We're Just Almost The Same: Life Without Mothers

The presence of a mother is encompassing, there is power in knowing that she is just there.  There is comfort in knowing that she just is.  A mother, with all of her good, her bad, and her ugly, is more of a force than a mere person.

When my mom was suffering from the end stage of cancer, I remember peeking into her room before entering each time.  I would pause, watch her chest rise and fall with each breath, and then enter. She was still there.  When I watched the final breath leave her body, it was as if all of the oxygen in the room went with her, in that last gasp of life. She was all of a sudden, not there.

The loss of a mother is visceral.  The umbilical cord that was cut at birth was the first physical separation, but the tether that holds mother and child remains strong through space and time, throughout life.  When death separates a mother and child, there is a real physical aching.

There was a time when my five year daughter was mourning the loss of her first mother.  She cried, saying,  "I'm losing my mother. I need her to kiss me on the cheek some more. I need her to make me some noodles, and go to the park, and walk by the train tracks."  And I said to her back,  "I'll love you, and hold you close forever, and kiss your cheek, and make you noodles, and I will take you to the park every day until you're old.  While we walk to the park, we can talk about your mother, and we can remember all of the remembers that you have about her.  And I lost my mother too, but in a different way, and I need her to kiss me on the cheek some more too, and I miss her everyday too."

My daughter replied: "You lost your mother too? We're just almost the same."  

We are all, just almost the same.

I've been thinking and talking a lot about what Glennon says. "There is no such thing as other people's children."  I believe this with my whole heart.  The children that are in my life, the ones that have passed through, the ones who will be with me until my final breath, or theirs, all of them, are all of my heart.

They are all, just almost the same.  Children of my body, children of my heart.

Two of the children that lived in my home, and in my heart, are now gone. One murdered by gun violence, and one lost to suicide.  Both young teenagers.  I mourn along with their families, and I tell their stories, because their stories should be part of all of our stories.

Our stories are all, just almost the same.

But these two stories in particular: the child who loses their mother, and the mother who loses their child - these are two of the greatest, tragic love stories that life ever wrote.

In the moment that I became motherless, in the moment where all of the oxygen left the room,  I knew that a child should never live without a mother.  It is a most sacred honor to be a mother to the motherless.   But although there is no such thing as other people's children, I'm not sure it works so naturally the other way.  A mother is a mother is a mother.  My mother.  My tether.  Her mother.  Her tether. I can't be the first mother to my daughter who misses her first mother; there is no replacement for that.   But I hope and pray that I can be the best first, second, other, birth, adoptive, foster mother that I can be.   Because once I was taught to be mother, to all of the children, by my mother.

We are all, just almost the same.  Because love.