“There is an emptiness inside of me — a void that will never be filled. No one in your life will ever love you as your mother does. There is no love as pure, unconditional and strong as a mother’s love. And I will never be loved that way again.” ― Hope Edelman, Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss
Image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
Yesterday was Mother’s Day. Through the diurnal, I saw pictures of my friends with their moms on social media; beautiful pictures of daughters and sons holding their moms in warm embraces, kissing them; happy images with happy faces; pictures adorned with heart melting words, describing the love shared between the people in the photographs.
Suggested read: Mother’s Day Special: Dear Mom, I LOVE YOU
For most people, Mother’s Day is a happy Sunday, a day of flowers, gifts, cards and conversations. But what about those of us who have lost our one chance at the purest form of love? And what about those, who were never given a chance?
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I lost my mother last year. She was ill for a year, bed-ridden, and when she died, most people consoled me by saying, “But she was suffering. Now she is free. She is happy wherever she is.” And with that one belief, I will have to live my entire life.
Being motherless is dire every day, but motherless on Mother’s Day, particularly, is gut-wrenching, because you are constantly glared at by stinging reminders that your mom is dead. Yes, I did not put it prettily, because it is NOT PRETTY.
Mother’s Day to us, is a scathing reminder that in the battles of life, we will never have our moms to fall back on, and that we will have to march on all by ourselves.
Image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
It is a day when you think about all that you could have said instead of all that you said; a day when you think of moments lost to time, moments that you took for granted not because they didn’t mean anything, but because you never thought they would slip through your fingers.
You are reminded of the plate and the cup that have not been used in a year and the chair that sits empty. Your memory is jogged to the betel nut case that is catching rust. From one corner of your eyes, you see the tooth brush above the basin that remains unmoved, and the call bell on the shelf that you have not dared press because it is too damn hard.
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And the only words that keep returning to you through the day are the words you heard first when your mom died, “She is no more.” And though you have echoed these words to yourself over the days, they seem to get bigger for your ears. Their power to devastate seems to swell, until it spills through your eyes. These words pound at your heart, they crack you open and break you apart, time and again.
Image source: Google, copyright-free image, under Creative Commons License
And if you are feeling this way, feel it without remorse or censorship. You don’t have to edit your feelings. Why pretend everything is okay, when it is not? If you are arrested by grief or hurt or even anger, and are struggling, then make it known, because you are not alone.
You feel a void within you, and know that the void will never be filled by words of comfort or encouragement or love, or even by another human, because there can be no one like the one who left that void in your heart. And yes, your life moves on, but mourning does not come with an end date or the promise that it will get easier or you will get better at it with time. Mourning comes in waves, ebbing and flowing. And learning how to swim in it, is something no one can prepare you for.
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But as someone once said, “Grief is the price we pay for love.” And grief is a sign that we were loved. And no matter how sad that sounds, it also means the love we had is worth the ache. And the love we had will live until the end of time, in our broken hearts, trickling into the lives around us, through us.
After my mom passed away, whenever I was faced with an uncomfortable decision, I would think out loud, “How would my mom respond?” And so today, when I have no clue how to survive Mother’s Day, I ask her the same question, and hear her say instantly, “Though you feel motherless on Mother’s Day, you have me harbored in the deepest corners of your heart, from where, no one can take me away, not even death. And so Mother’s Day is as much yours as it is your friends’, and you should celebrate it in your own quiet way.”
Featured image source: Pixabay, under Creative Commons License
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