The art of being motherless

There’s a trend in the wellness, psychology, and self-healing community called re-parenting that’s really caught on recently. It’s the idea that we were all raised by parents who did the best they could, but as adults we can work with ourselves and our traumas and speak more to our inner child when we have reactions, feel scared, feel triggered, or feel lost. It’s an amazing concept, and it puts the power of healing squarely into the hand of the person who needs to be healed. There is agency in it. Power. I really believed in it because right up until July 23rd of this year, I was actively practicing this. Learning to feel safe. Understanding my triggers. Going to therapy to unpack how my relationship with my mother impacted my life. Understanding how the stories that were passed down to me during childhood about love, relationships, money and work all played out on the canvas of adulthood, almost like watching a silent film.

But then my brother called and told me that my mother died.

I always tried to imagine what it would feel like for my mother to die. Don’t freak out, I didn’t want to kill her. But our brains are built to protect us. That is their only job. And one of the ways my brain chose to protect me was to occasionally play out the scenario where my mother was no longer on this earth. I’d think about where I would be when I got the phone call (at home, the call always came late in the night in the witching “no good news coming” hours between midnight and 3:30am). I’d think about who would make the call (never quite landed on a good one here). And the most futile thought of all: I’d think about how it would feel to get that call. I’d imagine the initial shock of grief. The hanging up of the phone, dazed. I’d roll over and tell my partner what happened. He’d already be awakened by the phone ringing, half-awake but deeply concerned about the change in tone of my voice on the phone at the moment the news hit. It would jolt him more awake into that alert but eerily silent state that happens when you wake up and have to use your brain or your heart right away.

Like I said. Futile.

At 4:45am on July 24, 2019 I received a phone call from my brother in Chicago. “Hey. Mom’s gone.”

“What?!” my voice lilting with fear, panic, grief as my body understood what he said before my brain connected it. My brain still wasn’t sure. He replied, and clarified, “Mom’s dead.”

“Are you kidding?” Good ol’ brain. Doing anything it can to understand, to shield. Thinking that maybe my brother thought it’d be fun to call me at 4:45am and play a joke on me that mom died. I spat out, “Oh my god. Oh my god. What happened.” He told me. It was a long story that he somehow conveyed in less than 30 seconds. Procedure. Admitted. Emergency room. Coded.

“Ok. I guess I’ll come home. I’ll come home. I love you.”

I clicked end.

My previous vision that I’d so skillfully put together of the moment I found out my mom died was so far off the mark. I was alone in London. Over 3,000 miles away from any real support system. I had friends in London. Dear friends, actually. People I could call that would certainly have come immediately to be by my side. But when something this deep happens, you need people who have been to the depths of the ocean with you. Time. Years. Something sturdy and bolstered by fights, make ups, crying, sleepovers, joy, laughter, and years of love. Flimsy connections just won’t do. Even meaningful ones. All of mine were not where I was. I called Aaron. I called Alissa. I called Amalia. They all said “come home".” I booked a flight home.

Packing under duress is a strange thing. In my previous vision of getting the news, it didn’t involve having to pack a suitcase. When I imagined my grief, it felt heavy, but this didn’t. It felt like an internal buzzing that got so strong it caused my body to shake. It wasn’t my muscles running the show though, it was my heart, my gut, the spaces between my ribs that were vibrating. All responding like a symphony to my suddenly changed world.

In the fog of grief I made it to the airport. I took a bus and two trains. I sat at the airport bar instead of going to the lounge. The bartender didn’t even blink when I asked for a shot of Jameson at 7am. A few minutes later he looked me in the eyes with kindness and knowing and asked if I wanted another. Yes.

My mom died at 10:26pm on July 23, 2019. She died at 64 years old. She died at the University of Chicago hospital in the emergency room. When my brother called me he was still living in the same day that it happened and I was already in the future in London in the early morning hours of July 24, 2019.

All the re-parenting work I had been doing over the course of the year was rendered useless. The feeling of being unmoored in the world is different than just loving your mother from afar. I learned that shock comes first and nothing my little reptile brain could do would prepare me for the actual physical pain of grief. The shock is what I was able to use to ride home. It helped me book a flight, pack my bag. It propelled me to the airport. It gave me patience when my flight was delayed. It numbed me just enough to act.

The grief came later. And working on re-parenting and understanding your inner child means nothing to a body that’s feeling grief. It demands to be felt. Being motherless at 32 isn’t something I thought would happen. Turns out, preparing doesn’t do shit in this case. And it doesn’t matter how close you are to your mother. Being crushed and watching pieces of yourself float away as your desperately try to hold on to any semblance of normal is about as shitty as it gets. But you let those waves crash over you. You come up for breath when you can. You let yourself be held when you cry. And you learn the art of being motherless.