Mother’s Day for Moms Who Have Lost Children
For all of those who wake up on Mothers’ Day aching for the child who is not there, I send you love from across the ages. Love from all the mothers who have had to keep breathing after their child has stopped breathing, who have lost their bearings and their center, and slowly, slowly over lifetimes, found new feet and a new rhythm. May their arms be at your back. May their songs be in your belly. You have traveled an endless journey, through the underground and over mountains, to be here now. I honor your long road, your tremendous, broken heart.
I have been blessed to know many moms who have had to say their final goodbye to their children, (at least in body). I am one of them too. Through friendship, through my work as a therapist, my own well is deepened by traveling to this place of underground waters with these mothers, where love and loss swirl together, and where only someone else who has lost deeply can understand. We stand with our toes in the sacred spring, and take in the immense, shadowy love, allow it to flow through us, come through us in tears, in song, in rage, in tenderness.
For me, Mother’s day is a blurry mist of so many feelings, blended together in pastels of orange, pink, black and greys and blues. In the 16 years since my son was born, and the miracle of a week we had together, and his death in my arms, Mother’s day is something I love and that is exhausting, all together.
I love the sweetness that my living daughters bring, the flowers gathered for me, the cards infused with their humor and elegance, the scones, the beauty of a spring day. I love soaking in our family, our humor, even the bad moods for having to get up early on a Sunday, the beauty they create for me anyway. I love getting to acknowledge all three of my children, and love them all openly. I love getting to spend time in my heart with my son, sending him love, feeling his love in return, in the flight of bees, in the sun on my back, the blooming of his rose. He sends me gifts. I put my hand on my heart and thank him for them. Sometimes I wish I could feel more. Each year, I can only wait until that morning to know what the day, what the year, has to show me.
There are things I don’t like on this day. I don’t like having a schedule, because time feels so heavy, I move so slow compared to the rest of the world. I am truly in another realm, between this one for the living, and one where where my ancestors are, where my son is. I want to be here, in this in-between, in this slow time, and not rush. On Mother’s Day I have to let go of being a generous daughter for the mothers in my life. The best I can do is meet my mama at our favorite ice cream place together. She knows we will be late. She is glad we have made it. This was her loss too. On Mother’s Day I don’t like the expectation to be happy. My mood is not a symbol of my love for my family. It is the result of all the rivers, breezes and earthquakes of life merging on this one day. It will be what it will be. It is uncomfortable, but I must allow the convergence.
I love the room for honoring my son’s importance on this day. His life opened us to the parents we would be for our daughters. He taught us to hold on to the common moments, to be present for just BEING because there is so much preciousness to our breaths. He showed us how to see that we have arrived each day into the home of our life, and that we have no claim on what will happen tomorrow. We are cracked and also grateful. We will always have our work to do with grief and trauma. We are imperfect, broken-hearted, wise and tired parents.
For those of you who wake up on Mother’s Day with the heaviness of longing and missing mixed with the lights of flowers and love in the now, I wish you space to show up however you do. I wish you vast room to show up for yourself and your journey, exactly where it is right now. To be in awe of it. Even if you can’t wait for the next phase of it, perhaps a lighter one.That too, is welcome. May you have a chance to touch what is beneath your usual awareness, to feel what might be cooking there and allow it into your hearts, our minds, and bodies. To add to the richness of it all. There is no “should.” There is this moment. I am in awe of your heart, your courage to continue. May life find you, in the midst of longing and death. And “when death finds you, may it find you alive.” (African Proverb).
Jessica Malmberg is a mother of 3, a grief and trauma therapist in Santa Rosa, CA, and a songwriter who walks the hills, holding grief and praise, life and death in her two hands.
