Dear Mothers #12

For A Mother Without Her Mother

Dear Mothers, 

I am at a loss at how to parent through grief. 

It is May 2022, my son—and second child—is two months old, just barely starting to give me those longer stretches of sleep.  My mom and dad come over, chat about the weather, what we had for dinner, then sit down on the couch and reveal that my mother has been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. Three to six months. I ask if it is a joke. Who jokes about something like that? 

When my son is five months old, I take him to see Nana one last time. She already asked that we leave my daughter at home so she won’t “remember Nana this way.” She is so thin, so unlike my sturdy, hardworking mother, her hip bones jutting out of the sheets. 

We say goodbye to her as she says hello to Heaven. She waits for my sister and I to go home for the night before she dies, like she doesn’t want us to see her last breath. Moms, right? Always trying to shield us, right up to the end. 

The funeral is, as expected, horrible. My two-year-old daughter screams if I leave her line of sight. My husband has the stomach flu, and I solo parent my way through it. I drive us home to Texas with clenched teeth as I try to explain how alone I feel, untethered but also surrounded by unmet needs. 

Now it is December. My son is eight months old, and my daughter is three with big feelings. I am limping through the holidays, my capacity for magic-making absolutely stumped. I do not bake cookies, do not watch The Family Stone. Sadness permeates it all. My daughter says regularly, “Are you sad about Nana?” Always, sweet girl. Always. When I get out of bed, I count the hours until I am back in it. 

And now, in February, my father is getting remarried; my son is just shy of eleven months. I am livid with rage. I’m crying at school before my students show up. I understand that parents get to handle their needs, that we all just try to survive, but I cannot separate myself from my childhood. I snap at my daughter. I have no capacity for gentle parenting. I feel undone. 

So my question is this: how do you parent when the problem with parenting is … you? How do I get through this? How? I can’t ask my mother. 

Sincerely, A Mother Without Her Mother

Dear Mother Without Her Mother,

You wrote this letter many months ago, and even re-reading it now, your words instantly transport me back to my own experience—different than yours in so many ways, and yet, the ache is all too fresh and familiar.

I was not a mother when my mom died. I was just eighteen, starting out in life, graduating from high school only days before she died. No longer finding my footing as a new adult, I felt like everything I knew had fallen apart. 

My mom, too, died of pancreatic cancer. A terrible disease. A heartbreaking diagnosis. It was also so very quick; it can still take my breath away.

From her funeral, I remember the hazy glow of the walls, tan with peach and pink tones, and the nauseating smell of stargazer lilies. I remember the first December without her, seven months later, when Christmas felt empty and aching. My dad gave me my first cell phone—the size of a car battery—because instead of going away to college as originally planned, I was still sleeping in my childhood bedroom, commuting to a university only fifteen miles away. He wanted me to have a phone “just in case” and I genuinely smiled at this gesture, in what felt like the first time since she died.  

Half a year later, my dad told me he was getting remarried. I was eating breakfast, and without warning, teardrops fell into my bowl of Froot Loops, like rain in a puddle, over all the compounding loss and change.