MOTHERLESS MOTHERS DAY

With Mother’s Day approaching,I am reminded that I am without a mother 

When someone who loves us and we love right back leaves forever. It’s like the end of a book, the end of an era, and how we celebrate our bond changes forever. 

The day mother died. 

Daughter! That version of me ended. 

When I was around 11 for about a year I dreamed a recurring dream that my mother packed her favorite suitcase, the cream samsonite and when she left me, she walked away and just disappeared. It started raining and I couldn’t see her footprints anymore. She was gone. I always woke up shaken, and with wet cheeks drew close enough to feel her warmth. 

Rilke wrote

 “The future enters us long before it happens” 

Eight years later on the night of her passing and for months after that, I dreamed again that she indeed had left but this time she didn’t leave me under the shade, so  I got drenched, and I woke up shaken, soaked pillow and cold. 

Mother’s Day became my day of the dead.

As I have done every year since her passing, I am tempted to cancel plans to celebrate the joys of motherhood. 

Joy-  did not come readily to her, and when it did, it was stolen away quickly. We never heard her lament; instead, she went about her business, spending hours in the kitchen, church, or the kitchen in church.

Some days I want to call her and tell her the things I’m up to; I mix pancakes in a blender now, and not by hand, I still cannot make custard and that boy broke my heart. 

I can hear her replies “it can never taste like the one you mix by hand” “what will your child drink?”  “Don’t tell your brothers oh”  as well as all the dry dry things happening in my life. 

I am tempted to leave it all because I know that seeing others with their mothers will leave me undone but here’s what I will do,  I will evoke the feeling she left everyone who knew her with, a full belly or a little bit happier. 

If you are mourning the loss of someone or something who brought love and light into your life, I wish you love in all of its forms: a meal, a voice note, or remembering how you laughed together.