in my town. In Hail Mommy: A Requiem for a Lost Mother, I struggle – not for the first time — with the sadness of potential loss that comes [...]