As I sit here writing, it sounds kind of weird coming from a fifty-three year old woman after over twenty-four years. But it is true—I miss my Mom. I not only miss her for me but I miss her for my sons who never met her and for my daughter who spent a good amount of her first six years with her “Nana” before my Mom, her Nana died.
Maybe I also miss my grandmothers. I was listening to a friend of mine today and she was talking about her mother who died (there I said “that word”) this past January. I cried for her as we spoke of her newly born granddaughter not going to see her great-grandmother and it really hit me. My son is not going to meet and know his grandmother the way I did not get to meet and know my own. You see, my grandmother on my Mom’s side died when she was fifty-three. She was diabetic and when my Mom was twenty, her mother died, never meeting any of us grandchildren. Then when I was twenty-eight, my Mom, also at age fifty-three, died. For the two years prior, she had been sick and gave me everything in the way of support that she could as I went through my divorce.
I remember when my first son came into my life. He was age eight. I cried and cried every time he gave me a struggle—I needed my Mom to tell me how to deal with a child who never had a Mom bond with him. When I had accepted the challenge, my daughter was fourteen and was excited at the thought of having a sibling “finally.” Neither one of us thought that love would not be enough. We thought we both deserved that extra person in our life who would welcome being part of a family. It took us a long time to realize that love was not going to be enough—we would have to work through very trying times to get this young man to learn that love doesn’t happen just because you have a blood tie and that love is not just given only when there is a blood tie.
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