Okay, I’ve been holding back on this one for a while. But I’ve been receiving condolences now for over four weeks. Every single day, no exaggeration. These days, it may be just one or two people in a twenty-four hour period. Back in the first two weeks after my mother’s passing, it was overwhelming. Visits from close friends and family. Hundreds of social media comments. Dozens of cards and private messages. Cut flowers, potted plants, trees, treats. Most often now it’s just a quiet word before or after yoga class, on the massage table, on the baseball field. “I’m so sorry about your mom.” Such a loss–whether we’ve personally experienced it or not–is something everyone can identify with. But I notice some people really identifying. Maybe over-identifying?
Make no mistake, I had a truly unique, truly loving relationship with my mother. But it was also complicated and messy and sometimes really, truly painful. Yesterday, someone offering her condolences said to me, “Some people have awful mothers. We were so blessed to have good ones.” And I choked on my tongue a little bit. I didn’t love my mother because she was a GOOD one. I loved her because she was MINE. I don’t know what to say to people who assume my mother was as warm and caring and adoring and selfless as theirs. She might have been–I don’t know their mothers—so maybe this is my own failing as a daughter, but I kind of doubt it. You see, I had an imperfect mother. She wasn’t AWFUL. She wasn’t GOOD. She was what she was. Oftentimes we clicked, oftentimes we struggled. She loved me, with conditions. I spent nearly the entirety of my twenties in psychotherapy talking about her almost exclusively. My mother was—as “mother” is for most of us—a defining entity in my life. Now I am left to define myself.
I thank you so much for your condolences, but please don’t assume because I loved her, or because I miss her, that she was a WONDERFUL mother or even a GOOD one. My mother was human. And I want to be allowed to miss her because of all that, not in spite of it.
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