Smith - Grieving the death of a mother

GRIEVING THE DEATH

OF A MOTHER

Harold Ivan Smith

I N MEMORY OF MY MOTHER

M ARY C ATHERINE E CKERT S MITH

A PRIL 2, 1916F EBRUARY 21, 1999

GRIEVING THE DEATH OF A MOTHER

Copyright 2003 Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write to: Permissions, Augsburg Fortress, Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440.

Large-quantity purchases or custom editions of this book are available at a discount from the publisher. For more information, contact the sales department at Augsburg Fortress, Publishers, 1-800-328-4648, or write to: Sales Director, Augsburg Fortress, Publishers, P.O. Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

Scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1946, 1952, 1971, 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.

ISBN 0-8066-4347-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smith, Harold Ivan, 1947-

Grieving the death of a mother / Harold Ivan Smith.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

1. Grief. 2. BereavementPsychological aspects. 3. MothersDeathPsychological aspects. 4. Loss (Psychology) I. Title.

BF575.G7S593 2003

155.937dc21 2002154922

Cover design by Mira Skocka; original cover art by Mira Skocka

Book design by Michelle L. N. Cook

eISBN: 9781451409475

CONTENTS

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child. A long way from home.

African American spiritual

My mother died recently, and suddenly I wanted to go home and be a child again.

Laura Scott

I miss being someones daughter. So now I go through life with one less person keeping an eye on me, one less person loving me.

Joyce Maynard

I am again a traveler, wandering through a landscape for which Fodor has no guidebooka land called Grief.

Harold Ivan Smith

A MOTHERS DEATH CAN MAKE SHAMBLES of schedules, priorities, agendas, commitmentssometimes, our most intimate relationships. A mothers last breath inevitably changes us. Motherlessness can be paralyzing or it can be empowering. It can cause us to take life far more seriously. I know. My mother died on February 21, 1999.

As a grief educator, I thought I was prepared for my mothers death. After all, I help people deal with the death of their mothers. I had no idea one death could continuously ricochet down the corridors of a heart.

Grief for a mother will have its days

sometimes long after the rituals are over and

condolence cards have stopped coming in the mail.

Whenever I am convinced that grief is done

Bang! Its back! As if there is an

invisible bungee chord that pulls me back to my grief.

There ismemory.

My mothers guidance throughout my childhood can be summarized by her continual admonition: Now, I want you to be a big boy. Trying to be a big boy during my mothers dying and at her visitation, funeral, and committal proved challenging. It was as if death had ambushed me: You know very little, Mister! It was as if a menacing drill instructor had commandeered my heart.

As a grief educator, I encourage thorough grief. No light grief, no short cuts, and no time off for good behavior; the day-in, day-out work of grief is necessary and important. Unfortunately, I grieve in a society that aggressively limits grief, that reprimands, You should be over your mothers death by now (sometimes punctuated with an exclamation point). Its as if a game clock somewhere determines how much grief time one gets.

After my mothers funeral, I frequently felt as though I had run a gauntlet of questions: How old was your mother? When I answered eighty-three, the frequent response was, Oh, then she lived a good long life. Oh felt like a slap to my face. What would have been wrong with her living eighty-four or eighty-eight years? Was she a Christian? Yes. Well, then, shes in a better place. Had she been sick? Yes. Then her suffering is over. Yes, but what about my suffering? Grief, particularly for an aged mother, is disenfranchised. Jeanine Cannon Bozeman writes: I perceived that many people felt that because

It does not matter who you are or how high

or low your status in society:

how old or young you are

how experienced you are in the black-and-blue realities of life

how clever you are with words

losing a mother wounds.

For the rest of life, some will have great difficulty finding words to wrap around a mothers death. A song, a scent, a taste, a fabric, or a memory will leave us wordless.

It does not matter how self-confident you arelosing a mother deprives you of a chief cheerleader. A friend once told me: I lost the one person who would love me no matter what happened in my life. I always knew my mother would be there for me. What about your husband? I protested. Without hesitation, she replied, Like I said, I lost the one person who would love me no matter what happened in my life. Some have lost mothers at an early age; others have never known their mothers. Some have lost mothers through abandonment, custody battles, mental illness, addictions, dementia, Alzheimers, and then through death. Those who mourn motherloss know the deep reality found in the words to the African American spiritual Sometimes I feel like a motherless child. Long after the rituals, the words of this spiritual take on new meaning. Many have lost mothers without warning through automobile accidents, heart attacks, murders, or suicides. Many grievers are left burdened with unfinished business, apologies that were never verbalized, unexpressed appreciations, and unspoken affections. My friend Carl captured the feelings of many when he said, I still needed her. I wasnt finished growing up yet.

Some have witnessed a slow, agonizing death that has left them whimpering for grace or shaking a fist at a God who could allow such cruelty or injustice. Will I ever forget the first time I found my mother in diapers? Or the first time my mother did not know me? Me! Her baby, Harold Ivan! Some have lost mothers while trying to survive other life crises: downsizing, divorce, our own illness, the death of a child. The one we would have turned to is no longer there to comfort us. After a mother dies, any crisis feels more menacing. A mother might not have known what to say or do, but she would have listened to the end of our sentences, even the ones that rambled incoherently.

Some mothers served as the glue that held a fragile family together. Some of us grieve for a mother and for a family that disintegrated after her death. Some siblings have been on their best behavior while their mother was dying. Nothingincluding family dysfunctionwas allowed to upset mother. That fragile truce continued in some families through the rituals; in others, all it took to unravel was divvying up moms estate. A punch bowl can become a battleground that resurrects old family issues. The family has never been the sameand never will be. Family histories may be divided BMD and AMD: before Moms death and after Moms death.

Motherloss is heightened by the annual emphasis with motherhood on the second Sunday in May. Mothers Day was started by Anna Jarvis as she experienced deep grief for her mother, who died in 1905. Merchants have dozens of ways to remind you that its Mothers Day. Hope Edelman says, Im still trying to figure out how to revise the Roman calendar and leapfrog straight from April to June to avoid Mothers Day. But other red-letter days can sharply remind us that mother is dead, such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, Kwanza, Valentines Day, or even the Fourth of July, when Moms baked beans or devils food cake was the highlight of a picnic or backyard barbecue. Holidays are different after a mother dies.